BABY Audio

Launched to a lot of hype (mostly YouTubers) and then? Well, I can tell you it's very nice on bass, vocals, drums, and for that extra spice, even the master. BUT, do NOT use negative Hi-Shape or Lo-Shape values on 'pristine' sources or it will seriously fuck up your audio. Not ONE reviewer bothered to describe the behavior of these innocuous and badly named sliders. Neither does Baby Audio. So you're welcome. If BA had added some sort of visualizer...that would've helped, but really, why have 'em in the first place? Or if you are going to, why not think about how the end user is going to perceive and use those settings? As an EQ basically, right? So, what happens when I turn down the bass on my EQ? Does my kick drum turn to diarrhea? Nope. While they generally make some very intuitive plugins (Tekno is genius, Smooth Operator Pro is gold!), this one confuses me. V2.0 with better controls (or even some sort of 'well this is why we put this here') should ensure that this has legs beyond it's initial 'premier week' on YouTube. It's a very simple, and a very elegant sounding plugin; those two settings just play spoilsport.

I have used so many plugins over the past 20-years. .. some good, some bad, and some ugly. The whole shebang by Baby Audio is very, very good indeed. They don't mindlessly follow the market trend and churn out clones of other products; they release extremely creative, innovative audio tools that users crave. .. myself included! Their apps and plugs suit a variety of genres, not just EDM. I'm currently producing alternative folk and indie rock.

This bundle includes some of the best offerings available in today's and tomorrow's market. I'm a proud user of many of them. In addition to writing and producing original tracks, I work as an educator, using music to reach, teach, and inspire. I just finished another semester. You should have seen the kid's faces when I used Transit to mess with their in-class samples! I just updated to Transit 2, and I cannot wait for next semester. I haven't used Humanoid yet, but I have high hopes for vocal transformation and hard tuning. Smooth Operator is lovely, and I'm used that to. .. well. .. smooth out harsh tracks. It's very easy to use, musical, and yields great results. Comeback Kid is another favorite of mine. .. the warmth of its repeats are creamy and it's fun to mess scroll through settings.

All of Baby Audio's music tools look and sound good. And, they are fun to use! I highly recommend checking out this bundle, especially when on sale.

Transit (version 1) is already obsolete in less than a year. Now it's $29 to stay current and doesn't replace existing instances. Baby Audio, you've got some great products, but I hope you don't treat them all like this. I'm stepping off the Trainsit train.

Update 11/11/25: there is an update to the transit2, but I cant log into their site because they do "fastspring" and this is blocking me from receiving the update. I have no account, but I have an account? I bough this in pluginboutique, and they dont have the update, and baby audio has no account for me. Great! Par for the effing course. 2 stars.

Edit: I want to say something I dont usually say: this was better than I thought it was. It took hours and a few different sessions over days for me to come to this conclusion and add another star, and I wanted to say this. The quality and complexity of premade effects stacks is actually very good, and it works, and increases the value of this despite how soon after v1 was this released, how it looks identical, etc. Still - its a cash grab lol, but its also a good product if you just buy this and not the first version.

*****.

I wrote a lengthy review for the first Transit, released... about 1 year ago. I gave that plugin 4 stars, minus 1 for weak MIDI binding, and overall I enjoyed it and found it useful when shortcutting or speeding up my post-processing and tweaking workflows.

Cut to today -- Baby Audio/Huang sent me an email that I thought was about a major update to the recently released Transit, but instead it was an email offering me a special price for... Transit 2, a new release already.

This new version of Transit is also nice, it also looks good(identical), and this version has a lot more presets and a good number more effects than version 1, but.... I cant help but feel that this was not necessary and that the idea was, indeed, a modest cash grab.

If Transit 2(and 1) were not just tools that streamline existing DAW-based workflows and effects chains, and were not plugins whose main functions can be replicated in most DAWs at a stock level, I would not criticize this brand for making a paid version 2 which is basically an updated version 1, but that is the reality here.

I did indeed buy this because the $30 upgrade offer fits into my budgets and I was genuinely curious to see how far this had been developed, but I'll only give 3 stars to an otherwise 4-5 star product because attaching a YouTube streamer personality to this to try to sell + its minimal value warrants it.

Having tried both versions, I actually prefer this to the premium one (the Comeback Kid). All the different modes are dialled in pretty nicely (except 'cheap', which just puts a mediocre bitcrusher effect on the repeats), and it sounds nice and wide with or without 'ping pong'

This is a terrific little synth. It's not really an emulation, although Baby Audio obviously started out with the Yamaha CS01 as inspiration. They have taken it much further, though, adding extra features that take it way beyond the CS01, whilst keeping the original's simplicity of operation (and some of the limitations that go with that). Sound quality is excellent, very much in the spirit of the good ol' days but right up there with the best emulations and V/A plugins.

You get two oscillators with the usual V/A waveforms and tuning options. FM modulates Osc 1 with a sine wave for a gnarlier sound. The low-pass resonant filter does its job, without standing out in any way. There is just one ADSR envelope and a single LFO (sine wave only). At the end of the signal path is a decent suite effects - sidechain (ducks the signal to a 4/4 beat if there is no input), Tone (EQ), Drive (two kinds), Delay, Reverb and Chorus.

The instrument is velocity sensitive (on/off) but doesn't respond to aftertouch or a mod wheel (even though the CS01 had pitch and mod wheels). It all sounds a bit basic and mundane but the reality is that all the elements work together really well, to create something that is much greater than the sum of it's fairly simplistic parts. BA-1 ships with several hundred presets to prove this point. Hitting the "re-gen" button also shows that it's pretty hard not to make a useful patch, even when assigning random values to everything.

The Version 1.5 update added a basic arpeggiator and a few "hidden" controls to extend the synth's functionality (look for little dots in the cracks in the UI). While we are talking about dots, there are a couple of labels on the bottom row with dots next to them - press the dots to change the functionality, as per the screen. V1.5 also gives you an effect VST with the BA-1's effect chain, which is a nice addition. The updated preset browser is also pretty good, allowing you to tag presets with three different colours.

There are a couple of weird, unique features I feel are perhaps unnecessary and take up a lot of space on the GUI. The speaker sim is kinda cute, I suppose, but it's pretty limited and doesn't need to take up so much space. The Battery emulation is supposed to mimic the effect of running out of juice but it feels either too subtle or too full-on, there's no real sweet spot where it feels useful. The sidechain can be used like a second LFO on the VCA so it has its uses.

There are also a few things I'd like to see added to this synth, limitations that feel unnecessary to me. Being able to modulate the FM amount with the envelope or LFO would extend the usefulness of the feature. In fact more destinations for the LFO would be welcomed, as would a few more LFO waveforms. I also feel the LFO's modulation depth isn't always enough. HP, BP and Notch filter modes would be nice, too. Being able to assign the Mod Wheel to various parameters would make the synth a lot more playable. Maybe the speaker box could be halved to make room for the chunky wheels of the CS01, which I always thought looked really cool. They'd be particularly good for the standalone, if not so much for the VSTi (where you can more easily assign controllers). The biggest improvement I'd like to see, though, is the addition of a unison mode so I can stack all the oscillators into even bigger sounds.

To be clear, none of those things stop this from being a really good little synth, just as it is. The sounds I can get out of it are incredible, from soft and subtle to monstrous and scary, and all the while it delivers a high quality sound that always seems to work in a mix. You can use the re-gen feature to build your own bank of unique, usable sounds in no time and tweaking those sounds to get them working in an arrangement/mix is about as easy as it gets. As I said, BA-1 is a lot more than the sum of its parts and it has become my "go to" synth for most things.

Love this reverb. The GUI is fantastic and it sounds awesome. Pretty much the only reverb I use these days.

Instant Synthwave machine. Simple, enjoyable, no clutter, light on the CPU, sounds GREAT. Looking for subtle vintage textures? Got it. The tones of those crappy "unsolved mysteries" TV shows of the early 80s? Easy as pie. Analog warmth? Ask and you shall receive.