What is your favorite transient shaper ?

[kidslow]

I also have at least the NI Transient Master, but it sounds plasticy to me.

Any specific type of material or generally speaking?

In general, but I guess it should work for low-harmonic electronic music. Plasticy means that it doesn't give expected transient snap or bottom weight. I.e. too smooth and thin. Most likely because the timing fits the transient unideally or the curves are too pure.

Seems like a taste thing viewtopic.php?t=440377. However, it certainly has less tuneability than some others.

Or well, the plastic sound is clearly e.g. in these demos https://en.audiofanzine.com/transient-s ... rrows.html. It squashes the snap unnaturally rather than reveals it.

I took liberty to download the mp3 they used for the drum break in those examples with Transient Master and after some A:B with Neutron's transient shaper I can hear what you call the plastic sound or lack of pop. And no question NI is sub-optimal with those drums, especially the unnatural roll-off of the cymbals, that the article is calling gating. In my test, if the Sustain knob in Transient Master is attenuated below about 20% this becomes more and more apparent.

Transient Master seems to hold up better with the guitar and bass in their examples. Might stick to using it with electronic material. Noted that it is not the best transient shaper choice for acoustic drums.

[bmanic]

That sounds quite interesting Would you mind to elaborate or share a link to some video of this in action? I keep hearing and seeing awesome uses of Saturn 2 and it‘s definitely high on my list… surely never thought of it as a transient designer. But you‘re pretty much hitting the nail there. I always have some distortion/clipper after the transient designers to shape and curb them further. I‘m pretty much open to any phase-friendly multi-band solution so I can work on the body, oomph, slap and smack or shine separately. Best case would be to have it in one plugin. Spiff lookes quite interesting and I’ll download the demo once it’s on sale to see what it can do. I also had a look at Transgressor but the level dependent detection didn’t really work for me at all.
How is the Saturn 2 solution doing with.. say guitars (acoustic or clean picking/strumming) or any other source with a more prominent sustain than most percussion? Can I think of it as some kind of a rather complex preset you set up once, save it and then shift and move around as you see fit or is it fast to set up?

Sorry no videos as far as I know but it has an envelope follower which can be switched to transient mode and it can be internally routed to take it's side chain from any of the split bands you create. This opens up a ton of possibilities.

Unfortunately the actual envelope follower itself isn't exactly all that flexible nor ideal but luckily you can combine up to 4 of them in one preset which allows you to use one to tweak another, either directly by modulating the attack and release times or by modulating the same parameter in the opposite direction. This way you get almost complete control over the shape.

The only negative I have found so far is that it can't do super fast timings. Thus it is unfortunately unsuitable for extreme clickyness or spikes.. though you can somewhat work around this using two shapers.

I've made quite a few presets that use transient shaping to tailor a complex audio source (like a drumbus, or even the mixbus) but haven't really done any for single instruments. If you have an example audio source and tell me what you want to achieve with it I could create a preset and post the processed file for you.. or even send you the preset, then you can go download Saturn 2 demo (fully functional for 30 days I think).. and in case you've already demoed it at some point just send FabFilter an email and ask for a demo reset.

[concealed identity]

For multiband transient shaping, Spectral Plugins has just released theirs for free, and it's REALLY good imo: https://spectral-plugins.com/

Easily the best (only?) free multiband transient shaper, but you may find it just as good or better than some paid options.

[Manuel_M]

Sorry no videos as far as I know but it has an envelope follower which can be switched to transient mode and it can be internally routed to take it's side chain from any of the split bands you create. This opens up a ton of possibilities.

Unfortunately the actual envelope follower itself isn't exactly all that flexible nor ideal but luckily you can combine up to 4 of them in one preset which allows you to use one to tweak another, either directly by modulating the attack and release times or by modulating the same parameter in the opposite direction. This way you get almost complete control over the shape.

The only negative I have found so far is that it can't do super fast timings. Thus it is unfortunately unsuitable for extreme clickyness or spikes.. though you can somewhat work around this using two shapers.

I've made quite a few presets that use transient shaping to tailor a complex audio source (like a drumbus, or even the mixbus) but haven't really done any for single instruments. If you have an example audio source and tell me what you want to achieve with it I could create a preset and post the processed file for you.. or even send you the preset, then you can go download Saturn 2 demo (fully functional for 30 days I think).. and in case you've already demoed it at some point just send FabFilter an email and ask for a demo reset.

Oh, that’s so kind of you! Right now I‘m preparing a lot of drums. So currently no raw guitar strummings but I think Fabfilter is doing a yearly summer sale somewhen in June and I might as well get me some demo license for Saturn 2. By then I should have plenty of tonal/guitar material to see what I can do with it but I might come back at you if I need help/guidance. I‘m also gonna ask a friend who’s got their Total Bundle and since I haven’t seen him making music in quite some time, he might be up for selling it to me

It sounds a bit improvisational with the envelope followers but since I had been programming a shit ton of synths patches over the past year I‘m sure I‘ll get to grips with modulating Saturn‘s parameters
Maybe they‘ll extend/improve upon this with version 3 It sounds quite promising for many scenarios!

For multiband transient shaping, Spectral Plugins has just released theirs for free, and it's REALLY good imo: <span class="skimlinks-unlinked">https://spectral-plugins.com</span>/

Easily the best (only?) free multiband transient shaper, but you may find it just as good or better than some paid options.

Awesome, I shall give it a try while I‘m at it Let’s see how their crossovers handle the phase!

[digitalboytn]

A 10 kg sledgehammer...

You can change a few transients with one of those after a solid breakfast ...

[soundmodel]

I also have at least the NI Transient Master, but it sounds plasticy to me.

Any specific type of material or generally speaking?

In general, but I guess it should work for low-harmonic electronic music. Plasticy means that it doesn't give expected transient snap or bottom weight. I.e. too smooth and thin. Most likely because the timing fits the transient unideally or the curves are too pure.

Seems like a taste thing viewtopic.php?t=440377. However, it certainly has less tuneability than some others.

Or well, the plastic sound is clearly e.g. in these demos https://en.audiofanzine.com/transient-s ... rrows.html. It squashes the snap unnaturally rather than reveals it.

I took liberty to download the mp3 they used for the drum break in those examples with Transient Master and after some A:B with Neutron's transient shaper I can hear what you call the plastic sound or lack of pop. And no question NI is sub-optimal with those drums, especially the unnatural roll-off of the cymbals, that the article is calling gating. In my test, if the Sustain knob in Transient Master is attenuated below about 20% this becomes more and more apparent.

Transient Master seems to hold up better with the guitar and bass in their examples. Might stick to using it with electronic material. Noted that it is not the best transient shaper choice for acoustic drums.

No I just think it's badly designed. It's not the role of the user to figure out what it fits and what it isn't. If it's marketed as general-purpose, then if it sounds bad on some material or most material, then it is not very good.

I don't really use transient shapers as types, but more around general characters. That's why I had

one psychoacoustic shaper
one basic colorless shaper
one coloring shaper

The assumption is that most of the time these are source-neutral.

Otherwise they should be branded like RAxx or RVox or the sorts.

[soundmodel]

Also, TBH, as a naive theory I don't think a transient shaper should fail to fit most material as long as the timings can be adjusted. That is only to accomodate the lengths of different frequencies. So I think NI Transient Master just attempts to use "average timings" for everything.

But with e.g. the Flux BitterSweet being a FREE plug-in, then I hardly see any use for things like the Transient Master.

[legendCNCD]

Sure I would also welcome a souped up Elysia nVelope because how freaking good it sounds already - with extra hold etc parameters to shape/sculpt the envelope it would be godsend in some situations.

[soundmodel]

Sure I would also welcome a souped up Elysia nVelope because how freaking good it sounds already - with extra hold etc parameters to shape/sculpt the envelope it would be godsend in some situations.

This one I didn't find clear for most material, but its strong point is the Freq pots.

[The Main Event]

Waves SmackAttack is by far my favourite for drums, its sounds pretty massive and has some versatile Features. Also DS-10 is a nice shaper but not as good as smackattack.

[kidslow]

No I just think it's badly designed. It's not the role of the user to figure out what it fits and what it isn't. If it's marketed as general-purpose, then if it sounds bad on some material or most material, then it is not very good.

Your insights have been very welcome, and only place where I disagree is that I believe it is the role of the user to figure that out, for any tool like this. Ideally prior to purchase. If your point is that NI should be fabricating a more worthy general purpose tool, I 100% agree. Now that I've really listened more closely I would say the sustain knob gives sub-optimal results in both directions when you venture outside the -25% to +25% range.

Purchased Wavegrove Utu, no demo, no documentation either, but the interface seems mostly clear and very well laid out with a nice combination of features. Sounds good to me. I don't know how much longer the sale will last but with the coupon WGR-Easter-2024 on their gumroad page for $9 is a real bargain. All their gumroad plugins are 50% off with that.

[karx25]

Native instruments Transient Shaper

[Raddler1]

Logic's enveloper is quite good. Khz is good, pump feature is unique, but no output gain. Impact starts smacking too fast on transients and as someone mentioned, can get phasey. Smack attack is just so versatile, can take you anywhere in transient land, too bad it's not multiband. That new multiband Pancz is rather good, very clean, GUI a bit too dark though and lacks an EQ. Couture is interesting, but the sustain doesn't push very hard, has great post saturation to tame the transient peaks, very useful on hi hats. NI transient master is good, but vanilla on the controls. Quantum is good, but loses it's charm after a while and feels like you can get lost in the Fx and go off in a tangent forgetting your main goal of transient control. UAD SPL is very good, super transparent and feels natural on most material. The PA version is junk. The new fuse VCE 118 is very useable for transients, doubles as a limiter too.

[liquidsound]

Carver if you are on Ableton
https://www.noirlabs.co/

[Nug Wrangler]

Black Rooster The Canary is nice
https://blackroosteraudio.com/en/products/canary