Transient shaping
Popularised by SPL’s iconic Transient Designer, a transient shaper is one of the simplest yet most effective tools for shaping a signal’s punch and impact, usually via only two controls: attack and sustain. In contrast to a compressor, which will only act when the threshold level is exceeded, transient shaping plugins act on an input signal in a consistent way, regardless of the incoming signal level.
This behaviour often makes them a more reliable choice than a compressor for adding or removing a signal’s punch, for a number of reasons. One example is mixing live drum recordings: a live drummer will typically not hit the drums at a completely consistent level, so a compressor will not shape the signal in a completely consistent way; a transient shaper, on the other hand, analyses the entire amplitude envelope of the signal passing through it, and reacts to every hit uniformly – not just those that exceed a predefined threshold.
Not only can transient shaping raise or lower a signal’s attack, but it’s also a great tool for adjusting sustain. If you’re looking to reduce a sound’s sustain, for example, you could use a gate to reduce the level after a the envelope has decayed to a certain level… but gates can sound a bit truncated or obvious if not set up carefully. A transient shaper will typically give cleaner, more invisible results when being used for the same job.
Now we’ve had a quick rundown of how transient shaping works in theory, let’s take a closer look at some of the great ways we can add punch and power to a signal with transient design.