Transient Designer has come to Venue!

Its a great day to be a Venue engineer! Somehow I missed its initial release a few weeks ago, but yesterday I loaded the new SPL Transient Designer TDM plug-in and enjoyed sweet audio bliss!

Why so excited? Danny Cox, Kensington’s music director and accomplished studio drummer, first introduced me to a 4-channel hardware version of the Transient Designer a few years ago and I had one in our previous PM1D rig for maybe 6 months. In that time, I quickly found it to be one of those magic tools that just makes things sound better.

Its very simple to use – only attack and sustain controls – and the combination allows the engineer to completely reshape the attack and sustain characteristics of a sound. On snare, adding some sustain adds a natural verb of sort to an otherwise too tight sound. On toms, reducing the sustain a few clicks gives a similar effect to taping up a drum that’s a bit too resonant. On kick, dynamically adjust the click of the tone vs the sustain. On piano, add or reduce the initial attack of the note.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I’m a big proponent of getting the mix right at the source. While Transient Designer made its name in the industry to fix in the mix otherwise poorly recorded tracks, I found it provided a great tool to adjust for the variety of styles of drummers that play on our stage and make otherwise great tones even better. The whole key to using it effectively is moderation.

Now on any given week I will have at least 6 or 7 instances of the plug-in set up in my rack on kick in and out, snare 1 and 2, rack & floor toms, & piano.

Dave Stagl said today that its a bit early, but it seems likely that Transient Designer TDM is destined to become another must-have plug-in for Venue. I must agree! Much in the same vane as Cranesong Phoenix, Rane Serato Dynamics, & the Pultec/Fairchild combo on guitars, Transient Designer will be a staple of my live setup going forward.

SPL has a 14-day demo available on their site. But be warned: don’t try it unless you’re prepared to purchase!