Manual

UAD Powered Plug-Ins Manual - 428 - Chapter 44: SPL Transient Designer

• Shorten the sustain period of a snare or a reverb tail in a very musical way

to obtain more transparency in the mix.

• When recording a live drum set, shorten the toms or overheads without

physically damping them. Usual efforts to damp and mike are reduced re-

markably. Since mufﬂing of any drum also changes the dynamic response,

the Transient Designer opens up a whole new soundscape.

• Micing live drums is considerably faster and easier because you can correct

the apparent “distance” of the microphone by simply varying the ATTACK

and SUSTAIN values.

• The Transient Designer is a perfect alternative to noise gates in live drum

micing. Adaptively reacting to the duration of the original signal, the sustain

is shortened more musically than with ﬁxed release times and a drumset is

freed from any crosstalk quickly and effectively.

• Create unusual dynamic effects including new and interesting pan effects.

For example, patch a mono loop through two channels of the Transient De-

signer and pan fully left and right in the mix. Process the left channel with

increased ATTACK and reduced SUSTAIN while you adjust the right chan-

nel the opposite way and you get very special stereo loop sounds. You have

to try this to appreciate what it sounds like, but expect to hear a lot of un-

usual stereo movement.

• Enjoy an amazingly simple integration of drum sounds into a mix. If the

acoustic level of a snare is expanded to approximately +4 dB by increasing

the attack value, the effective increase of peak levels in the overall mix is

merely about 0.5 dB to 1 dB.

Drums:

Ambience

If your drums happen to sound as if the room mics have been placed in a shoe

closet, the Transient Designer can immediately turn that sound into the ambi-

ence of an empty warehouse. Just send the stereo room mics through the Tran-

sient Designer and crank the ATTACK control to emphasize the first wave.

Now slowly increase SUSTAIN values to bring up an “all-buttons-in-1176-

sound” room tone—but without pumping cymbals. For a solid and driving

rhythm track just fine-tune the SUSTAIN control to make sure that the room mic

envelope ends more or less exactly on the desired upbeat or downbeat.