What is a Transient Shaper?

[Sharmaji]

how anyone mixed multitracked lived drums before transient designers came into the fold, i have no idea. huge respects to that.

macc's clarified the process. in practice, they're really useful on (surprise) transient things-- drums especially, but also short bass sounds, etc. I use them as a sort of halfway tool between a gate and a compressor; they're excellent for shortening a sound and getting rid of a natural reverb tail, w/o it sounding cut off, which not all gates can do. They're also great for slowing down the attack of a sound, making it seem more intense and/or farther away-- or for accentuating the transient, making it seem closer and possibly smaller. works wonders on rimshots, and room mics on a drumkit.

you can accentuate the decay of a sound as well, and create an effect similar to sidechained pumping. often really pretty ugly (most sounds devolve into the noise floor at the end of the decay), but sometimes quite interesting.

also the opposite of compression is expansion... yet another tool that's about halfway between gating and compression.

TBH it's really a mix tool, not so much an effect... in EDM, if you're using it on drums, you'd probably find more joy by just choosing a different sample, but YMMV...

[-[2]DAY_-]

UAD SPL Transient Shaper works incredibly.... im sure there are other niceys.

But in general most of the stuff has been covered. i just figured i'd add one technique that has helped me get great drum sounds on occasion...

First start by applying typical compression, maybe between 4 -8:1 ratio, slow attack and fast release, to make drum transient snap and then decay rather quickly.. emphasizing the transient.
Then turn up the transient shaper's release to bring the release of the sound back UP since the compression made its attack dramatically louder. It seems kinda like digging a hole just to fill it back in again, but in many cases, it sounds better... the drum has the snap from compression, but bringing the volume up on its release afterward makes it more noticable/memorable of a hit, without eating up headroom .. you could also give it a touch more (or less) attack

I guess all i'm saying is try combining compression and TS (transient shaper inserted post-compression).
IMO bringing out the snap is more effective with compression, while bringing out the release is better with TS.