Snap: a transient shaper plugin for punch, snap and control

What a transient shaper plugin does

A transient shaper plugin changes two parts of every sound: the attack, the first few milliseconds of a hit, and the sustain, the ring and tail after it. Turn Attack up and a snare cracks harder. Turn Sustain down and a roomy kit goes tight and dry. It's also called a transient designer, and the job is the same whatever the name.

Unlike a compressor, a transient shaper doesn't use a threshold. Snap follows the shape of each hit, not its level, so a ghost note and a rimshot get the same treatment. That makes it quick to set: there's no threshold to chase when the drummer plays softer in the verse. For the theory, read what a transient shaper is.

Drum punch without losing headroom

The catch with adding attack is that it makes peaks taller. A big attack boost can push a snare's peaks several dB higher, and that headroom is gone before you reach the mix bus. Snap's Clip to Punch fixes this. An oversampled soft clipper after the shaper shaves the new peaks back toward the input's peak level, so the extra attack reads as loudness and punch instead of spikes.

Most presets run Clip to Punch between 20% and 60%. Drum Bus Loud goes to 85% for a dense, loud bus. Soft Jazz Brushes turns it off, because it softens the attack and creates no new peaks to catch.

Transient shaper presets for kick, snare and drum bus

Play the demo and listen to Punchy Drum Kit: kick and snare step forward, the tails get a little shorter, and the peaks stay where they were. Then try Big Room Drums, which does the opposite: Sustain at +55% brings the room up.

2-band mode: shape the kick without touching the cymbals

On a full drum loop, boosting attack sharpens everything at once: kick, snare, hats and cymbals. Switch Bands to 2-Band and Snap splits the signal at Split (60 Hz to 4 kHz). Below the split, Low Attack and Low Sustain apply; above it, the main Attack and Sustain.

Rock Kit Smack splits at 200 Hz and sharpens both bands, with a bit of extra low sustain for weight. Overhead Tamer splits at 3 kHz and softens attack on top, which takes the sting out of cymbals in overheads. Beat Bus 2-Band adds knock below 150 Hz while shortening the low tail, so a kick punches without the boom smearing into the bass.

Tighten room sound and loops with Sustain

Pulling Sustain down is the fastest way to dry up drums recorded in a lively room. Tight Room Kill and Snare Dry Up do it on single tracks, and Loop Tightener cleans up sampled loops. Go further and you get an effect: Gated Room Fake cuts sustain by 100% for a choked, gated sound.

Not sure what Snap is hearing? Set Listen to Transients or Sustain to solo each part. The Transient Solo and Sustain Solo presets do it in one click.

Beyond drums: guitar, bass and percussion

Anything with a pluck or a strum has transients. Acoustic Strum Pop makes strummed parts bounce, Funk Guitar Chank turns clean funk rhythm into tight stabs, and Palm Mute Chug adds low-end attack to metal rhythm guitar. Bass Pick Definition sharpens the pick above 500 Hz and barely touches the low end below it. Going the other way, Acoustic Soften takes the edge off a bright, spiky strum.

Snap in Ableton Live, Pro Tools and FL Studio

• Ableton Live: drag Snap onto a drum track or a Drum Rack chain. Live's Drum Buss has a Transients knob, but no separate attack and sustain controls. See plugins for Ableton.
• Pro Tools: Snap loads as AAX on any insert. Put it on the kick or snare track, or on the drum aux. See plugins for Pro Tools.
• FL Studio: load Snap on the Mixer insert your drums are routed to. It works the same on a single Channel Rack sound or a full drum bus. See plugins for FL Studio.
• Logic Pro: use the AU version in an Audio FX slot on the track or drum bus.

The dry path inside Snap is latency matched, so Mix settings below 100% never comb-filter. That lets you do parallel processing on one insert, without a send.