This is kind of a big thing. Up until now we haven’t had a transient designer in iOS, but as of now there’s FAC Transient, which is a dynamics processor providing precise design and control of the attack and sustain stages of your instruments. If you’re not sure what a transient designer or shaper does, they are often associated with drum enhancements. FAC Transient includes, in addition to classic amplification or attenuation of the attack and sustain portion of your instrument, a fine control of the detection circuit involved in the processing.
Basically there are three envelopes built from their respective detection circuits. The first one is the contour of the input signal, this includes similar processing available in FAC Maxima and brings you control of the threshold, time and detector algorithm. The second and third one define the contour of the attack and sustain portions and brings you a total control of the depth and duration of each stage.
FAC Transient gives you all you need to design the shape of your instruments and provides them the place they deserve in your mix.
Here are the main features of the app:
- Design the attack and sustain stages of your instruments
- Adjust the depths to bring them to the front or to the background of your mix
- Fine tuning of the envelope detection circuits; time, algorithm and threshold
- Threshold provides an accurate control of what to keep in the input detection circuit
- Suitable for any situation: drums, guitars, bass, vocal and much more
- Mix parameter to blend the effect into the original signal
- Audio Unit V3 iOS
- Host app provided (iOS: Supports most of your input devices – mic and USB devices)
- iOS AuV3 supported in GarageBand, AudioBus3, AUM, BM3, ModStep…
Input
- Gain (up to 15db) Use it carefully
Main contour
- Threshold sets the level at which the detector starts working
- Time the detector takes to return to the detected level
- Detector algorithm: SLOW and FAST
Attack Designer
- Depth defines the amplification or attenuation of the attack portion of the signal
- Time is the duration the attack envelope detector takes to return to the main contour
Sustain Designer
- Depth defines the amplification or attenuation of the sustain portion of the signal
- Time is the duration the sustain envelope detector takes to return to the main contour
Output
- Dry/Wet mix signal control
- Gain (up to 15db) Use it carefully
- Stereo input and output VU Meter
- Bypass
As with all FAC products the value of each knob can be monitored at any time and two VU meters provide an accurate visual monitoring of the input and output signal levels. The knobs are very responsive, natural and follow a specific curve according to the parameters type.
Preset Management
Transient also comes with some factory presets to provide you a source of inspiration to satisfy your needs in any situation you might require.
The preset button provides common management features: loading, organization, and saving. The left and right arrows allow fast navigation short cut among all the presets (factory + user), a short press on the center label provides a detailed list of all the available presets, select the one you want to work with. On the other hand a long press (hold) provides contextual operation. For factory presets it’s possible to save the current preset to a user preset, for user presets it’s possible to rename, save and delete the current preset.
FAC Transient is available on the app store and costs $8.99