Audio Assault’s Transient+ VST/AU Plugin FREE For A Limited Time

Audio Assault is giving away the Transient+ ($10 value) transient shaper effect in VST/VST3/AU/AAX/RTAS plugin formats as a free download for a limited time only.

Transient+ is marketed as a multi-band transient shaper on Audio Assault’s website but it’s not exactly clear how to (if at all) adjust the affected frequency range. The available controls resemble that of a traditional transient shaper that covers the entire frequency spectrum. There’s the Attack knob for increasing the perceived volume of the attack transient and the Sustain knob for increasing the volume of the signal’s “tail”. Located between these two controls is the 2X parameter which doubles the intensity of the applied transient processing.

One interesting addition to the otherwise fairly standard feature set is the Clip control which enables the built-in clipper circuit. This can be used to simply tame the peaks of the processed transient, or as a creative effect for distorting the processed signal. The resulting distortion sounds quite aggressive and could work very well for beefing up percussive sounds. Paired with the Mix control which adds the clean signal to the output, the Clip effect in Transient+ becomes a neat little tool for parallel processing of acoustic and electronic drum tracks.

The other available controls include the Slow switch which “relaxes” the transient detection algorithm and the Bypass switch for quickly turning off any processing. The Output knob controls the volume on the output. A preset manager is also included for storing your settings for later (the plugin doesn’t come with any factory presets).

During our test, Transient+ proved to be a very capable transient shaper. The plugin is very easy to use due to its simple control scheme and the transient detection worked flawlessly on our test material. It handled even some complex synth bass patches without a problem so it can also be useful for adding punch to bass sounds. The CPU hit is very low, hitting around 1% on our test machine.

Transient+ normally costs $10 and is currently available for free download from the developer’s website, so definitely check it out if you’re looking for a simple transient shaping tool. After completing the checkout process, you will receive a ZIP archive which contains the installer for unpacking the desired plugin formats on your hard drive.

Transient+ is available for free download via Audio Assault (85.8 MB download size, ZIP archive containing EXE installer, 32-bit & 64-bit VST/VST3/AU/AAX/RTAS plugin formats for Windows & macOS).