Not Just Another Transient Designer
A true one of a kind, Transgressor goes beyond the limits of standard transient designers. It gives you the ability to craft the sound of drums and other instruments not just in terms of attack and sustain, but timbrally as well. The Transgressor combines a transient designer with two equalizers. No big deal you say? Any EQ plug-ins will do? Au contraire mon frère. Transgressor not only lets you equalize the attack and sustain portions of the instrument’s envelope individually (yes, you read that right; attack can be equalized differently from sustain), but it also lets you dial in the specific low, mid, and high frequencies independently on each. What if you need a brighter attack but want to keep the dark resonance of toms or kick drum? Perhaps you need more midrange attack but wish to brighten the resonance of a hi-hat? Perhaps you’re happy with the overall sound of snare but the attack is just a little too bright. The answer is the Transgressor (you must have seen that coming). Only Transgressor gives you the ability to control transients and sustain without compromising one for the other.
Just the Facts:
- Hybrid transient designer with two 3-band equalizers with selectable slopes
- Gain controls let you boost or eliminate transients and sustain independently
- Mix knob lets you adjust wet/dry signal
- Adjustable transient detector lets you control sensitivity, eliminate false triggers from bleed
- Internal or external sidechain control of detector
- Sidechain EQ lets you dial in the frequencies that trigger the detector
- Three sidechain modes with “listen” feature to monitor sidechain signal
- Retrigger controls time between triggered events
- A/B bank comparison
- Factory presets to get you started
EQ Transients and Sustain Individually
EQ plug-ins only make global changes to an instrument; whatever you do to the transient is also done to the sustain and decay. Even dynamic EQs change the entire envelope, even if it’s only momentarily. Transgressor gives you 2 EQs. One for your attack and one for your sustain, letting you shape exactly the way you want your attack to sound. There are three bands to each EQ section (low, mid, high) with variable frequency selection and gain for each band. Each band also gives you three selectable filter types that are particularly suited to each band. For example, the low band has high-pass, low shelf, and bell, while the mid band has bell, bandpass, and slant, which boosts highs while cutting lows and vice versa.
EQ Applications
Do you want to add bite to your snare without increasing the snare buzz? Transgressor is your go-to plug-in. Do you need to reduce the ringing in your snare without changing the tone? No worries. Transgressor does it easily. Transgressor is also a great tool for reamping a snare. The high-frequency attack coming through a speaker will not excite the snare head enough. You need midrange information to make that happen, which requires transient design and dramatic EQing. Transgressor’s ability to boost the gain on the low and midrange portion of the attack, while eliminating sustain lets you do it in one simple process. Better still, it gives you the ability to easily craft the sound of the re-amped snare with adjustments on the fly.
If you’ve ever fallen asleep on the control room sofa while producer and drummer went through every snare in the known universe to find the right one, only to be replaced in the mix with CPU-eating software, Transgressor can save both time and CPU resources. Don’t like the snare the client sent you? Forget about time-consuming snare sample shootouts. Transgressor’s powerful EQ and transient- and resonance-shaping capabilities can transform the sound of any drum to suit the song and your taste.
Not just for drums, Transgressor can also bring out the snap and pop of a funk bass without turning it into a baritone guitar. Plus, you can get really clever and create unique-sounding drums and instruments that will have other producers calling you up to find out how you got that sound.
Sidechain Sleight of Hand
In addition to giving you full control over the sound of your transients, Transgressor adds another layer of creativity by letting you use the detector with an external sidechain. This lets you adjust the EQ and sustain of any instrument triggered by another. For example, some engineers use room mics just for ambience. However, if you mix like Chris Lord-Alge and derive the body of your drum sound from the room mics, perhaps you’ll find that you need to increase the attack on the snare drum hits. Put Transgressor on your room mics and route the snare drum to the sidechain. Then the transients will only trigger when the snare drum is hit, but it will affect the sound on the room mics. This is highly effective for getting big drum sounds without washing them out in reverb.
Whether it’s hard-hitting tight drums, or big sustained drums, Transgressor lets you dial them in exactly the way you want. Download the demo now and be forgiven for all your transient-shaping sins.
bherle –
Yes, love this, but please hurry with the Apple Silicon Native version, or I’ll end up buying something else and probably never come back for future versions!
deniki4 –
Very good plugin.
Please make M1 Native version. Only your plugins in my collection still don’t support M1.
jacoby –
Essential plugin. Along with Gatey Watey, in desperate need of Apple silicon update. Dozens of piano libraries out there, from lightweight to comprehensive. And Pianoteq. PRIORITIES.
Phatso Brown –
Is the best kept secret in creative drum shaping? Oh yes. And criminally underrated too. This is pure multi band mayhem on your snares, kicks, percussion, and even guitars. Forget about AI, use this to generate endless variations on your existing samples and beats library. A dull sounding electronic kick now has more oomph and sounds like a Pearl. A snare sounds more layered and cuts through with a little high mid boost, where previously you had to layer it with a clap and who knows what else. Separate bands for attack and release are just insanity, but they make it easy to fix things like those troublesome guitar samples and VSTs with too much low mid energy buildup. It can even do resonance suppression. There is no built in clipper, which encourages responsible transient processing, so I won’t ask for one (and Boz do make a few very clever ones). I am a bit of a transient design ho, so I don’t know how I slept on this one, but don’t make the same mistake I did and transgress away. If you’re having to compress, and eq and layer your drums to get them to sound phat, use this, and thank Boz later.
shotaro356 –
Really Great for Electronic Kicks! Just use factory preset for Kick, and Next, Boom! Your Kick will be Next Level!
Also Combination of “Transgressor 2 -> Bark Of Dog 2” is Great. If you are looking for Great Kick for kinda Club Track, I think this is must have! I use this combi along with other plugins but this is very key factor. I have other Frequency adjustable transient designer, but Transgressor only has this Very great unique charactor for Electric Kicks. Thanks Boz and Boz Digital Labs’s team! Amazing!
Clifton –
There is nothing out there in the ether like this. Boz, has really thought about a series of key events that artists and engineers work with on the daily and has created a tool that would allow innovators to tap into its DNA, to extract the necessary components to build their spaceships, guided voices, and leave their personal stamp on the universe. Take a leap, have a listen, and decide for yourself. Support yourself and protect your art, you know what’s best. The future has came and went, get into the presence.
Ars. Nova. Strata . . .
JonB –
Like others here have said, when you first read the description it sounds like a unique idea and not much else, but when you start to use it there is no going back! The idea is so simple and yet so powerful that it’s possible to get a toy drum recorded with a potato to sound like a real, useable kickdrum. This replaces MANY of the other plug-ins that I would usually use on my drumtracks and busses and does so with little cpu usage. The GUI is neat and shows you every function in just one window, which makes it fast to work with, and I like the fact that it’s possible to save both universal presets and presets for the attack and sustain EQ’s separately. This is simply a must have plug-in!
Tre’ Ossmann –
This is a plugin that never caught my eye until I heard it in action. When I first read the description of this plugin, I thought it was a unique idea, but that was about it. I didn’t really grasp how powerful this plugin is until I watched a couple videos on it. Then I was blown away. This thing offers a degree of control over drums unlike any other plugin I’ve ever seen. So far I haven’t owned a Boz plugin that I haven’t liked, but if I had to give them all up and could only keep one, this one would be it. Simply because there’s no other plugin out there (that I know of) that is capable of transforming drum tracks like this one is. This plugin is a game changer.
kevinsparks –
This is a game-changer for fart sounds. Turn down the sustain on the lower frequencies and you instantly have a speaker destroyer if you are proud enough. Cowardly farts not allowed
hungaristani –
Transgressor has been a bread and butter plugin on all drum tracks since the day I bought it. It’s so much more than a plain transient/envelope shaper. Its use along with Oxford Envolution completely changed my workflow and the way I use compressors. It’s a must for all who go for heavily processed drums without using samples.
John Nathaniel – Producer/Mixer (OneRepublic, Switchfoot) –
Transgressor is an absolute beast to handle the shape of sounds. Having the ability to manipulate the attack and sustain so precisely is a game changer for me! You can go from soft to absolute chaos with this!
Torgul –
This is just plain good. 🙂
eno –
Well, the interface has some little spots that don’t feel completely consistent, plus you cannot resize it? Other than that, after spending years almost never touching transients or simply using some very basic transient shaper, this one finally does give me a lot of influence and – most importantly – a quick handle on the sound of drums and other elements. Highly recommended!
rickskii –
After trying a variety of different transient designers I definitely have a new favourite. I tried the first version but really didn’t get along with it. The new EQ section and the much better layout on version 2 really let you see what is going on and allow adjustments to easily be made. Props to boz on this release.
ilmai –
This immediately became my favorite transient processing tool. So creative, so much more powerful as a sound design tool than any alternative. Also the new UI is so much easier to use. Now if Big Beautiful Door gets a similar update, it’s going to be an insta-buy for me.
tccrawford82 –
This is a fantastic tool.
You can, for instance, on toms, with the ‘remove stick attack’ preset, set the threshold so that soft hits keep the stick attack and sound nice and organic, and the attack on loud hits is de-emphasized so the drums sound big and full.
It’s so quick and easy.
Vic –
Transgressor been one of my fav plug from Boz. I love the things you can do with it & totally control things. It’s extraordinary.
Now that Boz has enhanced the interface with audio analysis and 4 bands of eq, I’m so excited to have it, ambitiously taking on 2020 with a smile.
Thanks a lot for the free update Boz, glad to be a long time customer & supporter of your great reliable work. Cheers
Alexphilipp –
Absolutely incredible tool. Gives very impressive results with unbelievably small CPU load. Different frequency settings for Transient and Sustain very useful. For Threshold would be nice to see below and above function in future. Also latency could be set up to 1ms when rendering for better transient handling.
Good job Boz! Must have plugin!
jaimedare –
Love this thing for so many reasons. Favourite way to currently use it is to totally change up drum loops by muting the sustain part and then playing with the hold/release and also the retrigger etc. Obviously plenty of other, more practical uses for this too, would fully recommend it!
Ross Donaldson –
I bought the first generation of this product way way back and I think I have used it on every mix since. I am looking forward to the updated interface.
In the olden days we would take a drawmer gate and set it to “duck” so we could process just that crack portion of the snare then add it into the mix. This allows me to do that in one interface with much better control.