Eventide: Fission

Eventide’s Audio division recently released a new entrant into the Transient Shaping collection of digital audio tools available to the modern engineer, although this processor is a lot more than just a means to emphasise the attack transient and shorten the decay elements of a sound.

I am loving “Fission.” This is practically splitting the atom when it comes to accessing the elements of the sound envelope and most importantly gives the engineer independent control between both, with a powerful library of dedicated effects assignable to each component: Transient & Tonal.

Sure, split a Tom hit and you can alter the balance between the attack strike and the decay of the shell - you can now even Tune the decay independently of the attack with the Pitch algorithm - but this is a sound sculpting tool, not just a Transient Designer of sorts. If you’d like to literally divide the sonic elements that are the DNA of your targeted sound and manipulate them both in beautifully musical (and non-musical) ways then check out “FISSION” by Eventide.

SSL Drumstrip

In a previous post I stated my fondness for Solid State Logic's "Drumstrip" plugin, now available as an RTAS. Since purchasing this it has become my go to strip for drums, providing me with: Noise Gate with excellent parameters giving immense control, a Transient Designer to emphasise the attacks, Low and High frequency shaping with harmonic distortion control and the now famous Talk-back Mic' compressor. Add to that the ability to alter the order of each processor or bypass them altogether along with several gain controls throughout the signal path. Other plugs offer just one or some of these functions but SSL bring it all together at a great price. I highly recommend it.