[RDBOIS]

I've been postponing the whole subject matter for over a year (had too much on my plate...).

But, now is the time to learn about plugins that deal with Transients.

AT the risk of sounding ignorant (which I am...), my understanding of a transient is anything that occurs at the very beginning of a sound. Yes?

Once a sound is in progress and we're past the first few milliseconds, there are no more transients. Right? Any other spikes in a signal, past the transient stage are simply peaks. Yes?

Technically speaking, are plugins that deal with transients simply compressors that have all the settings dialed up for us, so that all we need to do is turn one nob? Or two nobs * sometimes I see a sustain. Maybe also a slider, that has time in milliseconds.

Please expose the flaw in my noobie logic. Ok?

I don't really like 'black boxes' so would it better to for me to use a compressor to deal with transients, rather than use a plugin? Tell why this is a good or bad idea.

I like ReaComp, because I feel it can do EVERYTHING in a transparent way.

The goal and signal: An acoustic guitar being strummed with a pick, that will be playing a supporting role in the background. Other instruments will take care of the punch and defining the time signature, the acoustic guitar is more like a ringing string/harmonic filler. A bit of definition on the important beat measures is required, but I would like to tame the sound of the pick hitting the strings.

This is a transient issues, right?

Besides for transients, I was thinking of adding a bit of chorus to 'blur' things up, with some reverb to 'lengthen and blend' the strumming.

What if I set two instances of ReaComp like this:

Rea-Comp #1:

Pre-Comp : 10 ms - to make sure the compressor treats the very first milliseconds of the signal. This is a look-a-head, yes?

Attack: 0.1 ms - very fast attack, but not true 0 ms, because I read somewhere that setting to zero (0) causes some unexplained issues...

Release: 100 ms - the song BPM is 72 with a distinct strum on most beats 1,2,3,4 and some little bits in between. For me, the release is more like a listening feel, rather than calculating mathematically how many millisecond are in a BPM.

Ratio: 2 My playing is not all over the play, and I already lowered the exaggerated loud peaks in the Pre-Volume envelop. Is a ration of 2 enough?

Knee size: Hard - 0 db. Not sure what knee really does? I like to believe it tells the compressor to be like a stallion rather than a donkey.

RMS size = 0 ms Assuming here that I don't need to use any averaging from the rest of the song ahead.

I would place the threshold for a max reduction of -3 to -6 db


****

ReaComp #2:

Just use the preset for mastering.


Or should I just use a Transient plugin?

Never used one before, but downloaded Stillwell TRANSIENT MONSTER. Sustain would be like my Pre-Comp #2?

Any advice?

This would be to deal with the peaks coming in after the transients, so the
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