Harmonic Saturation vs. Transient Design. What is the difference in sound and usage? They seem fairly interchangeable to me for processing and sound design. Any thoughts?

 

Last edited by a moderator: Aug 18, 2023

I don't know the nitty gritty to give a DSP oriented answer but since you mentioned "how they sound"... they sound quite different, don't you think?

 

Not so sure. It might be plugin specific. They both seem to fatten, add punch, etc. I'm sure they must be different, but how? And when would one be used over the other? I'm thinking transient design is more geared towards percussive sounds as it focuses on attack.

 

Well, have you compared using visuals meters like Spectograms and Oscilloscopes? You will notice that distortion plugins tends to flatten the whole audio signal (what we call wideband, unless it's a multiband distortion plugin) while the transient shaper (in a general way) tend to actually boost or lessen only the transient sections of the audio signal according to a set of parameters (like "attack" and "sustain" for example).

 

Transient Designing is a lot like compression, automatic volume controls where user control the envelope of end result with a mix of all 4 common compression type cleverly programmed under the hood. Upward/Downward Comp/Expand.

Saturation on the other hand is quite a broad term that could apply to a lot of things, it's a simplified word to describe the process derived from the end result being viewed as saturated and somehow the process for it becomes known as "saturation" in everyday audio engineer way of communicating. There's nothing definite about "saturation" process, it could possibly be a lot of audio processing such as waveshaping, clipping, additive harmonics, artifacts from other audio processing (high-to-extreme compression, gating, pitch-shifting, phase rotating) etc that could lead to the end result being perceived as denser, or saturated.

That's how I understand it.

 

Last edited: Aug 18, 2023

I was going in expecting an interesting conversation about intricacies of their usage but this:

This I was not mentally prepared for.
Alright. Where do I start.

Saturation is a more socially acceptable term for distortion. What it does is, it contorts the waveform in a subtle or not-so-subtle way so it has more harmonics. It has a strong tendency to compresses the dynamic range of a signal.
This is also called waveshaping. The easiest and most widespread form of saturation/distortion/waveshaping to understand is clipping - you clip away the peaks of a signal, turning a sine wave into a trapezoid wave, for example. When you clip/saturate your snare, as another example, you add mids and highs and everything above its fundamental, but you actually make the fundamental quieter, and reduce the overall peak level in the process. Because you basically cut the peak off.

Transient shaping does what it sounds like - it follows the signal's envelope and tries to detect two specific stages of the envelope - when it suddenly rises and when it stays at the same for some time level after a sudden rise. It then can make your signal either louder or softer during each of these stages. So it can *either* compress *or* expand the dynamic range of a signal, it ideally doesn't affect the waveform at all and doesn't introduce new harmonics or affect the relative spectrum of the signal in any way. It soley, or at the very least primarily, affects the signal's dynamics.

They do two completely different things."Add punch" is more of a subjective description than an actual processing. If anything, saturation objectively removes "punch" by reducing peak levels.

 

Distortion adds harmonics to a signal, which can make the fundamental frequency sound louder. This is because the harmonics will psycho acoustically add to the amplitude of the fundamental frequency, making it sound louder.
The amount of loudness that is added to the fundamental frequency by wave shaping will depend on the specific type of wave shaping that is being used.
In general, wave shaping can be an effective way to make the fundamentals of a sound sound louder.

 

Transients designers, shapers: attack (to kill or boost snap, punch), release (to boost or cut sustain sounds, room, echo etc). Mostly dynamic on whole spectrum or bands...
Harmonic saturation: add dirtness or fart or crackling, or brightness, colour, warmifieng mids, low mid.... Exciters... Too, on separate bands or whole signal...saturators might glue, smoothen transients

 

Last edited: Aug 18, 2023

I think 'louder' and 'punch' might be the same thing to you if I'm reading your post correctly.

To my mind, punch is made up of two components:

1) Fullness/fatness/in your face-ness.
2) Dynamic range.

if you reach for a soft saturator, you get 1). However, your transients get soggier as you push your saturation harder - bad for punch.

if you reach for a saturator with a hard(er) shape, you still get 1). However, you need to push your saturator even harder than before. This adds the bad kind of distortion and still removes from your DR - bad for punch.

With a 'clean' transient shaper / compressor, you mostly get 2), but without adding much to perceived fullness.

I wouldn't exclusively use one or the other to try to achieve 1) and 2) at the same time.

There are very many compressors/transient shapers that also saturate heavily as part of their signature sound.

 

Poor word choice . . . they both seem to add 0omph, thicken, not punch. ;-). I have always viewed transient shaping as something more for the percussion attacks and saturation as more of a broad stroke across a legato.

I think xorome is onto something that makes distinguishing these two processors confusing at times . . . "There are very many compressors/transient shapers that also saturate heavily as part of their signature sound."

 

I should add that wave shaping beside additive loudness buildup also changes the timbre, making it sharper (if odd harmonics dominate), or warmer (if it's the case with even ones).
And we perceive sharper sound as louder, and warm as quieter.

 

They are completely different

 

This is honestly not any better.
But hey, as long as it sounds good in the end. Certain multiple-grammy-awarded mixers don't know what they're doing either.

 

2 completely different things. one is adding harmonics one is sharpening or rounding off transients...
if needed use both
theres no rule, make it sound good