Waves Audio Smack Attack User Guide

Smack!Attack!Transient!Shaper!/!User!Guide

Contents

Introduction ........................................................................................................... 2

Components ......................................................................................................... 3

Quick Start Guide ................................................................................................. 4

Interface ............................................................................................................... 5

Controls ................................................................................................................ 6

Sensitivity and Level Controls ................................................................................................................ 6!

Audio Graph ........................................................................................................................................... 7!

Shape and Duration Controls ................................................................................................................. 9!

Output Controls .................................................................................................................................... 11!

Attack Shapes................................................................................................................................................................ 9!

Sustain Shapes ......................................................... ................................................................................................. 10!

Smack!Attack!Transient!Shaper!/!User!Guide

2!

Introduction

The Waves Smack Attack Transient Shaper adds smack, sting, spike, and bite to your drums and other transient-rich

instruments. Use it to harden or soften attacks and to boost or reduce sustains. You can shape your transients in a

creative way or use Smack Attack as a surgical tool. Smack Attack has zero latency and it processes in real time, so it

transforms your transients live or in the studio.

About Smack Attack

Transients are short-duration, rapid changes in a sound. They naturally occur in drums and other percussion

instruments, and in most instruments whose sound begins with a strong attack. Smack Attack is designed to detect,

shape, and manipulate these transient sounds. It identifies transients based on their fast change in amplitude. Detection

is not based on an absolute peak level, so Smack Attack can discern transients within low- or high-level signals. Smack

Attack acts on two parts of a transient: attack and sustain. It manipulates the transient attack by making it sharper or

smoother, and manipulates the sustain signal by making it more or less prolonged.

The amount of processing is proportional to the transient rate of change: higher rate-of-change means greater action.

Separate Sensitivity controls for attack and sustain let you set independently which transients are processed: perhaps

only the loudest transients, or all of them, or anything in between. Processing controls—Level Change, Shape, and

Duration—are also adjusted separately for attack and sustain. This gives you more control when shaping the overall

impact of the sound.

You can mix the processed signal with the input sound to blend the transient effect, and you can adjust output level by

up to ±24 dB to get a clean, spiky sound. You can also create a loud, overdriven output signal and then limit dynamically

or saturate without dynamic processing. Each of these output methods yields distinct results.

Smack Attack is designed primarily for individual instruments or mix groups where you want to boost, attenuate, or

manipulate transients—or to build creative effects. On top of that, you can insert Smack Attack on the master buss to

control transients in the full mix.

Smack!Attack!Transient!Shaper!/!User!Guide

3!

Components

WaveShell technology enables us to split Waves processors into smaller plugins, which we call components. Having a

choice of components for a particular processor gives you the flexibility to choose the configuration best suited to your

material.

Smack Attack Transient Shaper has two components:

• Smack Attack Mono: mono-in to mono-out

• Smack Attack Stereo: stereo-in to stereo-out