Transient
The split-second spike at the start of a hit or consonant that gives it punch, snap, and a clear sense of timing.
See it
What it is
A transient is the brief, fast-changing onset of a sound: the beater click before a kick drum's body, the crack before a snare rings, or the T and K that make speech feel crisp. It may last only milliseconds, but it gives the ear timing, punch, and definition.
Preserve it with a compressor attack slow enough to let the onset pass, or reshape it deliberately with a transient designer. The SPL Transient Designer turned this into a two-knob idea, Attack and Sustain, with no threshold to set at all. More attack makes drums feel closer and punchier; less attack softens picks, clicks, and overly sharp percussion without changing the whole frequency balance like EQ would.
Gotcha: transients spend headroom. Boost them and the track may clip before it sounds much louder; crush them with a fast compressor or hard limiter and the mix turns flat. Not every transient is useful either: mouth clicks, edit pops, and plosives are brief onsets too, but they usually need repair rather than emphasis.
Ask AI for it
Use FabFilter Pro-C 2 on this drum bus at 4:1 with Lookahead at 0 ms, Attack at 30 ms, and Release at 100 ms. Lower the Threshold until the drum bodies get about 3 dB of gain reduction while the kick and snare transients still pass with a clear initial crack. Level-match bypass, keep peaks below -1 dBFS, and do not add a limiter.