Attack Softener vs Kombinat4

Attack Softener is an effect that fades the beginning of each note you play to remove the attack transient. This allows you to make synth-like sounds with almost any instrument (guitar, bass, piano, etc.) HOW DOES IT WORK? It functions similarly to a transient shaper. Unlike a transient shaper though, it can bring the volume of attack sounds down to near zero quickly enough to silence the pick sound of an electric guitar in very fast music. WHAT IS IT USED FOR? It works with any instrument but we really like to use it with electric guitar. We recommend the following effect chain: Guitar -> Attack Softener -> Compressor -> Reverb. The combination of the attack softener and compressor is especially nice because the compressor keeps the volume balanced when playing clean solos but heavy compression intensifies the pick click noise, making it inappropriate for many styles of music. With the Attack Softener placed before the compressor you can get a nice, even clean solo tone that doesn't have punchy hard pick sounds. This allows you to play solos with a clean tone, where normally you would have to use distortion or overdrive to get sustain, now you can get that distorted "light touch" feel without the harshness of distortion. MORE TECHNICAL EXPLANATION OF HOW IT WORKS A transient shaper creates two volume envelopes. One rises immediately and falls slowly; the other rises slowly and falls slowly. The difference between these two envelopes indicates how far the volume should be reduced to silence the attack. However, changing the volume very quickly usually causes noise in the sound because of volume changes that happen naturally during the sustain part of the notes. This plugin is different from ordinary transient shapers because it combines several new methods to help it differentiate between real attack transients and other volume changes, and it uses dynamic filters that adjust the response time to ensure that it can respond quickly without introducing audible clicking sounds when the volume changes. IS THERE ANY OTHER EFFECT LIKE THIS OR IS IT SOMETHING NEW? EHX makes a pedal called Attack / Decay that does something similar. There are several other pedals that also do swell effects. All of them are designed for long fades and slow playing except the EHX one, which can operate faster by separating each new note onto its own audio channel using spectral processing. That spectral note separation distorts the tone signficiantly. This Attack Softener plugin is the only effect we are aware of that handles fast picking while preserving the original tone of the instrument.

KOMBINAT4 is Audio Damage's fourth-generation flagship distortion. Take any sound, split it into up to eight frequency bands, and assign one of 38 distortion engines to each band. Or flip to Serial mode and chain those eight engines end-to-end for stacked, cascading mayhem. THIRTY-EIGHT DISTORTION ENGINES The complete roster from Kombinat Tri returns: Fuzz, Saturate, Distort, Clip, Warp, Degrade, Ring Mod, X Noise, Octaver, Wavy, Rectify, Tube Clip, and the famously unhinged Nerd Rage. Joining them is the entire engine set from our Grind distortion: Tanh, Asym Tanh, Overdrive, Polynomial, Linear Distort, Sine Drive, Var Hard Clip, Gloubi Boulga, MXR, Soft Clip, and Cubic NLD. Plus thirteen brand-new algorithms built specifically for Kombinat4: Wavefold, Chebyshev, Bitwise, Slew Limit, Comparator, Diode Clip, Feedback FM, Fractal, Dropout, Shapeshift, Phase Distortion, Stutter, and Erosion. Every engine has up to three custom-labeled controls plus per-band gain and solo. Pick a different engine for each band and design distortion tones that simply weren't available before. EIGHT BANDS, TWO MODES In Multiband mode, the input is split by Linkwitz-Riley crossovers into up to eight parallel bands. Each band gets its own engine and gain stage, and everything recombines at the output. Drop to two bands for classic low/high splits, push to eight for full-spectrum surgical distortion design, and solo any band to dial it in cleanly. In Serial mode, those same eight slots become a chain — every engine processes the full-bandwidth signal in turn, for layered drive structures impossible to achieve with a single algorithm. OUTPUT SECTION A dedicated output filter with twelve types: 2-pole and 4-pole low-pass, high-pass, and band-pass shapes, a notch, three OTA-style filters, a 914-style ladder bandpass, our Filterpod, and bypass. Built-in Rough Rider compressor at the output with sidechain HPF and external sidechain input. Global feedback path with attack and decay envelope for self-oscillating screams and slow-blooming sustain. Optional AGC for level-matched A/B comparisons across heavy distortion settings. DC blocker. 2x and 4x oversampling for clean high-frequency content. PRESETS AND WORKFLOW Factory preset library covering subtle saturation, mix-bus enhancement, mid-range fattening, lead guitar tones, low-end mangling, full-on industrial destruction, and everything in between. Folder-based user preset browser with favorites and import/export of single presets or full folders as ZIP. XML preset compatibility with the desktop edition — your iOS presets work in your DAW and vice versa. AUv3 plugin for iOS hosts including GarageBand, Logic Pro for iPad, AUM, Cubasis, Loopy Pro, Audiobus, drambo, BeatMaker 3, and others. Standalone app included. Tooltips on every control. Animated band display with realtime spectrum overlay. No DRM, no account, no online activation.