TRANSIT 2 Review
Plugin Boutique has provided me with a copy of Baby AUdio’s Transit 2 for review. Transit 2 is a creative multi-effect designed with transitions and fills in mind. Transit has a lovely neuomorphic light themed UI, looking like something straight from the design team of Teenage Engineering. The workflow has been designed in a way that would be perfect for hardware, but also has some of the limitations you’d find in hardware (more on that later). You get seven effects slots with dozens of effects to choose from. These effects are manipulated by either a macro, an LFO, a follower/sidechain, or gate/sequencer* modulators.
EFFECTS
The effects cover a wide range of typical effects types, with a couple fun glitchy options for good measure such as a looper and a “warp” effect. Some of the effects options are a bit redundant, I always prefer a toggle to switch between 12 and 24 db filters, or between two different reverb types instead of counting them as separate effects. You can only load one of each effect, a limitation I always find restricting rather than workflow enhancing, I’d love to stack multiple loopers and warps, or just use seven delays if I wanted to.
The effects are simple with three to four controls each, they sound pretty typical, not bad at all, but they don’t really stand out as particularly special. The magic here really comes form creating nice macro mappings that morph your beat for fun transitions. There’s a noice generator and an oscillator built in, so you could use this as a sound source if you want to make risers. The warp effect is fun, it’s like a granular time stretch/ pitch shift effect.
Because of the nature of the modulation in Transit, some effect types are required just to add more motion, pump tremolo, and mod filter have built in modulation. I appreciated the inclusion of an OTT effect for really livening up these transition effects. The bit crusher is a nice touch as well as the reverser and pitch effects.
MODULATION
Modulation is done via the single modulator, by default this is a very large macro making it easy to play in your transition. A simple LFO can replace the macro if you want motion to repeat and loop. All the modulation is retained when switching modes, so you can simply lock your preferred modulation mode and use it with any of the presets. The LFO has basic shapes and noise, but no sample hold unfortunately.
Each control has a modulation button that transforms the control into a modulation range, This range comes with some helpful color coordination so you can easily tell if you are applying negative or positive modulation. Almost all controls can be modulated, and you also get a curve control so you can have different parameters respond faster or slower to the main modulator.
The gate and sequencer are a bit unique, each host a grid of eight different tempo divisions. In gate mode clicking a division starts playing an LFO at that rate until you let go. In sequencer mode, Transit waits for the transport to reach the next position that matches the selected division and starts modulation from there. Both modes have loop and pendulum modes as well as a macro range setting. *It’s worth noting that “sequencer” mode is less of a sequencer, and the name is meant to suggest that it is a sequencer trigger mode.
I enjoy the simplicity of Transit, the UI is playful and pleasant to look at, I do wish we could stack multiple effects, that would add so much more depth and imo is actually easier UI to understand and work with, though, understandably more challenging to develop for the team over at Baby Audio. The preset collection is robust, and if this only serves as a collection of playable presets, I think it can be worth it for many, especially if you lock the macro and map it to a physical slider. I’d love to see a few more creative effects types, maybe a resonator, a notch filter would be nice, or a frequency shifter. I can see myself using Transit for some quick performance expression when sound designing and resampling.
If you plan on purchasing TRANSIT 2 from Plugin Boutique, please consider supporting me by using my affiliate links
TRANSIT 2: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/2-Effects/53-Multi-Effect-/13431-Transit-2?a_aid=61c378ab215d5