Urban Puncher by United Plugins
The Urban Puncher plugin by Soundevice, which is released via United Plugins is designed to give drums and drum loops punch in an instant.
Urban Puncher can work on more than just drums, and in this article I talk about that as well.
Get the plugin here:
Get the plugin here: Plugin boutique: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/2-Effects/53-Multi-Effect-/7991-Urban-Puncher/?a_aid=5f3b0b4e8b099 ADSR Sounds: https://www.adsrsounds.com/product/software/united-plugins-urban-puncher-dynamics-processor-effect-for-drums/#a_aid=whitenoisestudio
Audio examples can be heard in the Youtube Video we did about the plugin.
First thing I noticed was how the plugin looked and I really like it.
It’s pretty photorealistic with even some fingerprints on it.
For me, how a plugin looks and operates is actually one of bigger reasons to use a plugin on a regular basis.
Some clunky operating plugin with an ugly interface doesn’t really compel me to work with it.
The Urban Puncher controls
There aren’t many controls on the plugin, 4 dials and two buttons.
That’s all you get to work with.
You have the punch dial which sets the amount of punch you get,
a dry wet control,
a saturation dial with which you dial in the amount of saturation,
the destroy button for an extra boost of saturation and there’s a bypass switch.
The Sound
I recorded a alt pop drum loop to test the plugin, and you can hear it in the video.
The punch dial is a combination of a few processors. There’s dynamic processing, transient design and eq.
If you dial it up the sound get’s more transient attack , the sound get’s shorter as well as the low end.
Now by dialing up the saturation and enable the destroy mode you get most of the original sound back,
but with a nice splashy attack and a thicker sound overall.
With urban puncherplugin, I prefer to always use the saturation.
The incoming level of the original audio is of influence on
how this plugin reacts and sounds,
and because of that I do really miss an input gain control.
You can of course raise the level of the audio going in the audio track in your
daw, but a dedicated control is so much easier.
There’s also the question if hi and low pass sidechain would be of benefit, although th eplugin does not lack in low end if you use saturation.
The combination of the punch and the saturation helps bringing out the clarity.
Now the dry wet control is only for the puncher dial.
Saturation is not available in
parallel, which I think would be of benefit when you want to use it for
instance in the masterbus.
For parallel usage, you have to use it as a send effect or have a duplicate track with the plugin on it.
This will also have the additional benefit of adding eq before the plugin.
With that you can shape the overall behaviour of the Urban Puncher more.
If you do that, you have to be careful though with the phasing.
Check out the plugin here:
Get the plugin here:
Plugin boutique: https://www.pluginboutique.com/product/2-Effects/53-Multi-Effect-/7991-Urban-Puncher/?a_aid=5f3b0b4e8b099
ADSR Sounds: https://www.adsrsounds.com/product/software/united-plugins-urban-puncher-dynamics-processor-effect-for-drums/#a_aid=whitenoisestudio
