Gates: Friend or ?

[chckn8r]

I've heard and seen a few posts putting the Gate in the "obsolete" bin citing that you can do the same thing with tools such as "Remove Silence from Waveform" in your DAW or just going in and cutting things out by hand.

I can see that for some tracks, but for me, I use gates beyond the binary on/off settings that some instinctively think of them as and I know you can probably go beyond that as well - I just haven't found the time or reason to yet...

I'll go in and cut out "silence" in an audio track if there's really annoying elements coming through in between the desired audio and the "silence" is in big enough chunks. Otherwise, I don't mind putting a gate on it.

One example of how I use a gate is when I'm mixing speaking voices.

I've gotten some doozy tracks where there's a lot of background noise coming through in between the speaking - chair squeeks, clothes rustling, kids whining... When there's nothing BUT the voices, and you start doing some hard and fast cutting, I find those edits become more annoying and noticeable issues than the original problems. That's one instance where I'll slap on a gate and set look-ahead to a half second, the gate a moderate attack, sustain and then slow release. I'll also not let it clamp down entirely on the track when the audio goes below the threshold - usually 15-20dB below the threshold to leave some sort of "room tone" seems to be less jarring.

There are other examples, but just wanted to see if there are any other proponents or detractors to using gates out there.

Cheers, Dave

[bholst]

I tend to do the manual cutting, but I know that gates can be used in a very musical way. Like you said, you can set them to basically 'fade' in a more gentle way rather than the more harsh 'cut'. I wouldn't say that they're obsolete by any means.

[bozmillar]

I don't usually hard gate anything, but I use expanders all the time. I think sometimes completely cutting something to silence can do more harm than good. I prefer to turn down the noise instead of turning it off.

[garageband]

I just draw volume automation. I don't recall ever using a gate successfully in a DAW. With the exception of special effects, I would say they are obsolete. That's
how I look at it. YMMW. OMG. WWJD? LOL. SNAFU.

[u2redlight]

I never hard gate. I use gate sometimes instead of sidechain compression

[Mackanov]

I usually only run drums through gates. A slower opening gate can change the character of the drum as much as a compressor IMO. For most everything else, I usually cut the silence out and automate the envelope for a smoother fade in/out.

[ivan.lt]

Noise gate is used to create 'djent' sound which AFAIK is relatively modern. A friend once showed me how a gate can tidy up attack of layered backing vocals, it sounds unnatural by itself but fine when mixed with the lead voice. Myself I mostly cut out silence by hand but a gate can save time.

[u2redlight]

Noise gate is used to create 'djent' sound which AFAIK is relatively modern. A friend once showed me how a gate can tidy up attack of layered backing vocals, it sounds unnatural by itself but fine when mixed with the lead voice. Myself I mostly cut out silence by hand but a gate can save time.

you should make a tutorial about this and post it in the turorials section, it would be nice!

[brandondrury]

Gates are fun tools. Although I don't use them nearly as much as compression or EQ, when a gate is necessary it's NECESSARY. The idea of a noise gate is pretty flawed in my experience...at least I have little use for that. I'm pretty quick in noise cutting in Cubase when that kind of thing is necessary.

I think the biggest flaw people have with gates is the underestimate how powerful knocking off only 6dB can be. People go for 40dB of reduction and that only sounds good if you are doing something really crazy and need an effect.

Brandon

[chckn8r]

I think the biggest flaw people have with gates is the underestimate how powerful knocking off only 6dB can be. People go for 40dB of reduction and that only sounds good if you are doing something really crazy and need an effect.

+1 to that.

Noise gate is used to create 'djent' sound which AFAIK is relatively modern. A friend once showed me how a gate can tidy up attack of layered backing vocals, it sounds unnatural by itself but fine when mixed with the lead voice. Myself I mostly cut out silence by hand but a gate can save time.

That's a cool - yeah, not a lot of non-pro singers are used singing backup without consonants - that'd be a cool way to tame the plossives and such. Nice

YMMW. OMG. WWJD? LOL. SNAFU.

That almost required an acronym appendix to go along with it!

[venuestudio]

I use gates on drums the majority of the time. It's not an on off thing but a gentle natural way to control the tail of the drum sound. They are used extensively in live sound to control drums.

[tedpenn]

I use gates all the time. There are many things you can do by hand, as the OP mentioned, but for me it's all about workflow (speed). Surprisingly, my absolute favorite gate (and the only one I've been able to dial in so I don't "hear" it opening) is the stock Digidesign Gate/Expander/Dyn III. It's the freebie that comes with every PT system (AFAIK). It can be set to a "look ahead" mode, so that the gate actually opens before the trigger crosses the threshold (unlike analog gates). Here are some examples...

1. I routinely use them on toms (MUCH faster than manually muting, and preferable to strip silence as I can leave some of the track playing using the "range" control).

2. They're also useful on any noisy tracks, again not always dialing out all of the noise, but most of it, so the effect is more subtle.

3. You can use a gate with a sidechain on a distorted snare track or crushed room track (in parallel with the dry snare) so that the gate only opens on snare hits. The reason for sidechaining is that the distorted/crushed track is too much of a mess to accurately trigger the gate itself.

Here's a clip that shows the exact same way I use them on toms: