One read of this and you'll be good to go forever and reclaim countless hours of cleaning up noise manually. That's most of the applications, from single track recordings to controlling the sound in a church or big arena. You'll also discover other creative uses if you experiment, especially with the sidechain option. A noise gate does not remove noise from the signal itself; when the gate is open, both the signal and the noise will pass through. Even though the signal and the unwanted noise are both present in open gate status, the noise is not as noticeable. The number that know but won't take the time to learn how to use them is sadly astonishing. Gates are absolutely used in these situations, inline on each individual signal and at the end of the entire signal path right before the amplifier. Another option is called the Lookahead. In a live situation, no matter what instrument you play, whether it outputs an instrument-level or you're using a microphone, you'll want to use noise gate as early in the signal chain as possible. The drum and cymbal mic channels will typically have noise gates so that the mics will only be turned on when the specific drum or cymbal is being played. You may still be wondering when you'd use a gate besides just cleaning up the regions in your signal that are meant to be silent. A noise gate is a god-send... if you know about it. In my opinion, it's really not possible to set it too fast, and faster is nearly always better. Examples include DJ Nexus's "Journey into Trance" (1:11), Chic's "Everybody Dance", and Diana Ross's "Upside Down".[6]. It's used in podcasting and audiobooks to save hundreds of hours of editing. The hold control is used to define the length of time the gate will stay fully open after the signal falls below the threshold, and before the release period is commenced. Another thing you can do is ducking, which reduces the volume of another track when the main track is playing. The technique was implemented in real-time electronics in some audiophile record players as early as the 1980s[citation needed], and is now commonly used in audio production post-processing, where software to Fourier transform the audio signal can yield a very detailed spectrum of the background noise. This allows the computer to read a certain amount of milliseconds forward in an audio track so that it has more time to prepare to open the gate when needed. A noise gate is an electronic device that attenuates the volume of an audio signal by either allowing the signal to pass through unaltered or by closing off the possibility for the signal to pass through entirely. [1] However, noise gates attenuate signals by a fixed amount, known as the range. A different gate was applied to each microphone so that the farther microphone was triggered only when Bowie reached the appropriate volume, and each microphone was muted as the next one was triggered. If the signal falls below the threshold, no signal is allowed to pass (or the signal is substantially attenuated): the gate is "closed". Then increase the threshold until you cut out all of the noise and take note of this level. For example, a synth pad may play whole notes while keyed to a guitar or percussion part. 1) Insert the Gate Inline - Remember, I've told you to always insert the noise gate immediately after your instrument or after the preamplifier for a microphone. With a hold, the gate will wait for the time duration you set to begin muting the audio again. The hold control is often set to ensure the gate does not close during short pauses between words or sentences in a speech signal.[4]. The range control is used to set the amount of attenuation to be applied to the signal when the gate is closed. The threshold of a noise gate is a lot like the threshold of a compressor.