OK, with our quick orientation session out the way, let’s consider what we can actually achieve with these things. I’ve provided details of all the commonly found controls in the Glossary Of Controls box. Attack, hold and release controls determine how quickly the processor opens and closes.Īnd that’s pretty much it for the basic concept, though some processors offer more controls than others. A gate’s infinite ratio means any signal falling below the threshold is attenuated by a fixed amount, which may be full muting or a user‑defined amount of attenuation, as determined by the floor or range control. An expander’s ratio allows it to attenuate the below‑threshold signal in proportion to the signal level - the lower the signal and the higher the ratio, the more the signal will be turned down.
A gate is essentially a downward expander with an infinite ratio. But while compressors and limiters attenuate signals that exceed a threshold, gates and expanders attenuate anything falling below it. In this article, I’ll describe a number of them, but before we dive into the techniques themselves I’ll quickly explain how gates and expanders work, so everyone can understand what follows, and decide whether their gate/expander has all the controls required for each technique.Ĭonceptually, gates and expanders are similar to compressors and limiters - all they do is change the signal level. But gates, along with their close cousins expanders, make possible some incredibly useful sound‑design and mixing techniques.
Given the availability of advanced editing features and ‘strip silence’ facilities in pretty much all DAW software today, not to mention sophisticated noise‑reduction software such as iZotope RX, you’d be forgiven for thinking that the traditional ‘noise gate’ should by now have gone the way of the dodo, at least when it comes to mix processing, if not live sound. You can do so much more with noise gates and expanders than nix unwanted noise.
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