Noise Gates Explained

Noise Gates Explained

A noise gate is a form of dynamics processing used to increase dynamic range by lowering the noise floor. A gate is an excellent tool for removing hum from an amp, cleaning up drum tracks between beats, background noise in dialog, and can even be used to reduce the amount of reverb in a recording.

Parameters

The common parameters for a noise gate are:
Threshold – sets the level that the gate will open, when the signal level drops below the threshold the gate closes and mutes the output
Attack – how fast the gate opens
Hold – how long before the gate starts to close
Release – aka Decay, how long until the gate is fully closed again
Range – how much the gated signal will be attenuated
Sidechain – the sidechain is for setting an alternate signal for the gate to be triggered from, sometimes called a Key
Filters – the filters section allows you to fine tune the sidechain signal.

What’s It For?

The normal use for gating is for removing background noise. An essential tool for clean dialog recording.
Some other uses for gates are gated reverb and using the sidechain to activate other effects.

How To Set A Noise Gate

To setup a gate properly, start with the the attack, hold, and release as fast as possible. Set the range to maximum, and the threshold to 0dB.
Start lowering the threshold until the sound starts to get chopped up by the gate. Slow down the attack time to remove any unnatural popping. Adjust the hold and release times to get a more natural decay.
If you don’t want the background noise to be turned down as much then you can reduce the range control.

Other Uses

Gated reverb was a popular effect in the 80s, mostly because of Phil Collins records.
To set it up, take your drum tracks and send them to a stereo reverb with a large room preset.
After the reverb insert a stereo gate. Adjust the gate settings so that the reverb is cut off before then next hit.
In this example you’ll hear the unprocessed drums, then with reverb, then adding the gate. Listen

Favorite Gates

The classic Drawmer DS201 is a hardware noise gate that is hard to beat.
The gate on the Waves SSL E-Channel is good, simple and effective.
The free ReaGate VST is quite good as well.
Noise gates aren’t very much fun to talk about, but they are a powerful tool that you need to know how to use.

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ATH-ANC7 Noise Canceling Headphones Review

Review of the ATH-ANC7 Noise Canceling headphones
I may never fly without them again!
by Jason Johnston

I decided to test the Audio Technica ATH-ANC7 headphones on a recent flight flight. I like to travel as light as possible, especially if I have to make connections, but decided to take the protective carrying case as well in my laptop bag since it was not that much bigger than the headphones themselves and was extremely light. (click here for more technical info on the ATH-ANC7's)

Once we were at cruising altitude, I decided to try the headphones first with my MP3 player. Right away I noticed how light they were on my head, the adjustments were easy and the earpieces nicely angled for comfort and fit. I decided to try them passively first (without turning on the active noise cancellation) and found that they cut out quite a bit of noise without even being turned on. But on the downside, I found the volume level output to be on the low side compared to my earbuds. But this, and my whole flying world, changed the second I turned them on. In one word... "Wow." It was like the entire full flight and the engine all hushed in silence as soon as I flipped the switch. The volume level as well immediately increased and I was able to turn down my MP3 player, I'm sure in part to all the outside noise it was competing with before.

The music was clear and reminded me of other top non-noise canceling headphones in it's class. I found the detail of the sound to be quite good, the higher frequencies clear but soft and the bass not too pronounced. If you like the exaggerated bass sound of cheaper headphones, the ANC7's are probably not for you. But I found the listening experience with Rock, Acoustic, Bluegrass, Folk all to be remarkable. I didn't test them on classical, but from the strings I heard in other mixes I expect it would sound great.

The ANC7's also come with some handy accessories like a 1/8 to 1/4 converter and an airplane audio adapter which saved me $3 and let me test it out on the inflight action movie. The bass was smooth, the dialog was clear and it was an enjoyable listening experience.

To wrap up, you can buy a simple pair of noise canceling headphones for less money. But if you want great noise canceling and excellent sound I would recommend the ATH-ANC7 headphones.

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