Gate (Native)

Parameters

Threshold — Level (in dB) below which the gate closes and silences (or attenuates) the signal. Signal above threshold passes; signal below gets pushed down by range dB. Set this just above the noise floor or bleed you want to silence, but below the quietest desired program material — too high and you cut the tails of words/notes, too low and noise sneaks through.

Attack — How fast the gate opens once signal crosses above threshold, in ms. Fast attacks (0.1–1 ms) preserve transient impact — essential for drum gating where the click is everything. Slower attacks (5–20 ms) soften the open-edge, suited to vocals where a snappy gate would sound clicky.

Hold — Minimum time in ms the gate stays open after the signal first triggers it, even if the signal drops below threshold. Prevents flutter on signals that hover around the threshold. Useful values: 30–100 ms for vocals (avoids gate chatter on word ends), 50–200 ms for drum hits (lets the natural decay through before the gate cuts).

Release — How fast the gate closes after signal drops below threshold (and hold has elapsed), in ms. Fast release (10–50 ms) cuts cleanly — surgical for drum gating. Slow release (100–500 ms) fades out smoothly, more natural for vocals and ambient sources. Too fast can sound clicky; too slow and the gate doesn’t actually do its job.

Range — Maximum attenuation in dB when the gate is fully closed. At −80 the gate effectively silences; at lower values (−10, −20) the “gate” becomes more like an expander, leaving residual signal audible. Useful for transparent gating where you want noise pushed down without the unnatural total silence of a hard gate.

Hysteresis — Difference (in dB) between the threshold for opening and the threshold for closing. With 3 dB hysteresis, the gate opens at threshold but only closes 3 dB below — prevents chatter when the signal hovers right at threshold. Increase if your gate is opening and closing rapidly on borderline material; reduce if it’s holding open too long after notes end.

Sidechain Hpf — Highpass filter on the detection signal (not the audio output). Prevents low-frequency rumble or kick bleed from triggering the gate when you only want it to respond to higher-frequency content. Common use: gating a snare track where you want the gate to ignore the kick drum’s low end and only react to the snare hit itself — set HPF around 200–300 Hz.

Dry/Wet — Equal-power blend between the dry signal (0) and the gated signal (1). Default 0.5 lets you blend a hard-gated copy with the dry signal — useful for taming bleed without losing all the natural ambience. Node-specific — the FX-slot version handles wet/dry at the mixer.

Additional controls

Detection Mode — How the gate measures input level. Peak — instantaneous detection, fast and accurate, the standard choice for percussive gating. RMS — short-window average, smoother but slower; can miss fast transients but works better for sustained material like vocals and synths.

Stereo Link — How channels are linked on stereo material. Dual — each channel gates independently. Link — both follow combined detection (preserves image; the standard choice for stereo program material).

About Gate (Native)

Native Gate is the inverse of the compressor — silences (or attenuates) signal below threshold rather than clamping signal above it. Classic uses: gating drum mics to remove bleed (kick mic catching snare, snare mic catching hi-hat), tightening up vocal recordings (kill mouth noise / breath between phrases), removing noise floor from sustained sources (synth pad hiss, amp hum). The range parameter is the killer feature — instead of binary open/closed (the DBX 363 / Drawmer hard-gate sound), set range to −10 or −20 dB to turn the gate into a downward expander (background pushed down without unnatural total silence — closer to the SSL channel-strip expander). hold prevents flutter on signals hovering at threshold (essential on percussion); hysteresis is a more elegant solution to the same problem (different open/close thresholds). sidechain_hpf stops bass content from triggering the gate when you only want it responding to the in-band material — set around 200–300 Hz on a snare track to make the gate ignore kick bleed and only react to the snare hit itself. Compare with Native Compressor for above-threshold control instead of below-threshold gating.

Generated 2026-05-05 from K2K_Dev@96730bdc by scripts/gen_lexique.py. Edit _intros/ or _overrides/, not this file.