This is my favorite gating plugin, and I highly recommend this for producers or mixing engineers who love simple and straight-to-the-point plugins.
The Gate Snapin by kiloHearts helps to get rid of low hum and noise from your audio signal, cut reverb tails short, or exaggerate the dynamics in a beat.
If for some reason, you want a ducking effect/sidechaining, it can be easily driven by an external sidechain signal.
There isn’t so much to review here as it’s simple, nevertheless, let’s walk through some Gate Snapin features and its parameters…
What's a Snapin?
This plugin is a "snapin". That means you can use it as a regular VST/AU plugin, or you can use it with a snapin hosts Multipass and Snap Heap where you can combine effects in amazing ways.
Unto the parameters...
A gate is comparable to a compressor, in that it controls the volume of an audio signal, the difference is that a compressor attenuates signals that are above a threshold (it cleans up the transient), and levels up the quiet section, while a gate attenuates signals by a fixed amount, known as the range.
So, a gate allows the main signal to pass through once it is above a set threshold (opens up the gate; no gating), and if the signals fall below the threshold, no signal is allowed to pass (closes the gate; attenuates the fixed range)
Threshold: The volume threshold for when the gate will open. The lower the threshold, the earlier the gate/expander will open. Utilize the display, and metering to set the right level, or better still trust your ears.
Attack: The attack determines how quickly the gate would fully open when the input volume is over the threshold.
For example, Once the signal reaches the threshold point, the attack will tell the gate, “hey I want you to start the gating after (n)millisecond “, simple right!
Hold: The hold time is the minimum time the gate will stay open.
Release: Just as it is necessary for a gate to determine when to react to sound, it is also necessary for the gate to determine when to release the reaction once it goes below the threshold, this is called Release. The release time is the time it takes for the gate to fully close when the input volume is under the threshold.
Range: The amount to attenuate the signal when the gate is closed.
These are the major ones, and the ones you would likely use the most, enjoy
► System Requirments:
- CPU: 2 GHz or faster
- Memory: 1 GB or more
- Operating System: Windows (7 or newer) or Mac OS X (10.7 or newer)
Supported formats: AAX/AU/VST2/Snapin