Noise Gates vs Hard Gate

[Giorgos02]

Hey guys, I have recently seen people claiming that 1 hard gate can be a lot better than 2 or 3 noise gates combined in different spots on the signal chain.

 

I only use Noise Gates because I don't know how to use Hard Gates and by my personal experience, I can't say I am satisfied with the Noise Gates.

 

What's your personal experiences on this? How do you set your Hard Gate? Can we gather some tips and information about this very important subject?

[arislaf]

Hi George, I use the hard gate to most of my heavy rhythm patches, it is indeed better. Normal gates suck a bit of your tone, and the more you are using the more tone you lose.

Now for the hard gate, decay works as on normal, hold is to keep the gate open a few milliseconds more, open is on how many decibel to open and close on how many decibel to close.

I tend to use thresh at 0, hold at 0, open at-57 and close -40. 

 

You can check my patch here http://line6.com/customtone/tone/1037513/

 

Just have in mind that the decibels vary from output to output, so they will need to be adjusted with your Titan.

[jandrio]

in addition 2 aris comments, consult  foll link

 

http://foobazaar.com/podhd/toneGuide/quickGuide#gate

[giallanon]

Anyway, Hard gate and Noise gate are 2 different things.

Noise gate is always on, and it's trying to always reduce the noise, no mattere if you're playing or not.

Hard gate is a sorta of switch; when it's on, nothing pass the gate, so you hear nothing, no noise, no guitar. This is handy when you stop your string and don't want to hear buzzing sound.

When the gate is open, any sound will pass, so it won't reduce any noise at all

[hideto810006]

hard gate has latency  32 sample (0.66666666......ms)

[Brazzy]

hard gate has latency  32 sample (0.66666666......ms)

 

The hard gate sounds devilish with that ".666"ms latency thing go'in on, lol.

[AlexKenivel]

I just this morning made the jump from using 2 noise gates to a single hard gate in my high gain rhythm patch. like everything, it takes a little time to set it how you like (I'm still messing with it). Meambobbos guide posted above goes into some pretty good detail.

[gunpointmetal]

hard gate has latency  32 sample (0.66666666......ms)

That is appropriately metal as F&^K! haha. For live patches I use a hard gate out in front of everything set really tight to my clean input then a light noise gate right before the amp model in my rhythm patches. Lead patches are just a different front-end OD w/the hard gate off. The noise gate set high enough to "gate" during heavy rhythm stuff definitely has a noticeable tonal impact. For recording I use a single hard gate at the front of the chain and do any extra gating in the DAW. Lots of metal guys would probably stick ANOTHER hard gate right after the amp model to make it super robotic sounding.

[Giorgos02]

hard gate has latency  32 sample (0.66666666......ms)

 

According to MeAmBobbo's guide you are wrong. Hard gate has 64 delay in samples.

 

http://imgur.com/EzZuwA8

[hideto810006]

According to MeAmBobbo's guide you are wrong. Hard gate has 64 delay in samples.

 

http://imgur.com/EzZuwA8

64  in 96k sample rate =  32 in 48k sample rate

[Giorgos02]

64  in 96k sample rate =  32 in 48k sample rate

 

oh.

[SteveKudlacek]

From a "non-experimental" perspective. if you are using a Noise Gate you are making something in your chain do something that it does not do well. If you want to limit sound from your gat while you are not playing it, use a Hard Gate. But any pedal or effect that is used to take away things from your sound is simply a bad thing. EQs and the like excluded of course which is another topic. Figure out what is creating that sound and replace it with something that actually works.

 

From an experimental perspective, if you are adding something into your chain to filter your sound because it achieves some special tone, then go for it. Most guitarists will find a way to achieve the sound they desire without a bunch of wizardry. That's where the balance between new technology, gear knowledge, and playing ability must be achieved. That said, I have never been one to shy away from an experiment.

 

As a minimalist, I am fascinated by the challenge of achieving a sound with as few robots as possible. There are a lot of ways to skin a cat... I like cats. Be nice to your kitty.

 

Steve.