From the course: Audio Foundations: Compression and Dynamic Processing

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Understanding and using gates

Understanding and using gates

From the course: Audio Foundations: Compression and Dynamic Processing

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Understanding and using gates

The next time you're at the supermarket pay attention to how the automatic doors open and close. Walk towards the door, the motion detector senses your presence and opens up to let you in. Once you walk through, it senses you're no longer there and closes automatically to keep the heating and cooling costs down. Simple, right? Well, you've just experienced a real-life version of the dynamics processor we call a gate. A gate and its close sibling the expander are extremely common dynamic processing tools. They're generally used to allow the desired clean signal to pass through while removing any unwanted low-level noise, like hum from a guitar amp or bleed from a track, like the sound of a headphone mix that bleeds into a vocal mic during a vocal recording session. Take a listen to this drum track and notice the bleed of other pieces in this kit. (music playing) Now listen with the gate in effect. Notice how the kick sound is much cleaner and the bleed is eliminated. (music playing) We…

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