Recording

Why Use Gates/Expanders?

The Music Telegraph | Text 2019/09/03 [13:15]
Recording

Why Use Gates/Expanders?

The Music Telegraph| 입력 : 2019/09/03 [13:15]

 

▲ Pro Tools Expander/Gate



 

Why Use Gates/Expanders?

 

 

To Eliminate Unwanted Leakage

When you are recording more than one live musician with more than one microphone, there will be some amount of leakage from one instrument into other's microphone (unless, of course, they are placed in separate rooms). Leakage commonly occurs when you are micing drums. You'll have many mics in close proximity to each other and there will always be some amount of kick drum leaking into the snare drum mic and vice versa. The problem with the leakage comes  when you want to add processing of some sort on the snare but not the kick. A gate will help you greatly reduce or even eliminate the unwanted leakage so you can treat the track as you wish.

 

Headphones also cause leakage problems. If you are overdubbing a singer and they are listening to the track with headphones, that sound may leak out and be picked up by the vocal mic. You'll want to gate it out if you can.

 

There are other situations where leakage can occur (hums, buzz, etc.) but you get the idea. Much of the unwanted sound can be at least reduced by using gates. 

 

 

To Reduce Ambience On A Track

Not all of us have perfect sounding rooms in which to record. Pre-recorded samples that you might want to use may have been recorded in a larger space than you want. Or maybe that bass note hangs on too long. All of these issues involve the reverberant field of the "S" (sustain) and "R" (release) of a sound's ADSR envelope. A gate can successfully be used to alter this sound by shortening the duration of the sound after it's attack.

 

 

For Creativity

Here's where gates really come into their own. By getting into the side chain circuit and inserting different signals, you can drastically alter the ADSR envelope of one sound by that of another. The familiar low frequency "808" sound is an example of using a kick drum envelope to shape a low frequency sine wave.

 

You can also tighten up the rhythmic relationship between instruments by having one key, or trigger the other. This will force the keyed instrument to "play" according to the pattern of the keying instrument. 

 

And then there are gated reverbs and delays. All sorts of effects can be gotten by altering quite  suddenly the tail of a reverb or the number of delays of a sound.

 

 

 

*The difference between a Gate and an Expander

An expander has the capability of reducing signal level at selectable rates (ratio) while a gate will reduce the input with a fixed ratio of 1:∞ (one to infinity).

 

 

 

 

 

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