Noise Gates

[john]

Hey

Do you use noise gates in your recording process?

One of the things I notice about non-pro recordings is the amount of noise on the track. This has several knock on problems, not least of which is the impact on head room, which ultimately effects the overall volume of the track.

http://recording.songstuff.com/articles.php?selected=44

I'm thinking of writing an article to expand on the one above looking at pros cons and usage scenarios. Whatcha fink? Any opinions or scenarios I should include in such an article?

Cheers

John

[Retrosaurus Rex]

Hi John,

Good point. I had the good fortune to spend some time in a working studio this past summer and the single most impressive thing was that it's dead quiet in there. Other than the sound generated in the room, it's almost as quiet as space, even the air conditioner was barely audible when it was the only sound and you concentrated on listening for it. I stepped into the vocal booth and pulled the door to, and the easily audible conversation that was going on in the main room disappeared completely. The control room had a very dead sound, so when you played back, you were hearing the monitors only, and very little of "the room". This is probably also the biggest single thing that separates a pro-level studio from the serious home-recording hobbyist. Most of the actual gear, including the real "go-to" gear is pretty much in reach for the average person, and there is a lot of inexpensive gear that does great, not to mention software, but the difference in environmental noise is still expensive to address, and treating the room requires specialized knowledge. And most people never think about addressing it anyway...

In this studio they used noise gates only sparingly, for instance, to cut off the decay of the snare drum to stay out of the way of the hi-hat. In the average home recording situation there's some trade-off between squashing noise and having natural sounding decays. The good news for computer recordists is, if you record in 24-bit and use proper gain-staging practices (which is another thread...), you should be able to get a signal-to-noise ratio that is acceptable for all but the most intimate recordings, and still leave plenty of headroom for processing, and to get that puppy LOUD, unless you live near an airport or something.

[FinnArild]

I never use noise gate anymore, I edit all the audio events anyway. Used them more when we were on tape.

[Prometheus]

I tend to do most of my gating manually, in the same way Finn mentions above. The only time I use gates is for cleaning up live drum recordings, very occasionally for shaping sounds to make them a little more pleasing and occasionally for ducking in video editing although I now have a plugin that does this automatically...

[Prometheus]

I stepped into the vocal booth and pulled the door to, and the easily audible conversation that was going on in the main room disappeared completely.

I've worked in studios with separate treated recording booths and in open plan ones where the control room and recording room are one and the same. My personal feeling is that what is gained by recording people in isolations (a slight lowering of the noise floor) is greatly outweighed by what is lost, the interaction and exchange of ideas between the artist(s), the engineer(s) and whoever else is present in real time...

[Retrosaurus Rex]

I've worked in studios with separate treated recording booths and in open plan ones where the control room and recording room are one and the same. My personal feeling is that what is gained by recording people in isolations (a slight lowering of the noise floor) is greatly outweighed by what is lost, the interaction and exchange of ideas between the artist(s), the engineer(s) and whoever else is present in real time...

The engineer at this studio I visited actually talked about that trade-off. He also was one of the designers and builders, so he talked about the thinking that went into the design. There was a significant amount of glass in the vocal booth, so line of sight could be maintained thru-out the main room and with the control room. There was also a curtain in the vocal booth because some singers actually prefer to be completely isolated... Also, they knew they would be doing a significant amount of spoken-word & voice-over work where interaction with a group isn't an issue, but a clean, dry sound is essential. And the main room was big enough that the whole band could be there if they preferred, so it was the best of both worlds, in that sense.

[memphisindie]

I use them if I need them on playback only, or mixing, not going to original tracks.