Channel Gate/Expander Section

The Channel Gate can tame the microphone bleed in live tracks, or add more expressive and dynamic articulation to pre-recorded loops and sounds.

Controls:

• Threshold Slider: drag the threshold slider down to meet the average signal level
• Input Meter: this meter indicates the level (post-sidechain-filter) that is being fed to the gate’s detector
• Gain Reduction meter: this meter indicates the amount of gain-reduction being applied. The first 4 LEDs each indicate 2dB of gain reduction.
• Depth Knob: increase this knob to increase the effect of the Gate processing. In the default Gate mode, this knob allows up to 60dB of gating. If the Exp (expander) button is enabled, then the range of this knob is decreased to only 15dB, and is geared to provide more sensitivity in the the first few dB of action.
• Attack: this knob adjusts the speed at which the gate or expander will engage, when the input signal reduces below the threshold slider
• Release: this knob adjusts the speed at which the gate or expander will release (return to unity gain), if the gate was engaged and now the input signal raises above the threshold slider
• SC F: the Sidechain Filter is a bandpass filter that focuses the sensitivity of the Gate/Expansion on a specific frequency range. For example: if you have a snare track which also has some bleed from the kick drum, you can focus the sidechain filter on a frequency that is present in the snare, but not the kick. This allows the gate to open only for the snare, and stay closed during the kick-drum, even if the bleed is quite loud.
• Lstn: this button allows you to listen to the sidechain-filtered input of the gate, thereby allowing you to tune the filter while listening to its effect
• Exp: enable this button to engage “Expander” mode. Expander mode is a gentler form of gating, where the signal is only decreased slightly when the signal recedes below the threshold. This can increase the dynamic contrast between loud sounds and quiet ones.
• Gate: this button enables the Gate/Compressor effect
• Knee (Expander mode only): this knob reduces the effect of the Ratio knob, so that the ratio starts very small and then proportionally increases to reach its full value, after the input signal has receded from the threshold by the defined dB value.
• Ratio (Expander mode only): this knob defines how strongly the expander will take effect when the input signal gets lower than the threshold
• Hyst (Gate mode only): The Hysteresis knob prevents the gate from quickly opening and closing when the signal slowly passes through the threshold region. Imagine the case where a signal with natural variation in volume (tremolo or vibrato) is slowly decaying. After the sound decreases beneath the threshold, the natural variation might momentarily exceed the threshold.
• Hold (Gate mode only): The Hold knob defines the minimum time that the gate will be held fully open, after the gate is triggered. In the common case where a Gate is used to focus on a single sound (like a snare drum), this allows the gate to be held open for the entire length of the drum hit, rather than decaying the sound immediately after the transient falls below the threshold.

!Lookahed Latency : the Gate effect requires a ‘lookahead’ time so it can accurately open before a drum transient. When any channel’s Gate mode is enabled, Mixbus must delay all the other channels to accommodate this latency. This is called ‘latency compensation’ and is inherent to Mixbus’s operation. However, there are a few cases where the additional latency is objectionable (for example: if you want to play a midi keyboard, and hear a virtual instrument played from a track in Mixbus). In this case you can disable PDC (plugin delay compensation) via the Latency Toolbar.

* the Expander mode does not incur lookahead latency

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