Placement of noise gate (plugins and hardware)?

[Ally-007]

My logic suggests that if I use a noise gate, I should put it at the end of the effects chain, so that it eliminates noise from all the preceding effects. However, I often see people putting the noise gate near (or even at) the beginning of the effects chain. Is there a valid reason for doing that?

 

[rob aylestone]

If you put it immediately after the nosiy piece of kit, then you'll still hear the other things in the chain - so the exact point really depends on how much you need to cut - I always had mine at the end of a chain, as my gizmos all produced noise.

 

[Ally-007]

If you put it immediately after the nosiy piece of kit, then you'll still hear the other things in the chain - so the exact point really depends on how much you need to cut - I always had mine at the end of a chain, as my gizmos all produced noise.

Yes, that was always my approach, too.

 

[ashcat_lt]

Well in plugin world if they’re adding noise it’s for no good reason and you should either turn off that “feature” or find a different plugin that doesn’t do that.

Most of the time we want the noise gate before any non-linear plugin which might reduce the dynamic range because it‘s usually easier to find a threshold before you smash things down into the noise floor.

In some cases it might actually work better to put the gate itself at the end of the chain but sidechain it from a split of the signal from somewhere at the beginning. Example might be put the gate after an amp sim but trigger it from the dry DI. That’s more useful in hardware than software usually, though.