Noise gates on mic bleeds- why bother?

[DaProTool]

Why is mic bleed through such a problem... a vocals recording having the faint music bleeding thru the headphones... you can't hear it in the mix anyway.
If anything it could give you a slight echo or reverb effect but I doubt it's loud enough to do that.

I guess my question is - is it really worth setting up noise gates/silence insertion and running the risk of creating weird artifacts on the original signal to rid off something one really cannot hear in the mix anyway.

Now, I am mainly to talking about instrument bleed such as on vocals or drums.... NOT NOISE like humming or background noise.

 

[RAMI]

Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Depends how much there is and how much you think is too much.

 

[MadAudio]

Bleed that sounds good is called ambience, even on the drums. I almost never gate my drum tracks unless I'm doing some sample replacement (which I also rarely do).

And you're quite right - it's ridiculous to apply a gate on the tracking side as there is the chance of the gate opening too late or closing too soon.

 

[NL5]

Why is mic bleed through such a problem... a vocals recording having the faint music bleeding thru the headphones... you can't hear it in the mix anyway.

Actually, you can. I strive quite hard to limit the amount to as little as possible.

Yep, I'm with Mad audio - don't gate to tape. In fact, in this day and age, why would you EVER use a gate????????

 

[DaProTool]

Actually, you can. I strive quite hard to limit the amount to as little as possible.

Yep, I'm with Mad audio - don't gate to tape. In fact, in this day and age, why would you EVER use a gate????????

How would you discern hihat bleeding through the snare mic versus hihat picked up by the overhead condenser in the mix???

I didn't mean outboard gating to tape... plug in gating post recording.
So what's used in place of gating now? Downward expander? I know that protools has the strip silence command, but that doesn't work on superimposed signal.

 

[DaProTool]

Bleed that sounds good is called ambience, even on the drums. I almost never gate my drum tracks unless I'm doing some sample replacement (which I also rarely do).

And you're quite right - it's ridiculous to apply a gate on the tracking side as there is the chance of the gate opening too late or closing too soon.

ambience, kind of like slight reverb or echo

 

[Robert D]

Yep, I'm with Mad audio - don't gate to tape. In fact, in this day and age, why would you EVER use a gate????????

Assuming "in this day and age" refers to digital editing, yes, absolutely agreed. There is no gate as precise, or as effective as digitally editing the track. I can't even remember the last time I used a gate. I CAN remember the last time I almost used a gate, and I quickly decided it sucked and I should just edit the track. My hardware gates are thick with dust, and in the digital realm, I can be so much more surgical with object editing than with software gates.

 

[NL5]

ambience, kind of like slight reverb or echo

More like Pre-Verb.

Assuming "in this day and age" refers to digital editing, yes, absolutely agreed. There is no gate as precise, or as effective as digitally editing the track. I can't even remember the last time I used a gate. I CAN remember the last time I almost used a gate, and I quickly decided it sucked and I should just edit the track. My hardware gates are thick with dust, and in the digital realm, I can be so much more surgical with object editing than with software gates.

Yep.

How would you discern hihat bleeding through the snare mic versus hihat picked up by the overhead condenser in the mix???

If you look at the quoted part of my response, I was referring to headphone bleed into a vocal mic.......

Hihat bleed into the snare mic is also pretty discernable in home recordings due to all the phase issues induced. If properly miced, there should be a pretty low level of bleed.

I didn't mean outboard gating to tape... plug in gating post recording.
So what's used in place of gating now? Downward expander? I know that protools has the strip silence command, but that doesn't work on superimposed signal.

See Robert D's post.......

 

[Robert D]

I know that protools has the strip silence command, but that doesn't work on superimposed signal.

Nothing works on a superimposed signal, unless the frequencies are so well seperated without crossover of harmonics that you can use filters. No gate ever made could remove a lower level signal while passing the higher level signal.

 

[DaProTool]

thanks for the responses guys

 

[Van Greco]

Yep, I'm with Mad audio - don't gate to tape. In fact, in this day and age, why would you EVER use a gate????????

I agree that there is really no reason to use a gate to cut noise with digital recording. Volume automation is far more precise. However, in defense of the lowly gate, it can still be useful as an effect. You can use it to create some weird sucking sounds. It's also really common to hear it used to create beat synced stuttering sounds.

 

[jmorris]

gating cnbe nicetool for enabling easier triggering of drums. Split snare,kick. One channel normal, the other with gate. Gives a clean trigger to sub out other drum choice then mix with orig. signal. At times snare and kick can have bleed that screws with triggering.

 

[NL5]

gating cnbe nicetool for enabling easier triggering of drums. Split snare,kick. One channel normal, the other with gate. Gives a clean trigger to sub out other drum choice then mix with orig. signal. At times snare and kick can have bleed that screws with triggering.

A trigger operates the same as a gate, so you are effectivley putting a gate in front of a gate....

 

[midwesttribune]

honestly if you cant tell in the final mixdown, and your not going to be sending off your vocal acapella's (vocal with no instrumental backround) to someone else to produce over the internet, then its no big deal. As long as it doesn't effect any of the plugins or quality of your mix, leak on...

 

[TerraMortim]

for the most part a little bit of bleed should be okay... unless you're heavily effecting the vocal...or compressing the shit out of it, or if you're eqing it a lot it could cause the mix to sound weird if there's tons of bleed. I doubt you'll get anything that'll be a problem under any normal use, unless you're blasting loudspeakers into the vocal booth. Also, I guess if you were editing teh timing or pitch and there was tons of bleed it could sound weird... but I dunno...never had a problem with it...I wouldn't get too worried.

 

[TexRoadkill]

I don't understand all the gate hate. Digital look-ahead gates are precise enough and they allow you to shape the drum tone much more then just cutting out the silence. Maybe I'm just to lazy to manually edit close mic'd drum tracks but gates seem to work fine for me.

 

[amra]

I never use gates when tracking, but I like to put gates on the toms during mixdown. It takes the tom mics out completely when they are not being played. This cuts down on low end rumble that can clutter up a mix...

 

[cusebassman]

Toying around in Cubase LE, the built-in comp/limiter has a nice little gate built in as well - turn it on, and for decently recorded tracks, it cuts the spaces out very nicely. Its nice in the case where I am recording acoustic guitar, and then recording vocals separately, and want to silence the time between the vocal parts. Nothing too drastic, but it gets rid of anything that creeps in.

As others have said, you can go right in and silence out the parts of a track you don't want audible, so you never get the potential negative side-effects of a gate, but honestly, the thing works for what I want, and its quicker.

So, its a matter of preference, apparently

As for why you would want to get rid of bleed, I can't really say for everyone else - I use the gating on individual tracks only when there is some noise in the background that only shines through when whatever source being recorded becomes silent... which i suppose isnt technically controlling bleed from other instruments

 

[SonicAlbert]

So what's used in place of gating now? Downward expander? I know that protools has the strip silence command, but that doesn't work on superimposed signal.

Strip silence is what I use when necessary. That's basically functioning as a gate in non-realtime.