Quote:
Originally Posted by sluttygearhere  how is it pointless? i always get my sounds the way i want them and print them when i track. i dont use the gates to prevent bleed through i use them to control overtones and ring out. its the same purpose of using them in a live situation. the risk of it ruining a take isnt even plausible. i know many an engineer who do it this way. |
Well, it's pointless because it can just as easily be done afterwards.
Comparing with live sound isn't really relevant - there's lots of things that need to be done in live sound that don't in the studio. They're 2 different beasts really - same building blocks, different aims. I've never assisted on a tracking session where a gate was printed on the way in whilst tracking drums. Though I have worked on a session where we had to repair the drums where the gate hadn't been set correctly, and were destroying the transients of the toms and kick (and missing out hits on occasion too).
That's the danger of ruining a take - it certainly IS plausible. Of course, you're going to say you set your gates on the safe side, so there's no chance of any tom hits being missed (although you are shaping the sound of the gated drum to tape).
I still say it's fairly pointless, you might as well do it whilst mixing, and then you've got the option of using the overtones if you want. There's no benefit of tracking with them (unlike say compression - although there's arguments against that now too).
If you pretty much mix as you track, and always mix any material you track, then I guess it's whatever works for you. But if not, or if you send any material off to be mixed by anyone else, I'd strongly suggest not tracking with gates.