Noise gate question, please help!

[miamidaddy]

Hello. I am currently recording vocals from different artists and when I am listening to the diffent takes I am hearing some unwanted background noise like air, a little bit of headphone bleeds, ect. and I am needing some help on correctly using a noise gate. I know some will suggest not using one in digital and editing the track by deleting sections but I will like how to use it and then choose to use it or not.

I am using the gate fx on protools and when i gate my vocals it sounds choppy like its clicking or cutting of some breaths that really make the vocal sound unnatural. What are some good settings or starting points to use to get good results to remove the air and backgroung noise between words or ablibs.

What settings to use on:

Threshold-
Attack-
Hold-
Decay-
Range-

Thanks in advance for the help!!!

[XHipHop]

can you just automate the volume or mute or cut in between the words?

it's impossible to tell you what settings. I guess you're going to want a slightly slower attack if you don't want to cut off the ends of words...but without hearing it there is no way to know. I think automating volume is your best bet though.

[miamidaddy]

I can do that (automate)but I am trying to learn to use a noise gate. Can anyone give a good starting point like what settings did you use (if you did) on your last recording thanks

[miamidaddy]

Or can anyone show me how to figure out how to use a noise gate? Thanks

[EspionageWHW]

First off, if you are experiencing a chopping effect from your noise gate, try lowering the threshold to about -40 db or so. That should be about enough to take care of most of that chopping thats happening.

To tweak even further, your settings will depend on what the average and peak levels that you record your vocals into Pro Tools are. I like to record rappers with an average peak level of about -5
So my vocal gate usually looks something like this:
Range to -80 db.
Attack very fast - about 0 or 2 ms
Hold to 200 ms and Decay to about 560 ms (Keep in mind, these settings will vary depend on how loud you record your vox into pro tools)

Another general rule of thumb is to use the gate as the first plug-in of the chain, because if you have EQ or compression before the gate, and then decide to go back and tweak the knobs on those later on in the mix... it could have an undesirable effect on your gate.

Hope that helps
-Es

[Tim Farrant]

IMO, you only really want to attenuate the signal 10 to 15 db between phrases. This will be enough to loose the leakage in the mix. So, fast(ish) attack 5mS, fairly slow decay @ 300mS, hold about 100mS, range 10-15dB depending on the severity of the leakage. Adjust threshold so that it does not chop out words, but just gently decays after each phrase.