5 Gating Tips For Better Live Shows

Get better mixes, faster with my 3-step guide to perfect EQ:
www.offshoreaudio.no/eq
Gates can wreck your mix but avoiding them keeps you from mixing your best. There’s more than just a threshold control on a noise gate and getting to grips with the more advanced controls can help beat feedback and take your mixes to the next level. It takes confidence and experience to quickly dial in the settings so I’m here to lend you my experience to give you the confience to level up your gating. we’ll look at 5 ways that you can go beyond simply turning it on and lowering the threshold.

[@johnmcquay82]

Some great tips here. I use gates a lot; I'm often having other sound engineers tell me I shouldn't use them, and then later they ask "how did you get that sound?" well, a lot of it is down to the way I use gates in conjunction with compression. It's amazing what you can achieve with relatively basic dynamics controls.

[@obijuan8466]

OMG! The key input frequency! I had no idea. And I just figured out the nasty clicking I have been hearing when I use the gate a few weeks ago. I knew it was something I was doing, but didn't know what.

[@OffshoreAudio]

Aha! That's great 😁 so glad it was helpful

[@NickGazard]

Thanks will explore gates beyond just thresholds on our X32s. Appreciate you showing it on different systems.

[@OffshoreAudio]

Thanks! It's my pleasure.

[@sky.london]

It was useful, thanks. Like the tip about Jazz.

[@OffshoreAudio]

Thanks! Glad you liked it.

[@Bobby_Uterus]

You have some great videos! You really deserve more views and likes. Are you a church sound tech by chance?

[@OffshoreAudio]

Thank you so much! I'm not, I'm about 50/50 between concerts and conferences.

[@Bobby_Uterus]

@@OffshoreAudio Awesome! Nothing against those church sound guys. I’ve learned a lot online from them, But all the religious stuff is kinda off putting. They also tend to mix only church type music.

[@user-kb6wx2uq6d]

I always try to find out if any backing vocalists are going to be talking to the crowd between songs because if I leave an expander on their talking voice often isn't loud enough to open the channel up properly

[@OffshoreAudio]

Yeah there's a lot of caveats to the whole expander thing. It works best if you've got really good communication with the band/ know the material. Either way it's a tool to have in your arsenal that can sometimes help solve a problem.