


It dictates how long the gate stays engaged after the audio rises back above the threshold setting. The release slider does the same thing, only in reverse. At the ends of words or sentences, the drop-off will be more gradual, and the very ends of words won’t cut out. If you set the attack time longer, the effect won’t drop the volume as quickly, and little volume drops in the middle of words won’t get caught in the gate, and thus be eliminated. Think of it as turning a volume knob down quickly or slowly. The attack slider controls how quickly the effect lowers the volume when sound goes below the threshold. To help counter this, you need to adjust the gate's attack and release settings. This can happen not only between words, sentences, or paragraphs, but even within words themselves. This can make your audio sound choppy and cut off parts of words or other material you need. If reaction time isn't right, the gate might cut off the beginning and end of your desired audio.

Second, as your desired sound begins and ends, the noise gate has to react. Sound complicated or difficult? Well, it can be, but with experience you'll get better at it. You must set the threshold in the perfect “sweet spot” where it cuts out enough of the sound you don't want without cutting out too much of the sound you do want. When you use the noise gate, you can't avoid cutting out a portion of the sound you want. A good, robust recording-especially of the human voice - contains audio material at virtually every volume level between absolute silence (that's “minus infinity,” or “-Inf” in digital audio terms) up to your loudest volume peak. First, the noise gate can affect your desired sound material. Sounds simple, right? Maybe, but keep a few important considerations in mind. The effect automatically drops the volume to zero whenever the sound's natural volume drops below the threshold, and the noise disappears. For example, to remove noise at -50 dB, set the noise gate threshold to -45 dB or so. The noise gate cuts off everything below a certain volume, known as the threshold volume.
