Noise Gates: Everything You NEED to Know | Too Afraid To Ask

whether you are playing disgusting High Gain heavy metal or something a little more tasteful we could all use noise reduction on our pedal boards but noise Gates often leave guitarists confused as to how they work what kind of noise they silence and the best ways to use them with the help of boss's latest ns1 X noise suppressor I'm going to answer a few Noise Gate questions which you might be too afraid to ask let's talk nomenclature boss calls this a noise suppressor the ISP decimator names itself noise reduction and something like the Rev G8 calls itself A Noise Gate these are all just different names for the same type of effect they all function in a similar fashion to achieve the same result throughout this video I'm going to use the general term Noise Gate for reasons which I hope will become clear once we start to understand how they work put simply A Noise Gate is an automatic volume control which silences your signal once it drops below a threshold amplitude it comprises of two main sections a gate and a sensor which senses the amplitude of the signal as it enters the pedal the sensor's threshold control sets the amplitude level below which the sensor will trigger once the sensor detects the signal level has dropped below the threshold amplitude the gate slams shut preventing the signal traveling further silencing the output from the pedal how quickly the gate opens and closes in response to the sensor detecting a signal amplitude crossing the threshold is determined by the gates attack and release controls respectively or in the case of the boss ns1 X these are both combined into a single Decay control you may even find a control which Alters the corporeal transparency of the gate determining how much of the signal leaks through when the gate is closed this is labeled damp on our boss unit but can commonly be named ratio as it's the ratio of signal to silence you might have noticed I've been talking exclusively about a Noise Gate allowing or denying the passage of signal and you might be thinking h m Colin I thought your signal and your noise were two separate things and your Noise Gate would get rid of the noise completely and I think it's incredibly important to understand that the intentional notes that you are playing and the unintentional operating noise floor generated with the pickups cables pedals and amplifier are not two separate entities traveling the signal chain together but rather one single entangled signal superp position noise Gates do not filter out noise and keep your notes they simply shut off the entire signal once it drops below the threshold amplitude when the gate is open everything gets through noise and notes alike and if you've got a lot of noise in your signal you're still going to hear it which is why it's also important to use other methods to get your signal chain as quiet as possible as this will help your Noise Gate work most effectively noise gates are not the solution for every type of noise you will encounter in an audio system which leads to frustration when guitarists try to use a noise gate to solve a problem they aren't designed to handle noise gates are the solution for silencing what I'm going to call the operating noise floor essentially all of the low amplitude stuff that's generated from handling the instrument and within the pickups and cables which ends up getting Amplified along with all of your intentional playing when using highquality cables and a properly wired and shielded instrument this operating noise floor can be very low indeed prior to amplification and in fact in a lot of low gain tones it can sound like there's no noise there at all but if your sound uses a lot of compression or especially Distortion and these effects are specifically designed to bring the loudest and quietest parts of your signal much closer in volume to each other so if you step on that fuzz pedal for example it's going to massively amplify and Dore all of that low amplitude operating noise floor and suddenly it's going to become all too audible this leads a lot of people to falsely conclude that their compressor or their distortion pedal is just noisy and while that might be the case for some pedals most of the time all they're doing is just amplifying the noise that was already there so if there is a sizable amplitude difference between the quietest notes and the loudest operating noise then a Noise Gate should have no problem shutting off the signal between notes and preventing your audience hearing the distorted noise [Music] [Music] floor noise gates are not designed to cope with nonoperating noise floor stuff things like switch mode power supplies injecting noise into your power line dirty power ground Loops or wiring issues with your guitar all of that should be addressed in addition and preferably before you start to try and Implement A Noise Gate remember you want to get your signal as clean as possible to give your Noise Gate the best possible chance of gating effectively there is no one best place to put a noise gate in your signal chain it's going to be situational depending on your application but there are a few rules of thumb that might work for you placing a Noise Gate early in the signal chain gives the sensor the best chance of differentiating between notes and noise floor ideally we want to sense the signal before the noise floor gets Amplified too much this works particularly well for cleaner sounds which use effects that don't introduce much more operating noise even with Distortion later in the signal chain this early placement is usually sufficient as we are silencing the noise floor before it can even reach the Distortion this is how I use noise Gates the majority of the time but in super high gain settings those distortion pedals and even the amplifier itself can add additional noise floor after the Noise Gate which will still be [Music] Audible [Music] [Music] [Applause] placing a Noise Gate after distortion pedals or indeed in the effects Loop of an amplifier to bring it after the preamp can silence all of that operating noise floor generated by the High Gain Distortion sources unfortunately this often has the consequence of bringing the noise floor and the notes much closer in Signal amplitude meaning the noise Gates sensor is much less able to successfully differentiate between the two this can lead to choppy performance from The Noise Gate cutting off notes prematurely or even struggling to stay closed in the most extreme cases now this is where it would be absolutely incredible if we could sense the signal early in the signal chain to get the best separation between notes and noise but only get it much later after Distortion where we can silence that late chain operating noise well that's exactly what send and return on our Noise Gate is for maybe it will make more sense if we view send as the sensor output and return as the gates input this effectively splits our Noise Gate pedal in half meaning with one single pedal we can place the sensor and gate in different locations in our signal chain this gives us ultimate flexibility regardless of what other effects we are using by allowing the signal to be sensed and gated at the points that are most effective we can get silent accurate gating without having to resort to running two noise Gates on our pedal [Music] board [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] a [Applause] [Music] one final note about Noise Gate placement you'll probably want to put your reverbs and delays after the Noise Gate unless of course you purposely want to cut off the tales and trails of your time-based [Music] effects [Music] [Applause] [Music] so in summary then sense it distort it gate it then delay it that's the arrangement that most people will probably be looking for but remember that noise gates are situational and you could find better performance in a different Arrangement depending on your effects chain let's talk about the boss ns1 X specifically as I'm sure many of you are wondering what's so special about this unit that you couldn't get from just any other Noise Gate you could buy While most other noise gates are analog in their operation the ns1 x is digital making use of boss's multi-dimensional processing algorithms which are capable of analyzing the signal in real time and then processing different elements of it in different ways this is just a little bit more sophisticated than sensing the signal amplitude gate mode operates pretty much the way we've discussed previously in this video with the gates opening and closing quickly and abruptly making it perfect for High Gain applications particularly those with percussive staccato [Music] playing [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the reduction mode makes use of multi-dimensional processing to tackle the way the gates attack and release can sound choppy and unnatural when used with clean or low gain sounds or when used with single coils which are the victim of Main's frequency hum developed largely for a new breed of distortion and compression controls multi-dimensional processing is able to break a digitized note into its fundamental frequency and its overtones in order to process those differently probably using furier transforms in the process it can also distinguish between the attack transients sustain and release of individual notes and again apply different processing to different temporal sections of the signal for example in a compressor multi-dimensional processing would be able to separate the fundamental and overtones in the initial attack of the note process each with different levels of compression to avoid the fundamental being disproportionately ducked and then ease into a more even compression as the note sustains all of which would imply that multi-dimensional processing would be fully capable of distinguishing between noise floor and notes particularly at the transitional points where notes give way to noise or noise gives way to notes reduction seems to focus on those transitional areas allowing for a more natural blending in and out of the noise gate rather than a sudden open and close which can spoil a more Soulful [Music] performance [Music] oh [Music] mute is a fantastic addition which runs in Noise Gate in reduction mode but importantly changes the foot switch into a mute button rather than a bypass for the effect [Music] hopefully all of this has been informative in helping you understand how noise gates work and how best to use them if you are interested at all in the boss ns1 X noise suppressor then you will find links in the description to where you can buy these for yourself and don't forget to click all the other buttons you're supposed to to make this video viable to the Ever Changing whims of the YouTube algorithm that's all for now keep it loud stay [Music] safe I love that new boss pedal smell

Channel: Science of Loud

Views: 61,087

Keywords: CSGuitars, Colin, all the gain, scotland, pickups, science, will it shred, whats the difference, studio, recording, guitar, amplifier, pedal, scottish, metal, cs guitar, cs guitars, collin, science of loud, tata, too afraid to ask, axe from the grave, restoration, pickup, gain appreciation, noise gate, noise suppressor, noise, 60 cycle hum, hum, hiss, gain hiss, 4 cable method, best way to use

Id: KUP2jle1w88

Length: 14min 53sec (893 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 17 2023