In our recording studio, Crash Symphony Productions, we are developing new ways to set up the gating for sessions. Some of our Recording Studio sessions require us to gate to disk. This is pretty cowboy stuff in the Recording Studio so it’s important that we get it right from the get go. Let’s take a look at how we set it up.

Getting the chain right first!

Firstly, we need to make sure that all the hardware is in the right order on the way into the computer. In our Recording Studio we set the chain up as follows: microphone, preamp, compressor limiting, compressor standard, gate, computer. Once we know the chain is set right it’s time to make sure that the raw signal with no compression or gating sounds good. We bypass all the gating and compression and simply get the vocalist position from the microphone correct. We raise the microphone to curtail sibilance and lower it to let more through. We bring the microphone closer to get more bottom end and push it back to make it sound thinner. These are standard moves in the Recording Studio. Once we have the microphone position correct we can begin to get the limiting compressor working properly. We just need a little compression happening and then we can pull it back a little. Once this is set we start working on the next compressor. This compressor is set up as normal vocal compression. Usually this is 4:1 or 6:1 compression ratio. Now that we have the compressors working together it’s time to take a look at what the signal looks and sounds like when it has been recorded it the DAW. When we’re happy with the dynamic on our signal we can begin the set up of the noise gate. This is the final step for us in our Recording Studio. They key is to make sure that the gate is not cutting off any words in an unwanted manner.
This is the standard procedure for set up of an audiobook, for example, in our Recording Studio.