Input 1 gate vs using a Decimator.

joesatch

joesatch

Inspired
running a tube pre into input 1. This is a high gain slo preamp. I usually just use the gate on the Fractal which is fine. Out of curiousity i decided to disable that and put a Decimator in between the pre and the fractal and it sounds MUCH better. why?
 
joesatch said:
running a tube pre into input 1. This is a high gain slo preamp. I usually just use the gate on the Fractal which is fine. Out of curiousity i decided to disable that and put a Decimator in between the pre and the fractal and it sounds MUCH better. why?
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Much better how? Would love to hear sound comparisons.

In my experience a Noise Gate doesn't change the tone - just stops noise when you're not playing.
 
joesatch said:
running a tube pre into input 1.
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I'd suggest running line level (balanced -TRS cable) from the pre-amp into AxeFX input 3 or 4 & use gate on selected input only if necessary.

Which tube pre are you using?
 
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I had a ISP Hum Extractor/Decimator and Fortin Zuul+. I had the opposite experience where the ISP did something to the tone which I did not like in the low-mids. The Zuul+ worked well, but after the recent noise gate improvements, there was no need to use it as outboard gear in the loop when the Axe-FX could acheive the same results.
 
For some reason this forum has a habit of calling various things "noise gates" that aren't noise gates. A true noise gate is either open (no effect on tone) or closed {silent). The trick is setting the level and the attack/sustain so it opens/closes in a way that flows with the song and tone.

A noise reducer or hum eliminator or buzz killer or whatever attempts to reduce buzz while you're playing and it obviously is going to have an effect on your tone.
 
ISP filter the noise while playing. The Axe still let noise while playing, whatever setting and gate you use. I live with it. That’s the only default that remain in the axe 3, to me. The last.
In fact, the axe open, and close the door like a “basic” gate.

Now that I have shared my opinion about the gate, I let the conversation continue, while eating some potato chips
 
ocaptainjr2 said:
This is a broad generality which is not true of all products.
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@ocaptainjr2 , if your point is that there are products that call themselves "noise reducers" or whatever that are actually gates, I completely agree and I appreciate the clarification. The larger point is that regardless of a device's name:

  • If it opens and closes and doesn't affect the tone, it's a gate.
  • If it's active while someone is playing, it's something else. Some sort of subtractive filter that attempts to remove the buzz from a tone.

As @My name is mud notes above, the Axe has a gate that has improved significantly lately, but the Axe does not seem to offer any buzz-reducing functionality outside of various EQs.

People that are great at technical tweaking (like mud!) can get the gate set to really eliminate noise during highly rhythmic playing, but a gate can't help at all with a long, sustained note, especially one that decays quite a bit.
 
joesatch said:
using the stock intelligent gate. threshold was at 3 o'clock to get it silent
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Try the Axe's gate in Classic mode instead and see if that gives you a better response.

Is the goal to gate the post preamp signal of the high gain preamp to then process in the Axe III for post preamp fx and Cab modelling? Or are you trying to use the Axe just for the gating?

I find that for high gain applications in the analog domain, using an ISP Pro Rack G to gate both the pre preamp and post preamp signals is the way to go.

You might get better results setting the whole rig up as 4CM rig so that you can use the Axe as a gate in front of the rack preamp, and then use the Axe as a post preamp gate too.

Would be great to hear some clips and also get more detail of how you are running things overall.
 
That documentation is fascinating @My name is mud . It seems to describe a gate + dynamic filter combined approach. I attempted to approximate this concept with a quick-and-dirty preset.

In this clip there are three sounds:

  1. Neither noise reduction technique - just an unadulterated Strat tone. Not very usable.
  2. Just the gate - even though the gate was dialed in very roughly, it does its normal nice job of chopping out noise between notes. However, during the final note decay, the gate obviously remains open and the noise essentially ruins the clip.
  3. The gate and a dynamic EQ. This Parametric EQ is controlled by an envelope follower such that it is basically flat when the guitar is loud, but the treble turns down as the guitar gets quieter.

I made a video even though I'm terrible at videos because it's fun to watch the EQ going bonkers while the guitar plays:



...Yeah, yeah, I know, leave the videos to Cooper. But still, for a rough hack, it's not terribly bad, eh? I think what would be better is this: Instead of just following the overall signal envelope at Input 1, if you could slice out a high-mid frequency range of the signal, and then use the volume of THAT to control the EQ. Then you would be saying "if the guitar is playing high mids loudly, leave it alone. If the guitar is NOT playing high mids loudly, start to EQ out the high mids." You could do even better by using a more refined EQ shape that really hones in on the buzz. Maybe you could use the tone match tech to tell the Axe "here's what the buzz sounds like by itself" and then the Axe could use that to dynamically shape the sound, or something...?

Greater minds than mine have explored this in vastly more depth, but perhaps this hints at what might be possible using tech that already ~exists in the Axe code.
 
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