Noise gate at input vs sidechain to input

InsideOut

InsideOut

Power User
I didn't a search and can't find an answer. This was brought up in the FW12 thread but I wanted to put it in it's own thread so we don't go in a million directions over there.
I can't wrap my head around what the difference is between putting a gate after amp/cab and selecting guitar input as the source vs. just using the gate in the input. Either way it's looking at the input. How do they differ?
 
InsideOut said:
I didn't a search and can't find an answer. This was brought up in the FW12 thread but I wanted to put it in it's own thread so we don't go in a million directions over there.
I can't wrap my head around what the difference is between putting a gate after amp/cab and selecting guitar input as the source vs. just using the gate in the input. Either way it's looking at the input. How do they differ?
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i don't think many would put the gate after the amp and then select the Guitar Input as the source.
 
AlGrenadine said:
I do it on ultra high gain sounds, it gets them very tight, it's definitely the secret weapon to ultra modern metal
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using the Guitar Input as the source? not the previous block?

regardless, people can just do it and listen for the differences and see what they prefer. i don't prefer it, personally.
 
InsideOut said:
I'm trying to learn how they are different. I understand they give different results. Just want to know why.
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Gate at the input: it will remove noise coming from the guitar. In the axe fx this means total silence, in the real world it means still hearing noise from pedals and amp.

Gate after the amp but controlled by the input: you can completely silence an amp based on what your guitar is doing, allowing you to keep the dynamics of your playing even with pretty aggressive noise reduction. Changing the gate settings can change the dynamic response of the amp without changing the tone. A good example are modern metal staccatos.
 
The difference front or behind would be in the attack characteristics, the speed and manner the gate opens in front of a high gain amp is going to shape the way the transient hits the distortion...behind the amp it won't effect the distortion characteristic at all. With input 1 as source you can have a rig on complete meltdown with oscillating delays and reverbs feeding back, with one gate at the end, it only opens when input 1 feels you play, and it's super sensitive since its just working with clean DI, but controlling niagra falls at the end.
 
In real world you want gate in the effects loop, after all the amplification since all the interference would be getting turned into hiss if you just gated the front of the amp, in AFX3 that can't happen. Basically you put the gate before anything you want to keep tails on, delay/reverb, and trigger the gate it from input 1.
 
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greiswig said:
I‘d love to hear some best practices. Like “I would, because______.”
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Turn off the input block gate to get maximum sensitivity... use a gate block after anything that's making noise, and before anything you want to keep tails on, reverb/delay, the gate triggered from input 1. You can get bonkers with a runaway delay and move that gate after it and some space verb. There can be an apocalypse going on but it's dead silent, barely tap the strings and you can unleash the beast percussively
 
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GiRa said:
Gate after the amp but controlled by the input: you can completely silence an amp based on what your guitar is doing, allowing you to keep the dynamics of your playing even with pretty aggressive noise reduction. Changing the gate settings can change the dynamic response of the amp without changing the tone. A good example are modern metal staccatos.
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Ok, this answers my question in the FW12 thread.
I just tried it and, even if I don't notice any difference in the noise reduction between the input gate and a side-chained gate, it definitely responds differently.
With the side-chained gate after the amp the decay of the note seems much more natural since it just turns down the volume and not the gain (which is basically what happens when a gate in front of the amp kicks in), and this is especially true for the new downward expander, it works reeeally good.
Kudos to Cliff for adding that!
 
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DLC86 said:
Ok, this answers my question in the FW12 thread.
I just tried it and, even if I don't notice any difference in the noise reduction between the input gate and a side-chained gate, it definitely responds differently.
With the side-chained gate after the amp the decay of the note seems much more natural since it just turns down the volume and not the gain (which is basically what happens when a gate in front of the amp kicks in), and this is especially true for the new downward expander, it works reeeally good.
Kudos to Cliff for adding that!
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When you say "side chained gate" do you mean like in a parallel path?
 
bishop5150 said:
When you say "side chained gate" do you mean like in a parallel path?
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The gate audio valve is wherever the gate block is placed on the grid, but the thing that opens it is the signal coming in on input 1 (or whatever you pick as the sidechain source), that way the gate opens up using clean pickup signal and doesn't have to listen to a bunch of noise, the threshold can be set more sensitively for it to still open the gate, it only has too deal with the non-distorted pickup DI, and since the gate is at the end, there's nothing between the guitar signal and the amp chain, that link stays open, so the guitar-amp dynamic isn't adulterated by anything
 
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