Gate Plugin for Vocals similar to "Sonnox Drug Gate"

[Gregg Markus]

So I've fallen in love with Sonnox' "Drug Gate" plugin.     Sometimes I record drummers that are pretty heavy handed, and leave me lots of bleed between mics.  So it's not uncommon to sacrifice the high end presence in a rack tom or snare because the high hat is cutting through too much.

Sonnox sort of deals with that. I can more or less eliminate everything but the drum hit thanks to AI (I assume).

 

Does anyone know of a similar plugin for vocals???    For example, recording a band live on stage (or in studio) where everyone is in the same room and even the most hypercardioid mics tend to bring in more of the band they should.

 

I'm not really interested in making that mic bleed "work" for me. In many cases, it is not "magical", it is only problematic - especially when given a short amount of time fix and mix everything.

 

Maybe Izotope? Or anything else AI based?

 

 

 

[bitflipper]

FabFilter Pro-G.

[SVSX]

If you are a longtime Cakewalk user, you could own the Pro Channel 4k Expander/Gate which is awesome. 

[Starship Krupa]

What does the Drug Gate do that's so special? Does it gate only certain frequencies?

Boz Digital's Gatey Watey does that, and has been on every live kit snare and kick since I got it years ago.

Cockos' REAFir (free for any host as part of their package of REAPlugs) can be used to gate out specific frequencies or ranges of frequencies. I had a camcorder video where the person holding the camera was also playing cowbell and managed to mostly tame the cowbell with REAFir. REAFir has other very handy tricks up its sleeve. I think it may get overlooked because it's both free and has been around for a long time, but it is a powerful tool.

[Gregg Markus]

On 12/18/2021 at 4:48 AM, Starship Krupa said:

What does the Drug Gate do that's so special? Does it gate only certain frequencies?

Boz Digital's Gatey Watey does that, and has been on every live kit snare and kick since I got it years ago.

Cockos' REAFir (free for any host as part of their package of REAPlugs) can be used to gate out specific frequencies or ranges of frequencies. I had a camcorder video where the person holding the camera was also playing cowbell and managed to mostly tame the cowbell with REAFir. REAFir has other very handy tricks up its sleeve. I think it may get overlooked because it's both free and has been around for a long time, but it is a powerful tool.

Sorry for the late reply (the forum keeps randomly failing to send me notifications).

The Sonnox Drum Gate uses machine learning / artificial intelligence to selectively remove the undesirable background noises.

There are three main "presets" - for bass drum, snare, or toms. It has a variety of of controls, but those 'presets' pretty much take care of everything. If you put a mic on a tom, with the Sonnox gate, it's almost like the tom is the only thing being recorded. You don't have to give up the higher frequencies in order to remove the cymbals. It's the best option I've seen yet for this.

I've relied on a variety of tools and techniques in the past that were frequency specific. Like multing a drum track boosting and sometimes compressing the offending frequencies, then flipping the polarity to 'cancel' out as much as I can. But there's always a price to pay, and I end up losing frequencies.

I've been experimenting with Izotopes music and master rebalance plugs. I haven't quite found the winning formula yet, but it'll likely be some balance between the izotope and various mult/boost/polarity/sodechain tricks.

Edited December 23, 2021 by Gregg Markus

[Will.]

Nothing wrong with the Sontius Gate. It cleans vocals pretty good. I use it when recording drums too. Only downside is, its really tiny on a big monitor. 

Edited October 3, 2023 by Will.