Recording with Care?

[Newbie]

Hi all,

Just wondering for those doing a lot of recordings with your band and all.

Is noise gate a necessity in your pedal board when doing recordings? Not sure if the fuzz or hum will affect/be very "disruptive" to the track. Cause recently I watched a band do recording and the arranger asked if he had a noise gate cause there was too much hum/fuzz coming from his dist unit.

Problem is he was playing rock. And usually a mid-amount of gain is somewhat needed, so it's a little hard to tweak the gain down; prolly won't get the amount of gain you need for the song and etc.

Any inputs or comments on this?

Rgds,
Newbie

 

[THOA]

A good noise will not or at least should not disrupt the amount of gain significantly. It is meant to suppress the noise coming ffrom the drive usit when the guitar is NOT being played.

Without a noise gate or suppresor, a recording will sound very muddy and unclear. It is very important for a guitar tone to be clear from noise especially, because it is sharing similar frequencies with the snare drum and most importantly, vocals.

If there are too many instrument fighting for space in the frequency range, there is a tendency for the instruments to cut each other off, making the recording very messy and noisy.

 

[Newbie]

A good noise will not or at least should not disrupt the amount of gain significantly. It is meant to suppress the noise coming ffrom the drive usit when the guitar is NOT being played.

Without a noise gate or suppresor, a recording will sound very muddy and unclear. It is very important for a guitar tone to be clear from noise especially, because it is sharing similar frequencies with the snare drum and most importantly, vocals.

If there are too many instrument fighting for space in the frequency range, there is a tendency for the instruments to cut each other off, making the recording very messy and noisy.

For the line in bold, do you mean a noise gate is meant to suppress the noise?

Also does noise gate acts as a compressor to some extend? It sounds like it will ultimately affect the sound of your distortion. Or does it just, basically filter any excessive noise when you're not playing?

So when you're playing, and you set the threshold to be "on playing level" and the gate opens, when you stop playing, the gate closes and disallows any other sound, which this case could be hand-rub-string or static etc to pass through?

 

[Newbie]

Just 1 more question, so noise gate will usually end up at the very end of the effect chain?

 

[Gr3y]

it's a kind of filter that cuts of certain frequency from your source. So if you want the noise maybe at 10khz to be reduced or cut, use it it. But again, excessive usage of gate will make your recording sound very unnatural. If the noise is minimal, leave it.

 

[gsonique]

Noise gates are for noobs...
...lazy fellas!

 

[soft]

With modern DAW, I think it is easier to remove the noise during mixdown. Just "splice, splice" and delete.

If it is a constant hum generated by the guitar/amp/efx, it should be troubleshoot and solved before recording. Else need more work during mixdown to remove it.

 

[gsonique]

Can't agree more ^

A noise gate just robs tone even though we are getting it sorted before recording.
My utmost desire/criteria in gear designs are to eliminate noise or at least suppressed to a tolerable level, thus giving users a hassle free operation.

Many a times, ignorance takes an upper hand where it may have just taken a little to sort e.g. power supplies or cables proper to reduce or eliminate noise. Sound equipment require isolated mains not sharing with other appliances, this is an issue with home or substandard studios.

Guitars/effects/amps with bad wiring or low quality pickups also tend to be the contributing factor to noise/hum. A little attention on these shall wield much better results than a suppressor.

Please avoid it (noise suppressor) if possible and use only as a last resort if all other means to eliminate noise fails.