DarkGate

DarkGate

A drum-focused noise gate built for cleaning up multi-mic drum recordings. Instead of generic gate controls, DarkGate has instrument-aware profiles (Kick / Snare / Toms / Cymbals) that tune the gate’s timing and detection for each drum, plus a spectral DeBleed engine to reject spill from other drums in the kit. You set the threshold visually by dragging on the waveform display.

Main display

WAVEFORM + THRESHOLD — The central waveform display. Drag the threshold line directly on the waveform to set where the gate opens. Anything below the line gets gated.

Instrument selector

KICK / SNARE / TOMS / CYMBALS — Selects an instrument profile. Each profile sets the gate’s attack/release timing, detection weighting, and bleed-rejection behavior to suit that drum (these timings aren’t exposed as knobs — they’re tuned per instrument).

Main controls

REDUCTION (0…80 dB) — How much the gate attenuates when closed. 0 = no reduction (gate effectively off), higher = harder gating, up to fully silencing the gated parts. (This is the gate’s range/depth.)

DeBleed (0…100%) — The spectral bleed-rejection engine. At 0 it’s a pure threshold gate. As you raise it, DarkGate analyzes the spectrum and uses the selected instrument’s profile to reject spill from the other drums (e.g. snare bleeding into the tom mics), so the gate triggers only on the intended drum. Higher = more aggressive bleed rejection.

LENGTH (0…2000 ms) — Hold time — how long the gate stays open after the signal drops below threshold, before it closes. Useful for letting drum tails ring out naturally.

Toggles

GHOST — When on, the gate never fully closes; instead of total silence it leaves a low residual level, so quiet ghost notes and tails stay audible rather than being chopped off.

S-CHAIN — Enables external sidechain triggering — the gate opens based on a separate input signal rather than the drum itself.

Metering

OUTPUT METER — Output level metering (L/R).