| MIX VERDICT: SONIBLE SMART:GATE |
| THE TAKEAWAY: “The “content aware” processing in Smart:Gate makes it a game-changer.” |
| COMPANY: Sonible • www.Sonible.com PRICE: $129 PROS: • “Content Aware” gating allows for fast and accurate settings. • Plenty of user-adjustable parameters. • Band Suppression feature. • Ducking option. • Mid/Side option CONS: • Target profile list needs more instruments. |
Smart:Gate is the latest offering from Sonible, a software developer at the forefront of integrating AI into processing plug-ins. The company describes Smart:Gate as “content aware” because it can identify common instrument or vocal characteristics in audio and keeps the gate open only when it detects a targeted source.
It’s remarkably easy to set. Insert it on a track, open the pulldown menu, then choose the appropriate Target Profile from a list that includes Vocals, Speech, Guitar Acoustic, Guitar Electric, Bass, Keys, Kick, Snare, Toms and Hi-Hat. (You can also choose “No Target” and use the plug-in as a conventional gate.)
Assuming that you select one of the instrument or voice Target Profiles, you then play a section of the track to allow Smart:Gate to recognize the source and create a setting for you. For example, say you’re gating a kick drum track and trying to remove the bleed from the snare and other kit elements: Simply select Kick as your Target Profile, and after playing some of the track, Smart:Gate will open only for the kick components in the signal, ignoring the others.
Once it creates a setting, you get plenty of adjustable parameters to tweak further if needed. Some are standard, including Attack, Release, Threshold and Hold. Others are not, such as the Band Suppression feature, which splits the signal into three adjustable frequency bands and lets you set how much or little the signal gets gated in each.
After watching Sonible videos, I decided to see if Smart:Gate is as easy to use as the company claims. First, I tried isolating a kick drum track with a lot of snare bleed. Smart:Gate listened to the source track and created an almost perfect setting. Next, I used it to clean up the bleed on the snare track. I had to tweak Smart:Gate’s setting slightly this time, but I soon had the snare in the clear.
Next, I thought I’d replicate something I saw in one of the videos—separating individual drums from a drum loop. The loop had kick, snare and hi-hat.
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First, I set the plug-in to isolate the kick, and it did so, only requiring minor subsequent adjustments on my part. After bouncing the kick to a new track, I repeated the process with the snare with similar success.
I couldn’t get Smart:Gate to completely isolate the hi-hat, which was relatively quiet in comparison and played on the same beat as some of the kick and snare hits. However, there was about half a measure where Smart:Gate did isolate the hi-hat, and I copied and pasted it to fill out the rest of the loop.
Smart:Gate also removed hum and buzz from an electric guitar track. I had to do a bit of additional tweaking because the notes were a little chopped off, but it was easy.
Smart:Gate also has a sidechain feature that makes triggering the gate from an external source simple and fast. For example, the common practice of gating the bass with the kick drum in the sidechain was a snap to configure and execute.
You can switch the detection and processing from Mono/ Mid (the default setting for analyzing and processing mono or stereo signals) to Side for more specialized applications. The plug-in can also be changed from a gate to a ducker.
The “content aware” processing in Smart:Gate makes it a game-changer. While it doesn’t have Target Profiles for every instrument, it has the most common ones and offers the option of manual setting, if needed. This may be Sonible’s most impressive plug-in yet, and that’s saying a lot.
