Sonible smart:gate tutorial: vocals and drum bleed

This tutorial demonstrates Sonible smart:gate on speech, vocals and drum recordings in a DAW. The speaker contrasts a standard level-based gate with smart mode: selecting speech as the target removes handclaps between spoken phrases in his example. The initial settings also cut some quiet word endings, so he lowers the threshold and increases release and hold to preserve them.

The vocal example tackles headphone bleed during pauses. He starts with a 50% threshold, selects vocals, then adjusts the threshold to retain quieter singing while suppressing leakage. Release and hold help preserve word endings; tolerance smooths gate opening and closing, and a small attack adjustment softens the onset.

On snare microphones, the speaker demonstrates rejection of other drum sounds but finds that the initial settings miss ghost notes. He lowers the threshold and adjusts bias while checking the display and playback. A separate tom example demonstrates cleanup of bleed from the rest of the kit.

The final example uses ducking mode to reduce snare in overhead microphones. The speaker adjusts the impact slider after finding the reduction too aggressive. These examples show why target selection still needs listening and manual adjustment for the recording at hand.