The noise gate is normally employed on a single unmixed signal (which may be stereo) rather than on a complete mix, although this can be done if you feel it's what you need to clean up starts and ends.

Figure 1 shows how the gate is connected to the insert points of the mixer channel you want to gate; as with equalisers and compressors, gates are not used via the aux send and return loop. If you're working without a full patchbay, you might have to make up a special adaptor (Y) lead if your console has the usual single stereo jack send/return insert point.

For the gate to be able to do anything useful there must, of course, be silent passages in the signal, or passages that should at least be silent. The aim is to silence that noisy guitar amp or chorus unit when the instrument isn't playing. Since you can't just twiddle the controls at random on a noise gate and expect to get a sensible result, you'll need a starting point of some kind.

Figure 2 shows the starting point I use on my own Drawmer DS201 (bought several years ago, battered and distinctly secondhand, from a hire company and still working absolutely perfectly). In order to know how to proceed from here, since this initial setting is unlikely to sound totally correct, you'll need to understand what each control does. - more