Kill the hiss between the chugs.
NuGate is a free noise gate built for high-gain guitars and drums. It shuts the noise in every stop and leaves every hit alone. No email, no account, no catch.
Why most gates fight you
Crank the gain and every stop in the riff fills with hiss and squeal. So you reach for a gate, and now it chatters on the decays, or it clips the front off the next chug.
NuGate is built to stay out of the way. It opens at your threshold and doesn't close again until the signal drops 4 dB further, so it can't flutter. Hold keeps it open through short gaps. And lookahead opens it a hair early, so the pick attack is never cut.
What you get
- Silence in the stops, punch in the hits. Set THRESH and the noise floor disappears between notes.
- No chatter on fading notes. Built-in hysteresis: opens at the threshold, closes 4 dB below it.
- Never lose the pick attack. LOOKAHEAD opens the gate 2 ms early (reported to your DAW, so everything stays in time).
- Stop cymbals opening your tom gate. KEY HPF and KEY LPF filter what the gate listens to, not what you hear.
- Turn the noise down instead of off. RANGE sets how far it closes, from a light duck to full silence.
- See every decision it makes. A scrolling display shows the input, what got through, the threshold and when it closed.
- Measured, not guessed. Every build is checked: it closes to exactly your RANGE, and lookahead lands to the sample.
A starting point
High-gain rhythm guitar
Start at Thresh -40 dB and raise it until the hiss in the stops is gone · Range -60 dB · Attack 0.5 ms · Hold 20 ms · Release 120 ms · Lookahead on. If tight stops sound cut off, raise Release.
What it runs on
- Mac: macOS 12 or newer, Apple Silicon or Intel. Audio Unit and VST3.
- Windows: 64-bit Windows 10 or 11. VST3.
- Not on Linux, iPad or phones (yet).