Klark Teknik DN530 specifications What Is a Gate?, Principles of gate operation

Chapter 2: What Is A Gate?

The natural sounds of everyday life, which can be caused by anything from, say, the falling of a leaf to the roar of a jet engine, vary extremely widely in sound level. This variance is known as the ‘dynamic range’ and is the difference — expressed in decibels (dB) — between the loudest and quietest sounds in a piece of audio, such as music or speech, or that can be reproduced by a piece of audio equipment without distortion.

All of the sounds that we want to listen to, whether natural or electronically processed, are accompanied by a certain amount of unwanted background noise, such as the rustle of musicians turning the pages of the score in the studio. Even if, in the final programme, the noise level is below the ambient noise of the listening area, it may still be heard and is therefore undesirable.

The gate is a valuable tool for controlling the dynamic range. The gate of the DN530 not only allows you to minimise or eliminate unwanted low level noises, but also gives you creative possibilities by providing the tools to artistically restructure the dynamics of a signal.

Principles of gate operation

The gate closes when the input signal falls below threshold (position 1 in Figure 1 below). This cuts off the output signal altogether until the gate opens again (position 2 Figure 1 below) when the input signal goes over threshold.

Input signal

	Music signal
Signal level	Noise
	Time

Figure 1: Gate function

Output signal

level
Signal	1	2
Threshold
Signals in	Signals in		Signals in
this range	this range		this range
muted	muted		muted
	Time

You would normally set the gate threshold below the lowest level of the performance so as not to lose any of the performance, but eliminating any of the unwanted hum, low level noise etc.

DN530
Operator Manual	5