Why are there two thresholds?

Because a single line makes the gate flicker. A signal sitting right on one threshold crosses it constantly, so the gate would open and close many times a second. Opening above one level and closing below a lower one gives the signal somewhere to sit without triggering anything.

What is the hold time for?

It keeps the gate open for a set period after it opens, which bridges short gaps inside a word or between notes. Without it, the natural dip in the middle of a syllable would be treated as a gap and cut, which sounds like a stutter rather than like noise reduction.

Why do I still hear a click at the edges?

Because switching gain instantly steps the waveform away from whatever level it had reached. The edge fade ramps the gain over a few milliseconds on both sides instead, so the change is smooth. Raising it closer to ten or twenty milliseconds removes the click even on low-frequency material.

Does gating damage the audio that passes through?

No. Passages above the thresholds are multiplied by one and untouched, and the percentages reported refer only to the quiet portions. What can be damaged is intelligibility, if the threshold is set so high that quiet consonants fall below it as well.

Why does my stereo file shift when the gate works?

Because each channel is measured and gated on its own, so a moment where the left channel is above the threshold and the right is below will pass on one side only. Compressing to mono before gating, or using the expander, avoids the effect when it matters.

Audio Gate

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Audio Gate silences everything below a closing threshold, with a second threshold for opening and a hold time so the result does not stutter. It reports the share of the file it actually silenced.

What is Audio Gate?

Set the two thresholds and the timing, drop a file, and process. The footer gives the thresholds, the percentage of the file that was gated, and the input peak.

The controls:

An open threshold from sixty decibels below full scale to ten below, defaulting to minus forty.
A close threshold over the same range, defaulting to minus fifty.
A hold from zero to a thousand milliseconds, defaulting to a hundred and fifty.
An edge fade from one to a hundred milliseconds, defaulting to ten.
A footer line with both thresholds, the percentage gated, and the peak of the input.

Two thresholds rather than one is the detail that makes a gate usable. The level has to rise above the open threshold before anything passes, but it only has to fall below the lower close threshold before the gate shuts again, and the gap between them is the hysteresis that stops a signal hovering on a single line from chattering the gate open and closed many times a second. The envelope driving that decision is a short windowed measurement of level rather than the raw sample value, which is what stops a single high sample from opening the gate and a single low one from closing it. Hold time then keeps the gate open for a set period after it has opened, which is what prevents short pauses inside a word from being cut into separate fragments. The fade applies a ramp on both edges rather than switching instantly, because a hard switch steps the waveform away from whatever level it was at and that step is a click. Everything below the close threshold ends up at true silence, which is the point of the tool, and the reported percentage is the honest measure of how much of the file that turned out to be. The two thresholds are linked so the close can never be raised above the open, since that arrangement would make the gate attempt to close and open on the same level. As with any gate, the risk is the same one: a threshold set too high takes the quiet parts of the wanted signal with it, and on speech that shows up as missing consonants rather than as a cleaner recording.

Where the gate is the wrong tool:

Hard silencing is audible on music and on natural-sounding dialogue.
Frequencies are not considered, so hiss at the same level as breath is gated with it.
Everything below the threshold goes to zero, so there is no partial reduction.
No lookahead, so the very start of a sound may be trimmed before the gate opens.
Independent channels mean a stereo image can shift when only one side passes.
Output is sixteen bit WAV.

Use it where silence is the correct answer: cleaning the gaps in a spoken-word recording that has a noisy background, silencing a guitar amp between phrases, or preparing a stem whose pauses should be truly empty. When a gentler result is wanted, the expander reduces below the threshold rather than removing, and when the goal is to take out the quiet stretches of a long recording to shorten it, the silence remover does that by finding them and cutting them away.

How to use Audio Gate

Drop an audio file onto the panel and listen to a passage that should be silent.
Set the open threshold just above the level of the material to keep.
Set the close threshold below the open one so hysteresis has room.
Choose a hold long enough to bridge short pauses and a few milliseconds of edge fade, then process.

When to use Audio Gate vs related tools

Audio Gate is the tool when the wanted answer is true silence, which suits noisy spoken word, amp noise between phrases and stems that should have empty pauses. Audio Expander makes the same decision gradually rather than absolutely. When the aim is a shorter file rather than a quieter one, Silence Remover cuts the quiet spans out altogether, and Noise Reducer addresses noise by its spectrum instead of its level.

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