GoldenGate

Before a computer took over an abundance of domains of activity, there were dedicated devices for each minor process. On the other hand, some activities, like music making greatly benefit from virtual synthesizers, compressors, and gates. With the help of tools like GoldenGate, you can balance sound according to custom frequencies.

This isn’t a stand-alone product, but merely a library of functions you need to bundle inside a host application, just like VSTHost. There’s no installation involved, and loading it in the host of your choice shouldn’t be much of a hassle.

As the name might suggest, the plugin specializes itself in sound gating. The process of gating is used to allow only specific sound frequencies to pass on to output signal. Unlike compressors, gates are used to attenuate sound below a threshold level. Here you also get to benefit from a few other effects.

A neat thing is it can work with multiple input devices, including speaker sound, meaning whatever is running on your PC, thus helping you test it out. Waveform is generated in real time, with the display panel capable of also showing you a rapid history when clicked.

There are only a few sets of controls you get to work with. Needless to say that one slider represents threshold, since it’s a mandatory gating component. Threshold is displayed with clearly visible lines on the preview area so you can adjust it according to input. There’s also a volume limiter in case you don’t want to allow input to pass at maximum volume.

Note that you need to select a specific frequency to monitor, which can be either low, medium, or high. Leaving the value set to “All” means it’s turned off. Additional sliders can be used to adjust attack, hold, and release for a bit more variety in sound. Gating is done with one of three algorithms like logarithmic, linear, or smooth.

To better analyze input sound, there’s a small slider you can use to zoom the preview area. Gate shape is displayed in a dedicated panel, so you get an idea of how sound is processed in a second. Last but not least, the plugin can be used to sneak with up to 80 milliseconds to have processors ready, which is nothing more than a short delay in actual sound delivery.

In conclusion, GoldenGate is a straightforward noise gating VST plugin, which makes it easy to configure tones to attenuate, and even enhance through attack, hold, and release sliders. Various functions can be used to look ahead of sound, and even practice on speaker sound for a quick start.