Currently in a "gating battle" - Just can't decide whether gating renders itself truly useful to my mixes or not. One thing is for sure, it's a totally different sound. Much clearer, but also more "mechanical", I'd say... Sometimes, I find that a little bleed helps to tie the drumkit together and give a little more natural vibe?? I remember watching some interviews with famous engineers - Some were strongly for gating and some were strongly against it... What I like about gating is (of course) how it eliminates the bleed - It's nice to have a kick with no snare bleed and vice versa. Kick and snare are really the only things I'm compelled to set a gate on, but I know some people do it on toms, as well. I just edit out the space between my tom hits, and I find that to work a little better on them than gating...

What do ya'll use gates for? If you have multiple mics on a kick and/ or snare, do you gate all of them, or maybe just one or two for emphasis? Do you use outboard gates (have an old dbx dual gate that I've yet to mess around with) or do you have a certain gate plugin that you prefer (I've been using the "Dead Duck" gate with great success recently...)? I'm actually thinking of automating a gate on my kick during certain parts of the song - select areas where there is an extended drum roll for example that I don't want "cloudying" up the kick hits... Maybe that will be my next experiment!

Thanks