Neutron Multiband Gate: How to Clean Up Samples

Did you know Izotope Neutron's Multiband Gate can clean up a drum sample to fit in the mix? Watch this to improve the clarity of your music.

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Intro 00:00
How To Use A Multiband Gate 01:19
Using a Regular Gate to Clean Up a Kick Sample 03:52
What If I Used An Equalizer? 04:05
Sample Clean-Up With A Transient Shaper 04:23
Do This If You Don't Have A Multiband Gate 05:44

📝 Video Transcription:

In this short video, I'll show you how to use Izotope Neutron's Multiband Gate to clean up a drum sample so it fits perfectly in the mix.

So if you want to improve the clarity of your music, stick around.

I'm Thales, pop music producer. And yesterday I was mixing one of my songs, but there was a strange noise on the kick drum sample.

And the thing is, I really liked this kick sample, didn't want to replace it. It was tuned to the key of the song, it had a nice low end, and a nice thump.

But there was a sustained high frequency that simply didn't fit the mix. It sounded like the kick was layered with a high hat sound, and it had some reverb. It was clashing with my own hi hats and percussion.

So the whole mix just lost clarity. This is what the sample sounded like before I fixed it:

When you hear it isolated, it doesn't sound like it will be a problem. But in context — with the rest of the drums and instruments, it wasn't going to work. I had to deal with it.

Before I show you how to fix this kind of problem, in case you have drum samples that you need to clean up, this is the final result:

And the right tool to fix this problem is a multiband gate, like the one included in Izotope's Neutron 3.

This one is quickly becoming my favorite plugin — and this video isn't sponsored or anything but I highly recommend you check their website for some great mixing tools. I'll add the link to the description below.

In case you're wondering which version this is, I got the advanced version that comes with their music production bundle.

With this multiband gate, I could isolate the sustained part of the problematic frequencies and cut it entirely, while preserving the transient part, which is super important on a kick drum.

First I used the solo button to figure out the exact frequencies where the layered high hat sound starts and made the gate affect just that band — in this case I made the separation at around 2.1kHz.

I like how this oscilloscope allows me to quickly visualize the waveform and position the threshold line exactly below the peak.

Now these parameters work just like any gate. The ratio is how much gain reduction will be applied when the gate closes, and I left the attack at zero so the gate opens fast and we don't miss the transient.

If I increased the attack, the transient would be gone too, and that would ruin the kick.

And the release control helps us fine tune the speed at which the gate goes from open to fully closed. This is a fast release, with the purpose of keeping the transient only.

The lower band remains unaffected, the gate is not acting on this range.

Once again, here's the final result:

If I tried to use a regular gate to address this problem, I would end up gating the low end of my kick drum, making it a short sample, and it would lose it's purpose and power.

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