Gated reverb is an effect that was used a lot in the eighties, and is still used sparely today. Phil Collins the artist usually recognized for his super-sounding snare drum with gated reverb. His snare sound still echoes in many tracks today, and audio schools teach Gated Reverb to their students.

What is gated reverb?

Gated reverb is when you feed a snare sound to a big hall reverb but gate it so it only sounds when the snare drum is hit. This is achieved by side-chaining the gate to the snare. And by fiddling with the parameters you can manipulate the attack and character of the reverb.

Phil Collins’s track I wish it would rain down is a good example of the snare reverb sounding only when the snare is hit and then hearing the gate kind of sucking the reverb back into it’s pocket.

But what about this Gate Reverb?

Reverb Gate is used in sound-reinforcement, or live sound. It is when you have a big reverb on the vocals for instance, and you don’t want the drums bleeding into the reverb and bringing muddiness to the FOH sound.

But you still don’t want to cut the microphone out of the mix because it adds to the overrall sound of the stage. Then you gate the aux send so nothing passes except when the signal gets strong enough to go over the threshold. The microphone is still picking up the sound of the stage but it is not being sent to the reverb.

Two almost exact names that name two completely different things?

Yeah, I know it’s a bit complicated. The thing to remember is that with gated reverb you are doing excatly that, you’re gating the reverb, or the output of the reverb. But with gate reverb you are putting a gate before the reverb, essentially the input of the reverb. So that’s basically the difference, whether you put the gate before or after.

One is an effect, the other is a kind of clean-up.