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MULTIGATE PRO XR4400 User Manual

Adjust all controls and switches to the following basic settings:

MONITOR switch

OUT

SC FILTER switch

OUT

THRESHOLD switch

fully clockwise

HOLD control

center position

RELEASE control

center position

MODE switch

GATE

RANGE/RATIO control

fully counter-clockwise

Tab. 6.1: Initial settings of the MULTIGATE PRO

THRESHOLD control
Now turn the THRESHOLD control counter-clockwise until the lowest signal 

delivered by the instrument you wish to record triggers the expander and is 

reproduced without any sound deterioration. The “+” LED lights up as soon as 

the expander is triggered. When everything’s set up properly, you will hear the 

instrument clearly “stand out” against the overall sound image.

HOLD control (available in GATE mode only)
The program material (e.g. speech/vocal recordings) often contains many and 

sometimes very short signal pauses, which could switch the gate off and back on 

over and again. The hold function prevents this annoying “flutter” effect known 

from conventional designs, simply by delaying the starting point of the release 

process. Thus, the gate remains on during short signal pauses. When the adjusted 

hold time has expired, the gate closes the audio channel depending on how the 

release function has been set.

RELEASE control (available in GATE mode only)
Many percussion instruments have long decay times (e.g. cymbals). As the release 

time can be adjusted on the MULTIGATE PRO, the device allows you to follow the 

decay curve of the instrument so that its overall sound character will be retained. 

In this way, you can avoid that short release times affect the natural decay phase 

of the instrument or its corresponding reverb ambiance.
Slowly decaying or heavily reverberated signals are best processed with long 

release times. You will note that with most drum sounds a short release time 

should be used for the sake of acoustic separation, while longer release times are 

usually better for cymbals and tom-toms.
Once all control elements have been set properly, your percussion sounds will be 

“dry”, “powerful” and acoustically well-defined.

RANGE control
The RANGE control determines the amount of maximum attenuation of the 

audio signal. When you process instruments with long decay times, it will 

be helpful to set the RANGE control to mid-travel position, so that the signal 

will not be suppressed completely. Although the MULTIGATE PRO allows for a 

maximum gain reduction of 80 dB, it is usually not useful to reduce the signal 

level by this maximum amount. In particular, with highly noise-affected signals 

we recommend that you use a signal attenuation of not more than 10 to 20 dB, 

so that the onset of the gate function will not become too obvious.

6.1.2  The expander function
In contrast to the gate function, the expander triggers a continuous attenuation 

of the signal, as soon as it has dropped below the threshold.

RATIO control
With the MODE switch in, the MULTIGATE PRO works as an interactive expander. 

The RATIO control determines the expansion curve. For example, when a piece 

of music was highly compressed during the recording session, the lost dynamics 

can be restored through complementary expansion. With a bit of feeling you 

can set the following controls by ear so that the original dynamics (prior to the 

compression process) will be restored.
We recommend that you set the RATIO control to about 1:1.2 through 1:2 to allow 

for a “smooth” expansion curve, and that you adjust the THRESHOLD control so 

that the entire dynamic range of the music piece will be below the threshold 

point. Now set the THRESHOLD control so that only the loudest passages of the 

program material surpass the threshold point (“-” LED flashes). In the same way, 

you can artificially expand the dynamic range of any instrument. In particular, 

when processing sampled sounds, expansion can produce nice results, 

because samplers usually have a highly limited dynamic range. When processing 

percussion sounds (e.g. snare drum) you can use downward expansion to create 

interesting effects, for example, by setting the threshold to about mid-position, 

so that only the “lower” part of the dynamics will be processed: the signal decays 

unchanged until the adjusted threshold is reached, and any subsequent signal 

portions are faded out with increasing attenuation.

The main task of an expander is to separate unwanted background noise from the 

actual signal and to eliminate this noise “inaudibly”. Understandably, there must 

be a minimum difference in the levels of wanted signal and interference signal, 

so as to be able to define a threshold point for the expander.
However, the optimum operation of an expander depends on the proper choice 

and positioning of the microphones:
Be extremely careful when instruments with high-frequency portions are played 

to the sides or back of a microphone with a cardioid polar pattern. Most room 

microphones suffer from a deterioration of their directivity when picking up 

high frequencies. For example, with a sensitivity difference of not more than 

2-3 dB around 5-10 kHz between the main and lateral axes, cymbals can produce 

enormous crosstalk in tom-tom microphones, or the hi-hats can mask the sound 

of the snare drum.
You should make optimum use of the specific directivity of a microphone to 

acoustically separate other instruments as perfectly as possible. Do as best as 

you can to separate the sound sources acoustically simply by positioning the 

microphones correctly.
Yet, in some applications even perfectly positioned microphones might 

not produce satisfying results. With its side-chain function the BEHRINGER 

MULTIGATE PRO gives you the option of frequency-selective expansion and thus 

another aid to ensure perfect acoustic separation of the sound sources.