First heard on Peter Gabriel's 1980 track Intruder, gated reverb is an instantly recognisable sound that became one of the decade's most iconic production techniques, perhaps most notably utilized by Phil Collins on In The Air Tonight.
Typically deployed on drums, a gated reverb its a short blast of intense reverb that's abruptly cut off by a noise gate. While this effect is achievable using the stock plugins found in almost any DAW (here's a tutorial), Solid State Logic has developed a new plugin that'll help you instantly summon the classic gated reverb sound with a click of your mouse.
How Genesis’s Peter Gabriel and Phil Collins stumbled upon the '80s gated-reverb drum sound
At the heart of GateVerb is a non-linear reverb that offers most of the controls you'd expect from a typical reverb plugin: Time controls the reverb's decay time, Size adjusts the room size, Colour tweaks the colour and tone of the wet signal, while Density controls the concentration of echoes in the reverb's decay, giving a thicker or thinner sound. You'll also find input and output Gain for tweaking the levels, and a Mix knob for adjusting the balance between wet and dry signals.
GateVerb's Retro control lets you add a vintage-style lo-fi effect for extra character and texture, while the Pre-Delay knob introduces a tempo-synced delay between the dry sound and the start of the reverb signal - useful for creative rhythmic effects. The Time control can also be synced to your project's tempo.
Elsewhere, you'll find a ducking feature, accessible through an Advanced Settings panel, that allows you to sidechain internal or external signals to the reverb to reduce gain and make space for other sounds in your overall mix. A Freeze button in the centre of the plugin's interface can be used to infinitely sustain a reverb signal, before cutting it off with the Kill button alongside.
This brings us to the reason we're all here: the gate. GateVerb's gate can be shaped and controlled via Trigger and Hold dials, while the Advanced Settings panel will let you tweak attack and release times and apply a filter to the signal triggering the gate. The gate can be triggered by the internal signal or an external signal from another instrument or sound in your DAW.
Solid State Logic's GateVerb is priced at $99.99 and available now in VST/VST3/AU/AAX formats.
