THR have recently launched a specialist noise gate that has been designed specifically to remove cymbal bleed from the likes of kick, snare and tom mics without negatively impacting their tone. The company say that deBleed achieves its goal using a frequency-dependant process, and is capable of significantly reducing cymbal bleed while leaving wanted signals intact.

To make the process as simple as possible, the plug-in allows users to select between Kick, Snare and Toms settings, and is equipped with an analysis feature that’s capable of setting its Threshold and Debleed parameters automatically. Hold and Release settings then allow the gate timing to be adjusted to make sure the sustain element of hits are preserved while the plug-in continues to attenuate the cymbal spill. Helpfully, the company have implemented a Ghost function that allows deBleed react to quieter snare hits - users can simply automate the control’s state to allow ghost hits to pass through rather than having to continually adjust the processing threshold.

Why use deBleed?

• Cymbal bleed can be extremely problematic, especially once you start adding more processing such as compression, which raises the noise level, essentially pushing the cymbals forward even more.
• Other methods of removing cymbal bleed rely on the use of high cut filters, but this dramatically affects the tone of the snare and even the kick & toms because they remove a lot of those higher frequencies which are an integral part of those parts of the kit (especially the snare).
• deBleed employs a completely different approach and only relies on filters when pushed to the extreme to keep the drums 100% natural.
• Lastly, you don't even need to spend more than 10 seconds to get the ideal results, it really is that simple.