The Next Generation of Oxford Drum Gate
Sonnox didn’t reinvent the wheel with Oxford Drum Gate 2. Instead, the company built on the foundation, expanding the already comprehensive plugin with even more capabilities. Well-executed gating is often the difference between a good recording and a great one — especially on multi-mic drum setups — and Oxford Drum Gate 2 is tailor-made for the task. It detects every intended drum hit with virtually zero false triggers, helping weed out inconsistencies, phase issues, and uncontrolled spills. This intelligent detection paves the way for you to fully utilize the gate’s adaptive decay, hit clipper, and leveler, along with time, polarity, and phase alignment, for drums that sound natural and full, with true-to-life complexity. Plus, Drum Gate 2 offers sample-accurate timing when using triggered drum samples and external sidechain triggering, ensuring every instance opens at the exact same moment to lock in time and phase. All this makes Oxford Drum Gate 2 one of the most natural-sounding gates Sweetwater producers have encountered, with an updated, user-friendly UI suitable for everything from home production setups to full-time studios.
Note: This product is a chance for owners of the previous version to upgrade at a reduced price. It also requires that you have an iLok account for authorization, although it does not require a physical iLok key. Please contact your Sweetwater Sales Engineer if you have questions.
Related Videos: Oxford Drum Gate 2 Plugin - Upgrade from Previous Version
Next-gen intelligent transient detection
Designed specifically with drums in mind, Oxford Drum Gate 2 uses transient detection in place of peak detection to construct a more detailed map of a track’s foreground and background elements. The plugin can intelligently identify kicks, snares, hi-hats, and toms, even in close-mic setups or complex runs. Tell the program which drums to process and let it do the rest. For this second generation, Sonnox has improved transient detection to remove false triggers, enhanced drum-type classification, and added High-hat, All Transients, and No Gating detection modes.
Additionally, the program now features an Align tab that aligns your entire setup and locks both time and phase for improved accuracy. Other improvements include a Level tab that smooths out performance variations and preserves contrast, and a Hit Clip feature that is fed peak information to preserve natural tonal character.
Adjustable resonant decay
One of the most frustrating issues with gates is setting the release time just right. If it closes too late, bleed sneaks in; if it closes too early, it sounds like a bad sample. Thankfully, Oxford Drum Gate 2’s adaptive decay section ends all of that. Now, you can set the release time according to an adjustable frequency curve — the Oxford cuts out the clutter but retains the natural resonance of the drum hit, so it mixes seamlessly back in with the rest of the kit.
Dual leveler for main and background elements
Finally, Oxford Drum Gate 2 offers not one, but two levelers, so you can independently control big hits and softer articulations simultaneously using a single processor — perfect for bringing up subtle ghost notes that might otherwise get lost in a mix, while maintaining overall clarity. And this all happens without compression for even more realism.
Sonnox Oxford Drum Gate 2 Features:
- Intelligent drum gate plugin that detects transients rather than peaks for more accurate capture
- Intelligent detection can accurately identify kicks, snares, hi-hats, and toms, detecting hits with fewer false triggers
- Align tab aligns your entire setup and locks both time and phase for improved accuracy
- Hit Clip is fed peak information to preserve natural tonal character
- Output MIDI in real time or capture MIDI files for later manipulation
- Adaptive resonant decay blends the gated signal seamlessly back into the mix
- Dual levelers for controlling foreground and background elements
