Renegate

Renegate is a full-band gate plugin that approaches noise reduction and transient control through psychoacoustic modeling rather than traditional threshold-based triggering. The plugin employs a 43-band auditory model to detect envelope characteristics in ways that correlate with human hearing, resulting in gating decisions that feel musically coherent rather than mechanically rigid.

The core architecture centers on program-dependent hysteresis, which automatically adapts the gate's behavior to the incoming signal's characteristics. This eliminates much of the trial-and-error typical of conventional gates, where threshold and hysteresis settings often require constant adjustment across different sources. Built-in look-ahead timing ensures you capture transients cleanly without the pre-ring artifacts common in faster-reacting gates, while the program-dependent auto-release function similarly shapes envelope behavior according to the signal content.

Renegate's sonic character leans toward transparency and naturalness, though the included Raw knob provides access to digital artifacts when intentional character is desired. The plugin offers multiple gain reduction topologies - standard, 1-pole lowpass, and highpass variants - allowing tonal shaping during the gating process itself. An integrated sequencer and MIDI control option extend functionality beyond basic gating, enabling rhythmic or performance-based gate modulation.

This tool suits mixing engineers working across diverse sources, from drums requiring surgical clarity to vocals needing gentle noise suppression. The 4x oversampling addresses potential aliasing at higher slopes. While Renegate occupies a niche between simple gates and multiband processors, its psychoacoustic foundation and quick setup make it valuable for engineers seeking intelligent gating without extensive tweaking.