Drum Gate
Seems to work seamlessly and very accurate.
Oxford Drum Gate
Clean, Powerful Drums Made Easy.
Say goodbye to bleed-filled drum tracks with Oxford Drum Gate. It smartly detects hits, reduces spill, and preserves the natural ring—giving you clean, punchy drums. For tight control or effortless editing, Drum Gate delivers every time.
£199.99
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Authorised with a free iLok account
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14-Day Money Back Guarantee
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Instant Digital Download
The Noise Gate Built for Drums
Traditional noise gates often fall short when it comes to drums. Misfired gates, choked hits, lost ghost notes, and excess spill leave your drums flat and lifeless—or worse, force you to replace them with samples.
Oxford Drum Gate changes the game. It intelligently isolates drum hits, reduces spill, and preserves the natural resonance of your kit—no more misdetections or unnatural gating—just clean, tight, and powerful drum sounds.
Whether you’re controlling bleed on a live kit or refining drum loops, Drum Gate delivers authentic, natural, and precise results every time.
Oxford Drum Gate changes the game. It intelligently isolates drum hits, reduces spill, and preserves the natural resonance of your kit—no more misdetections or unnatural gating—just clean, tight, and powerful drum sounds.
Whether you’re controlling bleed on a live kit or refining drum loops, Drum Gate delivers authentic, natural, and precise results every time.
See What's Possible With Drum Gate
Key Features
Intelligent Drum Hit Detection
Say goodbye to ineffective threshold-based gating.
Oxford Drum Gate uses intelligent hit detection to isolate kicks, snares, and toms—even in complex performances. Click to select which drums you want to process, and let the plugin do the rest.
Want to keep delicate ghost notes or cross-stick hits on a snare track while eliminating spill? Drum Gate handles it with accuracy and ease.
Oxford Drum Gate uses intelligent hit detection to isolate kicks, snares, and toms—even in complex performances. Click to select which drums you want to process, and let the plugin do the rest.
Want to keep delicate ghost notes or cross-stick hits on a snare track while eliminating spill? Drum Gate handles it with accuracy and ease.
Adaptive Drum Decay for Natural Resonance
Traditional gates often choke off a drum’s natural ring, leaving hits sounding flat.
Drum Gate solves this with its Adaptive Decay feature, which adjusts the decay dynamically based on each drum hit’s velocity.
This allows your drums to maintain their natural resonance while the gate clamps down on unwanted spill — tight control without sacrificing tone.
Drum Gate solves this with its Adaptive Decay feature, which adjusts the decay dynamically based on each drum hit’s velocity.
This allows your drums to maintain their natural resonance while the gate clamps down on unwanted spill — tight control without sacrificing tone.
Drum Leveller for Consistent Hits
Inconsistent drum hits can make balancing your mix tricky.
The Drum Leveller gives you precise control over the dynamics, smoothing out performance variations without killing the contrast between loud hits and softer ghost notes.
Maintain natural dynamics while evening out your drummer’s performance for a tighter, cleaner sound.
The Drum Leveller gives you precise control over the dynamics, smoothing out performance variations without killing the contrast between loud hits and softer ghost notes.
Maintain natural dynamics while evening out your drummer’s performance for a tighter, cleaner sound.
Fast & Accurate MIDI Drum Replacement
Need to replace or augment drums in the mix?
Drum Gate makes it easy—export the isolated drum hits as MIDI directly to your DAW, perfectly aligned and with all the original dynamics intact.
Whether you’re augmenting or replacing, Drum Gate gives you complete flexibility without compromising the feel of the performance.
Drum Gate makes it easy—export the isolated drum hits as MIDI directly to your DAW, perfectly aligned and with all the original dynamics intact.
Whether you’re augmenting or replacing, Drum Gate gives you complete flexibility without compromising the feel of the performance.
Description
The Sonnox Oxford Drum Gate redefines precision gating for drum and percussive tracks, solving the common challenges of bleed and mis-triggering that often plague drum mixes. Using intelligent drum-hit detection, this advanced gate plugin accurately isolates and controls each drum, ensuring clarity and impact without losing the natural feel of your performance. With its adaptive decay feature, you can tailor the gate’s release to match the resonance of each drum, capturing the full sustain without unwanted noise.
Optimized for studio professionals and mixing engineers, Oxford Drum Gate’s detailed frequency control allows you to refine individual elements in a drum kit, from tight kicks to shimmering cymbals. It integrates seamlessly with leading DAWs, enhancing workflow with efficient, high-performance processing. Designed with Sonnox’s DSP technology, the plugin delivers pristine sound quality while minimizing CPU usage, making it a versatile addition to any producer’s toolkit. Perfect for music production, mixing, and post-production, this gate is essential for achieving a polished, professional drum sound.
Watch Drum Gate In Action
Explore how engineers are saving hours on their drum mixes.
What The Pros Think Of Drum Gate
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"Never isolated bass drum and snare drum so easily with such accuracy. Even subtle ghost notes in a very dynamic jazz performance!"
Nils Hahmann, Audio Engineer and Abbey Road Institute lecturer -
"Drum Gate is just smarter than anything else designed to detect drum hits. Dynamics handling is out of this world!"
Dax Liniere, producer/mixer at Puzzle Factory Sound Studios -
"This plugin is amazing black magic sh*t! I can't believe what I just did to fix a crappy drum track"
Will Russell, Grammy award-winning engineer/producer -
"It’s already blowing my mind. They are calling this a drum gate but it’s a magic box of tricks and a drum mixing dream come true!"
Greg Wells (The Greatest Showman, Adele, John Legend, Keith Urban, Deftones) -
"Separating a kick/snare out of a loop, if even possible, was always a total pain in the a*s. I have no idea how Sonnox did it but they figured it out!! What a time saver. You’ve made my assistants so happy!"
Michael Brauer (John Mayer, Coldplay, Bon Jovi, George Ezra) -
"This is a great one-stop-shop of a plugin. Drum gate achieves what I’ve been trying to do with 3 separate plug-ins and more"
Andy Sneap (Killswitch Engage, Megadeth, Bullet for my Valentine, Opeth)
What our customers say 6 Reviews
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Sonnox Drum Gate --creative time saver
This tool works so well that i immediately save 45 minutes to an hour gating my live drums. It's a simple elegant threshold gate but is laid out simply and it works incredibly well and fast. No guessing and "gated drum" sounds after using this tool. First modern plugin I've found that work this reliably and this fast
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Oxford Drum Gate
This is the most punchy gate I own. I love how well it preserves the transient info on kick and snare.
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Drum gate and all my Sonnox plugs are great
Drum gate is useful very quickly. Cheers
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My new favourite drum gate.
The sonnox drum gate is by far the best drum gate I used so far. It’s easy to use and yields great results for some clean gated drums!
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Oxford Drum Gate
Amazing! Nothing else to say!
Compatibility
Licencing
- Local MachineInstall directly on your computer.
- iLok DeviceRequires an iLok2 or iLok3 USB dongle (latest drivers required).
- iLok CloudActivation via iLok Cloud requires an active internet connection (only one activation can be assigned to iLok Cloud; the other must be on a Local Machine or iLok Device).
Each Oxford plugin license includes two simultaneous activations.
With an iLok account, you can authorise each activation on one of the following devices:
Supported Formats
- Audio Unit (AU)
- VST3
- AAX-NativePro Tools 11 or later.
Compatible plugin formats for various digital audio workstations (DAWs):
Supported Operating Systems
- macOSmacOS 10.13 High Sierra or later.
- WindowsWindows 10 (64-bit) or later.
Our plugins are compatible with the following operating systems:
For compatibility with older systems, please contact our support team.
Documentation
For detailed setup instructions and additional usage tips, please refer to the user guide.
Oxford Drum Gate User Guide.
