Sonnox drum gate
It just works as it should, giving you the best sound quality and the needed control to shape drums spills. Been searching for this for a lifetime
Oxford Drum Gate
Effortlessly isolate your kicks, snares, and toms with intelligent hit recognition.
Isolate your kicks, snares and toms in seconds with real-time, intelligent hit detection. 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.
What The Pros Think Of Drum Gate
The Greatest Showman, Adele, John Legend, Keith Urban, Deftones
Greg Wells
"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!"
Grammy award-winning engineer/producer
Will Russell
"This plugin is amazing black magic sh*t! I can't believe what I just did to fix a crappy drum track"
Audio Engineer and Abbey Road Institute lecturer
Nils Hahmann
"Never isolated bass drum and snare drum so easily with such accuracy. Even subtle ghost notes in a very dynamic jazz performance!"
Producer/Mixer at Puzzle Factory Sound Studios
Dax Liniere
"Drum Gate is just smarter than anything else designed to detect drum hits. Dynamics handling is out of this world!"
John Mayer, Coldplay, Bon Jovi, George Ezra
Michael Brauer
"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!"
Killswitch Engage, Megadeth, Bullet for my Valentine, Opeth
Andy Sneap
"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"
FAQs
Oxford Drum Gate uses advanced drum hit detection to identify kicks, snares, and toms with incredible accuracy. Instead of relying only on threshold levels, it intelligently separates wanted hits from spill, making editing and mixing drums faster and cleaner.
While optimized for drums, you can experiment with other percussive sources like hand percussion or plucked instruments. The best results come from cleaning up and shaping multi mic drum recordings.
Traditional gates can choke off the natural ring of a drum, leaving hits flat and lifeless. Oxford Drum Gate solves this with Adaptive Decay, a smart feature that adjusts the decay in real time based on each hit’s velocity. The result is tight control of spill while preserving the natural resonance and tone of your drums.
What our customers say 27 Reviews
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Oxford Drum Gate
Phenomenal plugin, a must have for drums
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Draum Gate
The best in your weight category
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DrumGate
Like every Sonnox plugin I've tried, this is an excellent tool that just does what it says on the tin with no fuss.Truly professional tools
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Oxford Drum Gate
Mixing live drum tracks and tried some of the other "5 star" gates. This one is the champion!
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Drum gate
It’s one of those “do I really need this” plug-ins…” and then you use it on a track. Holy cow! I haven’t even looked at the manual. It’s so easy to use and yields results I couldn’t achieve fiddling with a traditional gate for 10x the effort. I especially love the ability to tune the decay, really a huge benefit.
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Oxford gate
Fantastic
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I'ts more than a Drum Gate
I use it to Shape the leak drums character.
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Oxford Drum Gate
The drum gate works very well. I bought it to go with my black salt drum gate as it has more options. I’m finding that I’m using the Oxford drum gate just about all the time as it allows me to fine tailor how it works with great results.
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.
