Gate on toms

[ApolloSpeed]

Is it preferred to use a gate on toms ?

If so, hardware or software ??

 

[dreamcatcher]

I use a software gate to cut out bleed from the snare/whatever.

Then balance the release time between keeping tom decay versus pick up more bleed.

 

[gumplunger]

Unless the song is really tom heavy, you can cut the hits right where you want them manually so you don't have to worry about automating the gate's decay and such. But if you have a lot of tom stuff going on, duplicate your tom track, shift it back a little bit (just 5-10 ms will probably do fine) and sidechain it to the other tom track so that you don't miss any of the attack and gate it.