The Expander-Gate plug-in reduces noise by decreasing the gain of signals that fall below a user-selectable threshold. Expanders are particularly useful for reducing noise or signal leakage that creeps into recorded material as its level falls, which often occurs with headphone leakage.

Expanders can be thought of as soft-noise gates because they provide a gentler way of cutting off noisy low-level signals than the typically abrupt cutoff of a gate. If you want, however, you can use this plug-in as a gate by setting the Ratio to its maximum value and using short Attack, Decay, and Hold settings.

See Expander-Gate Parameters.