Review by George Shilling
Gates have been around for many years, most offering the same features. The popular and fully featured Drawmer DS201 has remained cheap and unchanged in design for many years. There would be no point in a valve gate, and all that more expensive designs bring to the party are digital control and user memories. So what can this new Symetrix gate do for us that cannot be done already? Read on...
The 562E is a dual channel expander gate. In keeping with other units in the Symetrix range, it comes as a dark blue 1U box, with white legending (which is rather poor on this model), and black rubberized knobs with white pointers. There are also six small metal toggles switches.
On the back, both XLR and balanced jack connectors are featured for inputs and outputs. There are TRS jacks for external key inputs and internal key outputs (post filter) for each channel, a helpful plug wiring diagram and an IEC mains socket.
The two separate channels each have identical controls which are laid out with channel 1 taking the left-hand side and channel 2 the right. There are no shared controls whatsoever between the two channels: there is no power switch and no facility for any kind of linking of the channels. The latter, I feel, is a major omission. There are plenty of cheaper units on the market which have this vital feature: why else put two mono gates in the same box? Another omission is ducking, which comes as standard on the very popular and cheaper Drawmer DS201. I would accept that this feature is not used every day, but it can nevertheless be very useful. The Symetrix boffins have got so excited about their revolutionary new feature (which I am coming to!) that they have forgotten to add standard features that you get on units half the price of this one.
From left to right there are:
Toggle switch for In, Bypass or External Key, Toggle switch for Output Assign with Key Listen, Key Listen post-filter, or Gate/Exp (normal operation).
Next are knobs for low and high filters which do not have quite as much overlap as the Drawmer's but work well enough. Another toggle switch follows which is the 562E's trump card: Window Advance Max, Min or off. There is a four stage LED meter for gain reduction in increments of 3 12 30 and 60 dBs. There follow the main gate/expander controls in the same order they are found on a Drawmer: Threshold, Attack, Hold and Release times. Finally, Gate Range operates from 0 at 12 o'clock to 80dBs at full anticlockwise. When turned right it becomes expander ratio: 1:1 at 12 o'clock to 1:3 at full clockwise. However, below 75dBs of gain reduction the expansion reverts to 1:1 from then on downwards to avoid choppy sounding signal at low levels. On the review model this knob had a centre d?tente on the left channel, but not on the right. I thought this might be some hidden feature, but I soon found out that the expander on channel 2 did not work properly. Two LEDs were always lit on the gain reduction meter with no signal going in, so it seems that there was an incorrect or faulty pot fitted. There was also a front panel screw loose. What with the deficiencies already mentioned and appalling front panel legending (tiny spidery lettering compared to the Drawmer), I began to have my doubts about this unit! However, a quick trip back to the distributor fixed the pot and the loose screw.
After which I was able to try out the revolutionary new Window Advance feature. This sounded like quadraphonic headphones, negative delay, crop circles and other unlikely stories. You cannot travel in time, or can you? This feature supposedly opens the gate before the signal gets there. The technical approach is not really explained properly in the manual. Waffle, there is plenty of, but hard facts, few. I surmised that this gate either delays the signal to give itself time to open, or else it cleverly opens in such a way as to emulate the front of the transient's characteristics. No delay is immediately apparent, but comparing a Window-gated signal with its ungated twin (or with the Window Advance switched off) there is an audible phase shift. This suggests the former theory. However, the amount of actual delay caused to the signal is very tiny - seemingly less than a millisecond, so the only concern is when you need phase accuracy between gated and ungated signals. This, unfortunately, is often the case with drums, where the tiniest phase shift of, say, the snare drum signal compared to the overhead microphones can hugely affect the overall tone. Having said that, this feature certainly works very well, and the improvement in the front-end characteristics of percussive sounds is immediately noticeable compared to a conventional gate, especially when heard in solo.
Used with care this is valuable technology, and the option of expander instead of gate is welcome. However, the shortcomings of the 562E and its high price may deter you.
Reproduced with kind permission from www.georgeshilling.com. Copyright ?1997-2001
