Recently my Noise Gate has just straight up stopped working. I use all my regular settings that once worked, but now nothing will remove the background sound. It remains unchanged. It’s not really loud enough or consistent enough noise to use Noise Reduction. I’m using the latest version of Audacity. Any ideas of what I could check or try to get this tool working again? I hate publishing podcast episodes with a background buzz!
Try a higher Threshold setting (a smaller negative number). Maybe try something crazy like -6dB. You can also try more Level Reduction (a bigger negative number).
If the buzz is mains-hum, there’s an Audacity plugin to reduce it …
https://plugins.audacityteam.org/nyquist-plugins/effect-plugins/filters-and-eq#hum-remover
If it’s USB whine, there’s another Audacity plugin to reduce it: MosquitoKiller4.
It’s usually a good idea to put a number there. There have been forum posters who had problems on the wrong version, assuming they’re on the latest one.
Sudden, unexplained tool failure may not be an Audacity problem. Do you use Skype, Zoom, Meetings, Multi-Player-Games, etc? They take over your sound services completely and don’t tell you. They sometimes also leave the damage in place even after you close the application.
Make sure all your work is saved and do a clean machine shutdown. Hold Shift while you shutdown.
Here’s another variation.
Koz
It’s not the worst idea to find out where the noise is coming from. Past the constant pain in the neck problem of Noise Gate, we, the listeners, have to listen to the noise gate flipping in and out of the show. It’s never clean no matter how good you are at setting it.
Most Producers like to make the sound quality as desirable as possible. The ACX Audiobook people have a two-word instruction for this: “No Distractions!”
You can export a five to ten second sample of the noisy performance as WAV (Microsoft) and post it here on the forum. Do Not change the stereo/mono export setting.
The forum upload icon is the heavy bar with up arrow.
Koz
Thank you! Unfortunately none of this works. It’s as if the tool is completely unresponsive. No idea why.
Gate in 3.7.0 is working for me …
It’s possible to adjust the gate settings so it will do nothing.
[BTW, IMO, all the themes/skins in 3.7.0.0 are eyesores 
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