SPATIO Gate

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The defining characteristic of a gated reverb is the temporal shape of its impulse response. An impulse response describes how a system reacts to an ideally instantaneous excitation, showing how the resulting energy evolves over time.

In a natural acoustic space, reverberant energy is gradually dissipated through absorption by surfaces, objects and air. As a result, the overall envelope of a room impulse response generally decreases over time and can be approximated by an exponential decay (Fig. 1).

A gated reverb deliberately departs from this behaviour. Instead of allowing the response to decay naturally, its envelope remains relatively sustained and is then attenuated over a much shorter interval (Fig. 2). The later, lower-energy part of the response is therefore reduced or removed.

This redistribution of energy changes both the temporal envelope and the perceived structure of the reverberation. A greater proportion of the response is concentrated before the cutoff, producing a dense reverberant body followed by a clearly defined termination rather than a progressively fading tail.

SPATIO Gate allows the duration, density and final attenuation of this response to be shaped precisely, providing control over the transition from the sustained reverberant body to its ending.