Lookahead noise gate
Silentium
Silence between the storms — a tight lookahead noise gate for palm-muted rhythm.
AU · VST3 · Standalone · macOS & Windows · AGPL-3.0
About
A tight, lookahead noise gate built to kill amp hiss and hum in the silence between palm-muted chugs: it detects transients on a sidechain-filtered copy of the input, opens fast with a lookahead head start so it never clips the leading edge of a pick attack, and uses separate open/close thresholds so a hovering signal can never chatter the gate.
Why the name?
Silentium is monastic silence: not the absence of sound, but its deliberate discipline. As a lookahead gate that is exactly what it enforces — silence between the notes, precisely when you demand it.
Features
- Threshold with fixed 3 dB hysteresis — the gate can never chatter on a signal hovering near one value
- Lookahead — 0–20 ms head start so the gate never clips a pick attack; reported to the host as latency
- Attack / Hold / Release — full envelope control (0.1–50 ms / 0–500 ms / 5–500 ms)
- Range — floor attenuation down to −80 dB while closed
- SC HPF / SC LPF — sidechain-only high-pass and low-pass (v0.2.0), band-limit detection onto the pick-attack transient range and keep hum from falsely holding the gate open
- Knee — 0–24 dB soft knee, from classic hard snap to smooth gain blend
- Duck — inverts the gain computer into a ducker
- Listen — audition the sidechain detection signal
- External sidechain input — key the gate from another track
- Factory presets & preset management — browse/save/import/export via the in-plugin preset bar
Download
The latest builds are published on GitHub Releases.
The macOS binaries are Developer-ID-signed, notarized by Apple and stapled — they install and open without Gatekeeper warnings. Windows builds are not yet Authenticode-signed; SmartScreen may warn about an unknown publisher.
Screenshots
Coming with the next release.
The custom interface is currently in design — screenshots will appear here as soon as it ships.
Audio examples
Coming with the next release.
Before/after clips are being recorded — audio examples will appear here with an upcoming release.
Support development
Basilica Audio is free software, built at night and tuned by ear. If it earns a place in your session, you can help keep the candles lit.
Donation links are not wired up yet — they will go live soon.