ONE KNOB · VST3 + STANDALONE
MSD Denoiser — Noise Gate VST3 (Free)
LOOKAHEAD NOISE GATE
The silence between the chugs — without losing the chug. It hears the note coming before it has to decide, so your pick attack survives the gate instead of getting swallowed by it.
Name your price
It is free — $0 is a real option. If it earns a spot on your rhythm bus, pay what it was worth to you.
Instant download · VST3 + Standalone · no account needed to install · macOS not supported in this version.
THE PROBLEM
Every gate on the floor is guessing, because it is always late.
A gate has to decide before it lets a note through. A pedal only has the signal that already reached it — so by the time it knows your pick landed, the front of the note is already gone. Set it fast enough to close between the chugs and it chews the attack. Set it slow enough to keep the attack and the noise floor breathes back in behind the riff. You pick which half of your tone to sacrifice.
MSD Denoiser delays the audio and lets the detector run ahead of it. The gate is already fully open by the time the transient arrives. Your DAW is told about the delay and lines the track back up for you.
Ordinary gate 4.95 dB of attack lost
MSD Denoiser, 3 ms lookahead 0.31 dB
IT READS YOUR PLAYING
Chugs stop dead. Held notes still ring out. Same knob.
From one threshold setting the gate closes in 390 ms after a staccato stab, and takes 5360 ms under a sustained note. A fixed release time can only ever be right for one of those — which is why most gates make you retune the knob when you go from a chugging riff to a held chord. This one adapts to what you played.
WHERE IT LIVES
Voiced for the tight rhythm tone. Happy anywhere there is hum.
Where noise really bites is the home rig: laptop fans, a cheap interface, fluorescent lights and a pedalboard's worth of hiss, all stacked up in front of 40 dB of gain. Put this after the drive or amp sim — that is where the noise is made — and keep it before reverb and delay so it never chops a tail.
WHAT YOU TOUCH
A pedal, not a dashboard.
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THRESHOLD
The only decision. Turn it up until the noise goes away between notes, then back off slightly. Hover or drag for the dB readout.
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FOOTSWITCH
Click it to bypass — and the LED is the bypass lamp, lit when the gate is working. Bypass hands back the dry signal sample-exact, with the reported latency unchanged, so stomping it never shifts your track.
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LED LADDER
Gain reduction, so you can see what the gate is doing instead of guessing.
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SIZE
Right-click the panel for 50% / 75% / 100%. It remembers your choice with the session. No preset browser — one knob does not need one.
HOW IT WAS BUILT
Not a clone. Not ear-tuned.
There is no vintage circuit being copied here and no "inspired by" hand-waving. Every release has to pass a headless test harness before it ships: 11 behavioural checks measured on the compiled plugin, plus 19 self-tests whose only job is to prove the measurement code can actually report a failure. A test suite that cannot fail on purpose has never been shown to work.
Every number on this page comes out of that harness at 48 kHz on the build in the download — not from an impression of how it sounded on the day.
BEFORE YOU DOWNLOAD
The honest bits.
Windows only?
Yes. Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit, as a VST3 or the included standalone app. There is no macOS build in this version — if you are on a Mac, do not download it expecting one.
Does the lookahead put my track out of time?
No. The 3 ms delay is reported to the host as plugin latency and your DAW compensates for it, the same way it does for a linear-phase EQ. It stays reported when you bypass, too — a gate that changed its latency when you stomped it would shift the track under you.
Where does it go in the chain?
After the distortion or amp sim, because that is what makes the noise you are chasing. Keep it before reverb and delay so it never chops a tail. On a real amp with a send/return, it also works in front of the preamp with the loop — but in a plugin chain, after the gain stage is the answer.
What do I get in the download?
MSD Denoiser.vst3 and MSD Denoiser.exe, plus a
README and changelog, in one 6 MB zip. Copy the .vst3 into
C:\Program Files\Common Files\VST3\ and rescan your DAW, or
just run the standalone.
It is free — what is the catch?
None, and there is no license key to chase. It is the first release under MSDplugins and it exists so you can hear what the harness-first approach sounds like. Multiband, a Hard mode switch, external sidechain and a hysteresis knob are what a paid version would add later.
Licensing
Use it in your own music, commercial or non-commercial, on machines you own. No redistribution, resale, or reverse-engineering. Provided as-is, with no warranty.
GET IT
Set the threshold. Forget it.
Name your price
$0 is a real option. Windows 10/11 64-bit · VST3 + Standalone · 6 MB.