Vocal Gate

Vocal Gate for Cough and Sneeze Removal

Vocal Gate is a free and open-source VST3/AU audio plugin specifically designed for live-streaming/video-recording filtering or post-production editing/podcast mixing.

This is not a traditional noise-suppression tool meant for constant background hums. Instead, it leverages an ML classification model to identify sudden, sharp audio spikes commonly associated with coughs and sneezes, and tonal energies associated with vocals. When a match is detected on the live spectrogram, the plugin ducks the audio, saving editors hours of tedious manual waveform editing.

A 1-minute demo of use cases + spectrogram: {See video at top of page}

Latency

In order to make predictions ahead of time, the AI inference engine requires a lookahead latency of 750ms.

While this latency makes it incompatible with live two-way VOIP (like Discord or Zoom calls) or live "open mic" gaming, it is still a perfect solution for both post-production and live recording/streaming. If streaming/recording live, follow the GitHub Readme guide on async feed matching.

This plugin is experimental and I am looking for power users to test it, break it, and provide technical feedback. The full source code is available on the GitHub page. Found a bug or compatibility issue? Please do not use the review section – log it in the GitHub Issues tab so I can track it and push a fix!