"It is amazing when you have your vocal mics muted. The difference it makes is obvious sonically in terms of sound clarity and stage volume.
The monitors clean up, so you can hear yourself and band mates more clearly.

The mains become clearer and amps have more usable headroom for things like the vocals and drums to come through.

The first time I used them with my band, i had people come up to me and say " i don't know what you guys did, but your sound was so much better than ever before"

The Grateful Dead, who were pioneers of developing great sound, used to insure all vocal mics were muted by using trigger pads under the carpets that triggered the "key input" to the gates, but this is costly, custom made, bulky and required long setup time and extra snake channels... which is impractical for most people..

Unfortunately, even the best engineers won't mute the mics, for fear of a missed cue....

The sonic difference for band and audience is amazing.

Also imagine as a guitar player not having to compete against the monitor "bleed" from the vocal mics. Which makes you turn up louder, only to cause the bleed get louder....and so on.

Once you use this, you will never want to go back.... many big and small acts are using these Optogates."

Review From thegearpage.com