I'm having trouble achieving a sidechain effect. I have some ambient noise that I want to go in rhythm with the drums. I do not want the drums to be heard. I only want the noise to heard with the gated effect. At the moment I just want to get the effect to work at all.
 
So I open up sonar X2 and put a gate on my drums. Then I insert a send from the gate onto the noise track. I try to adjust the threshold on the gate. The gate only effects the drums. It doesn't seem to have an effect on the noise whatsoever. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Where does the sound from the insert actually come out? Any help would be great.
 
 

Reverse what you are doing. Apply the gate to the noise , using the send from the drums.  If that makes sense.

Ok, cool. That worked, thank you.
 
To get the drums not to play, I had to set their output to the sidechain.

It's a technique I use a lot for drum replacement on isolated kick or snare tracks.