Trying to get that Phil Collins/80s era gated reverb sound.  I read somewhere recently that it was coming back in vogue, so I figured I would try to recreate it.
 
I am using Addictive Drums 2.  I have the Fairfax kit and it is on Neutral.  
 
I have a send on my snare channel to a bus that has a Sonitus Gate and that is routed to a UAudio AMS RMX 16 on a long hall on another bus. I know I could have possibly bypassed the two bus method, but I am trying to hone the sound..  
 
On the gate, I have a fast attack, a 340ms hold (trying by ear), a 200 ms release...I have varied these trying to get that gated sound.
 
On the reverb - no pre-delay.  Moderate to long decay time.  Again - a hall program. 
 
I am not getting that sound.  I have even tried a gate AFTER the reverb to cut the tail.  
 
Any thoughts?  Help appreciated.  

Whole lotta pre delay then when it builds up slam it shut with the gate

hmm.  would have never guessed the pre-delay!  I will try that.  Been messing with the tail decay instead.  

Side-chain the reverb with a gate. Make sure your reverb is 100% wet.
This is how its done in logic pro but its done almost exactly the same way in sonar.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6L_BG0Qhg0

Try Valhalla Room Gated Verb preset and tweak it :)

Create a send in the snare track. Send to a bus where in FX you put a hall reverb (Brereverb 2 Ballroom) and after that a Sonitus gate that partially cuts the reverb.

space_cowboy
 I have even tried a gate AFTER the reverb to cut the tail.  
 

Putting the gate before the reverb does nothing (at least as far as a gated reverb sound is concerned). Its called a gated reverb sound because you're gating the reverb tail. Therefore putting the gate on the effected signal AFTER the reverb is the only way to get it. 
 
As mentioned, pre-delay can be useful but you also need to mess with the release time of the gate and the settings of the reverb itself. Keep trying with the gate placed post (after) the reverb. Or seek out plugins that already have gated presets.

Sidenote: As noisy and antiquated as it is, my brother recently added an old Alesis MIDIverb II to his guitar rig more or less solely for the gated reverb presets in it. If you really want that 80's gated reverb sound, those boxes really deliver and can be picked up for next to nothing on craigslist or ebay. 

If you still have PerfectSpace, there were some nice gated impulses in that. If you have Waves RVerb, there is a good selection of gated reverbs there as well. There are a ton of gated reverb impulses available on the web, so any convolution reverb that can use them would also work.
 
Doing it from scratch isn't so simple because there are several variables, like what type of reverb to start with, predelay, gate settings, and so on.
 
Regards,
Dan

Check out the tip "A Better Gated Reverb" on page 94 of The Big Book of SONAR Tips.

Here's a dup of something I posted in another thread:
 
from a March 2005 Sound On Sound article:
 
To create that effect authentically, send the drums to a reverb with a medium room preset selected. Now route the output of that reverb through a stereo noise gate (or patch a stereo noise gate into the reverb's return channels) and set an instant attack and pretty much instant release. The gate's hold time can be adjusted to taste, but the threshold should be adjusted carefully to avoid any 'fluttering' during the final part of the reverb tail. For more accurate triggering of the noise gate, take a feed from the drums into the gate's side-chain so that the percussive attack from the drums is used to trigger it, rather than the onset of the reverb alone.