Cheeky cheeky!

I've just been finishing off a studio build at The Law College - I chose a Yamaha 01v96 as the audio mixer - it has loads of ins and outs and very controllable. They didn't want to go for a full-blown talkback so I used a couple of ins for the director's open and switched mics and a couple of the spare Aux'es to feed the wallbox foldback feeds (the interviewer's earpiece and the floor foldback wedge). For the director's desk I had the metalwork dept at Bryant make me a panel with a mic on it and talkback key so that the director can key the mic and talk to the whole studio over the floor foldback but the interviewer's earpiece always gets the feed. You could also send a mix of the playback out of the wedge so that the studio crew get in the mood(!).
Anyhow - a combination of a mic that wasn't very sensitive and the general noise in the control room meant that the earpiece feed was a bit noisy and possible distracting to the interviewer.
The solution - the 01v96 has a noise gate and compressor per main input channel - I stuck a gate set to -50dB on each mic input (the open and switched feeds) and all was good. On one hand it seemed a bit naughty to use a noise gate but on the other hand it worked brilliantly!

Sorry to not be blogging so much at the moment - I'm working late most nights to stay on top of my day-job.