The only time I've experienced an overly aggressive noise gate, which resulted in artifacts as it was audibly cutting into quiet parts of the track, was when I was using Android at almost zero volume.
It happened with all Apps, and went away as soon as I figured out how to use UAPP to control UAC2 hardware volume, so that I could keep Android at close to 100% volume with still comfortable loudness.
I have never experienced this on Windows, and have never heard an audio track from YouTube with such a noise gate baked-in.
Something might be amiss.
To troubleshoot, I would try to find a YouTube video with an especially obnoxious noise gate behavior, then download the raw Opus track (format 251) from YouTube's servers using the YT-DLP CLI (GitHub).
Then open the track in your DAW, and play it back directly using Wasapi Exclusive or FlexASIO if required.
I suspect that the noise gate will be gone, leaving you with clean audio, which would suggest that it's not the Opus compression that's causing this, but some other part of your digital signal chain.
All points noted. I'll double check using the procedure you have outlined, whenever I hear any prominent noise on spoken word on Youtube.
What I did quickly to zero in on the source of this issue was listen to Spotify - and I could not hear anything definitive, definitely on music tracks, nothing untoward, no hiss of any kind, whatsoever. Even when I turned it up above what would be my comfortable listening level. No spurious noise whatsoever. I'm using WASAPI exclusive to send the audio from my DAW into the Apple dongle., and the rest of the chain from Windows audio, all the way to the dongle is using components I've used for years and in some cases like the convolution plugin, or gain plugins, measured the vanishingly low distortion levels - typically below -160 dBFS.
So I then played via Spotify - Tracy Chapman - Behind the Wall, which is only her sung vocal - no instruments. All I could hear that was spurious, when I listened really intently and turned it up, was the decay portion of whatever digital reverb had been applied to the voice, i.e at the end of each segment of singing, a faint really faint noise in the decay of the reverb. With really intent listening, there is a faint noise when she is singing. Who knows, could be resonance, in the headphones, I have no idea. I'll check on vocal recordings on the songs I mix, which have original vocals But it's definitely NOT a constant noise, that could be attributed to high sensitivity headphones. It's the kind of noise which I would never hear on a set of speakers - most likely not.
On other music on Spotify, nothing untoward. It kind of narrows this down to something on Youtube, as I said, I'll investigate further, whenever I hear this noise on Youtube spoken voice.
On that note - the rest of Tracy Chapman's eponymous album, sounds AMAZING, I owned the original CD, from a time in the 90's when all I could afford was a good Pioneer CD player, which is still in storage in another country(one of these 64 times oversampling beauties), and my listening was on some really terrible ear buds. Right now I'm in absolute audio heaven, everything sounds perfect., super clear, distinct, life like. It's hard to describe. Amazing. So been listening to this for 30+ years. Never heard it like this.
My thoughts are - if there's anything that does not sound this amazing,, it's the recording/mixing/mastering that is substandard. If this same audio chain can resolve Tracy Chapman, in such a faultless manner, the audio chain is NOT to blame, for anything less awesome. The audio chain is definitely good enough. Now I can appreciate why that album was so well received, it sounds amazing, crystal clear like nothing I have ever heard before. Must go and study in detail, how it was produced. It sounds incredibly detailed. Wow. So now I know - if it's not clear, its the music/audio - the source, that's where the issue is..
In future I'll do more tests, such as extract the audio of music tracks direct from CD, and play back via my DAW, instead of Spotify. I'm using the free Spotify, and I am 100% confident that the extract of the original CD will sound much better, cos I've done similar comparisons on other music - e.g Black Eyed Peas, where I own the CD. I'm satisfied with Spotify for casual listening - even critical listening at that, but definitely the CD of Tracy Chapman will be even more awesome.
On some quiet Tracy song segments, e.g when its only acoustic guitars playing, I can hear a very faint noise, in what some may call the air zone. - on "For You", really faint, but I can hear it. It is not a constant noise, but varies during the quiet guitar part.
This is fantastic, the vocals, diction, everything is so clear on Tracy's album. A very well produced album. That I am finally hearing for the 1st time properly. Wow.
I'll conclude by saying, it looks like a highly resolving audio chain, just separates the good from the not so good, and does this effortlessly. There was once a 7Up advert (7Up is similar to Sprite), with the tagline - "the difference is clear" (guess in comparison to Coca Cola, their main competitor). Listening to Tracy, everything is just that - clear. I am so impressed - so impressed. Apple Dongle, A good quality production, some AutoEQ correction and an unmodified CCA CRA using the default ear tips. I am thoroughly impressed. Struggling to imagine how this could be bettered. All my concerns about soundstage, panning, depth, height, whatever - all gone listening to the Tracy album - nothing to complain about. All the high frequencies I thought were subtle or somewhat subdued in other music, nothing like that here, all present here in Tracy's music. Next I'll check Norah Jones album - "Come away with me" - that should be telling. Not bad, intimate, very clear, only slight hiss in the acoustic quiet segments, but that Tracy album is simply out of this world, in comparison., spacious, more life like. The standard to beat in mixing.
I can imagine that with acoustic instruments, especially when you have a couple of them, playing back together, especially if for any reason, they were recorded to tape or mixed or mastered to tape at any time in their production, a bit of hiss is in order, and not objectionable. C'mon - pretty much every vinyl album will have some snap crackle and pop. ! Listening to modern music - eg Black eyed Peas - Where is the love? - OMG is this what this was supposed to sound like? So balanced, so clear yet so balanced. And the reduced dynamics is also easy to assimilate. Yeah one further confirmation - if it is well produced, you'll hear it. If it does not sound nice on this audio chain, fault is definitely from the source audio. The vocals are so so clear- so so clear compared to anything I ever heard on the JVC's. Must dig out the original CD, from somewhere in my packing boxes, to enjoy the original. Really pleased with what I'm hearing.
Now when the Spotify adverts come through, I can hear how really bad they are, compared to well produced audio.
I think in all of this, one also needs to curate a playlist of similarly well produced music or audio, that will not change (most likely via extract of the highest quality formats - e.g direct from the original CD), to assess subjectively - how good a listening chain is. I mention not changing, cos over time on Spotify we have these "remastered" versions, which sound nothing like the originals. So next step is for me, amongst many other things, to identify really good reference material that sounds amazing on Spotify, then get the original CD's thereof, and use these as my primary references when auditioning gear. Tidal would have been nice - but I hate subscriptions