Best Method of Eliminating Banding on Gradient Blends?

I'm doing my first job : )

i'm working with a friend and currently I have a bunch of little charts and bars that are red-to-purple gradient blends, most are 3-6" max in either direction.
File is CMYK.

I'm making the gradient, then using the Add Noise filter...about 1%/Uniform/Monochromatic. Is this the best way to go about eliminating banding?
Any better method?
Other than going into, say the yellow channel, what's the best way to check for banding? (I haven't got a hard proof yet).

Thanks!

If the dither option is chosen when using the gradient tool then there should be no banding

Dithering IS already selected.

Then the banding is probably just on your monitor... not in print

do a forum search on banding, it has been done many times recently with better answers

dither doesnt stop banding...noise does.

Phil, thanks.. I'll research the forum more thoroughly.

After adding Noise @ 1%/Uniform/Monochromatic, I was noticing some marginal banding whn I looked at the cyan channel. Hopefully when a halftone is thrown on top of that it will eliminate any possibility of banding appearing occuring.

You can usually be more aggressive with the noise addition than you would believe, as it invariably is far less noticeable in print. You also have to take into account the nature of the individual channels and whether there is appropriate image content to effectively mask what's on the cyan (in this case) channel. Adding noise to individual channels in varying amounts, but keeping it out of the highlights, especially in a CMYK document, are good ideas.

5-10% isnt unknown for me to use...barely can see it even if told on most mass repro media.

Lovegas, note the part about fade/lighten in those other discussions, stops the noise affecting the highlights.