Try reordering pedals and see if it has any impact on the noise. Gain pedals will typically do this as they are raising the overall noise floor, but now you can find out by how much and see if it might be wise to add a noise gate with some high gain pedals. This will help you find which ones are adding noise. Try switching pedals on and off one by one with no input signal. If you don’t have an EQ pedal on your board, you’ll probably want to go get one after doing this. This can often be outside the frequency range we care about from guitar so you can add shelf filters to cut just below and above those frequencies. Look for any noise that is being introduced from digital switch- ing or AC hum. Once you have gotten it as low as possible connect the output from your pedal board to the analyzer. I discovered that adapters I was using to adapt the BNC connectors from my lab equipment to ¼” for connecting to guitar gear were introducing noise. If it’s noisier than you expect, try different cables and trying turning off nearby equipment that might be interfering. Measure the noise of your test system with nothing connected first as a base- line. What can you do with it? Here are a few suggestions.
A high-end audio interface from say UA or Apogee and the full Faber Electroacoustics tool box on a mac would be a really nice audio ana- lyzer at a fraction of the price of a dedicated hardware audio analyzer. I use the iOS version with an iPhone 10 and the Line 6 Sonic Port for doing quick measurements when I don’t have anything fancier available. Faber Acoustics has a number of mac and iOS products at differ- ent price points from $39.99 for a basic frequency analyzer on iOS to $299.99 for the full mac suite. Dog Park Ispectrum is a free mac download with a handy display that shows simultaneous line graph and waterfall representations of the frequency spectrum. I like the ability to quickly store and compare multiple samples.
It’s pretty old and hasn’t been updated in years but it works really well and is used by many in the industry. This is a commercial Windows application and at time of writing costs between $39.95 and $99.95. Try googling ‘audio spectrum analyzer software’ and see what comes up.
I’m willing to bet there are Android and Linux apps available too. I’ll cover Windows, Mac, and iOS software here because it’s what I am familiar with. They cost around $100 each and any of these will be perfectly fine. See his handiwork at TECH TALK u an IK Mutimedia iRig, Line 6 UX2 or a Line 6 Sonic Port depending on exactly what I am doing.
GEARPHORIA MAR/APR 2020 27 James Lebihan is the owner of Mission Engineer- ing in Petaluma, California.