Ever play in a live situation where every time you switch a pedal on or off you get a loud, pop? You’ve done all your pedal board setup, painstakingly assured that your combo of true bypass pedals and cables are all set at home and everything is working fine there, but you get to church or the club and experience big problems. This phenomenon also occurs in relay midi switching systems too; big pops, when certain combinations of loops are turned on or off.
The technical term for this is Instantaneous DC Transition. Its what occurs when one DC level transfers to another DC level. So, the problem is actually related to power. While some churches and clubs tend to have dedicated circuits for audio and lighting, they don’t usually have conditioned power. This omission still allows for fluctuation in voltage. And most of my sound engineer-type friends also seem to agree that pedals and relay loops sometimes see a capacitance build up in the cables, and then when you open up the loop, BAM, a pop.
There are a few options to correct this:
1) Try placing a buffer or a pedal with a buffer in the chain or before a series of certain pedals. Boss type pedals have buffers to combat the popping issue, so the true bypass design of some pedals actually might contribute to the problem.
2) Try power solutions: Power conditioners, Furman power supplies, Voodoo Labs PP2 or the MXR CAE -402.
3) Try to avoid using consumer grade pedal interfaces that combine both power and audio signal, these NEVER create isolation in either power or audio. There’s always some flux in power.
Again, keep in mind,with any audio related issue, often there are several different potential problems as everyone’s setup differs. What have been your solutions to this problem?
One thought on “%1$s”