Noise floor
The residual level of unwanted sound that a device produces even when no signal is being played.
Every piece of electronic equipment generates a certain amount of hiss, hum and switching noise, and the sum of those contributions is the noise floor of a rig. High gain makes the problem worse because the amplifier magnifies whatever arrives at its input, so a quiet guitar with good shielding into a clean rig can still be unusable with heavy distortion. Reducing the noise floor means fixing each source in the chain, from shielding to power supply to the position of the amplifier relative to lighting and transformers.
Example: A high-gain sound that hisses audibly even with the guitar volume down is being limited by the rig's noise floor.
See also
Related
- PageNoise gate
- PageHum
- PageGain staging
- Page18-volt operation
- PageAnalogue delay
- PageAuto-wah
- PageAaron Dessner
- PageAce Frehley