# Catalinbread Echorec



## Louis (Apr 26, 2008)

Hi Everyone !!

My suggestion before you buy one of those is,

Open the box and click the true bypass mode,then plug
back into the unit and press the on-off switch and listen
to the noise when *on* compared with the *off* position.

Then make your choice !


Just returned mine because of this ,the Echorec has a Luxurious Echo
but is quite noisy ,mine was and I think it was unacceptable for the price ............ so now you know.



Louis


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## elliottmoose (Aug 20, 2012)

Good to know. I'm a delay nut, and this was on my list 'to try' but I may have to look into the noise issue a little further. Thanks for the headsup, Louis!

edit: who am I kidding, I'm going to buy one and try it for myself. But I'll be keeping a keen eye on the noise floor!


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## Louis (Apr 26, 2008)

Well I think I never bashed on someones design or product cause I know a lot
of work went in to be able to build them but again you guy's most know and
decide for yourself's if it's acceptable for you or not .

My personal argument was that this sound is a dream sound that takes you into another 
spacey almost spiritual level just like listening to Dark Side of the Moon with eyes closed ,
but if you add white noise on top of it ,it spoils everything !!


Just my humble opinion .




Louis


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## keto (May 23, 2006)

Did you try in in the 'OFF' setting?

Often noise like you describe is rig dependant. Did you try it with other guitars, amps, in an fx loop, or in a different order in your pedal chain?


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## Louis (Apr 26, 2008)

My amp is as silent as a snail sleeping !!

Here's a demo someone made while clicking on-off switch ,  https://soundcloud.com/amund-blix/echorec-noise

Mine compared with the demo was dead silent on off position or almost without no hiss from amp and
when clicked on ,it was worst then on the demo .

I clicked on every possible switch inside the echorec with the guitar plugged in alone
and then into the amp and it was noisy ,but when I say noisy !.......I mean noisy !!!
in an unacceptable way for a $285 pedal taxe included.

So if you want one ,try it first before you buy !


Louis


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

This may be a dumb question, but it still needs to be asked.

How did you power the pedal, and did you have anything else digital powered by the same source?

I ask because a) the Echorec is at least _partly_ digital, b) digital stuff has lots of clocks, c) some power supplies also have HF clocks in them, d) not all power supplies isolate the things they are feeding enough to prevent their interaction along power lines, e) many digital pedals that are dead quiet on their own can generate objectionable noise when sharing a power source with another digital pedal.

This is a KNOWN phenomenon, but not always that well known by all those folks to whom it applies, and perhaps it applies in this case. I don't own any Catalinbread pedals, but they have enough of a reputation at this point that I can't imagine they'd be willing to sacrifice that reputation for the sake of a couple of nifty tricks in the Echorec. That is NOT to place the blame on the user It's just one of those little things, like switch-popping from Boss pedals produced by true bypass pedals you thought were supposed to be silent, that happens when you didn't think it was supposed to happen, and maybe it happened in your case.


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## Louis (Apr 26, 2008)

mhammer said:


> This may be a dumb question, but it still needs to be asked.
> 
> How did you power the pedal, and did you have anything else digital powered by the same source?
> 
> ...



Gotcha!!..........but !!!!

When I got home with it and heard the white noise ,I search on the net for (Dunlop 9volt adapter for Echorec) just to make sure that it
wasn't the adapter.........then ended up on Gear Page in a Thread where members have this same issue and others not........ or have it but dont notice it.
After trying everything ,clicking every switch inside and backing off modulation mode and all this was done with guitar,Echorec into the amp
with all lights turned off ,no neons or nothing or bad ground in the house.

Called the store owner telling him the problem and he said he never had a complaint and I most have a bad one.
Go down to the store and he noticed the noise and he popped up a brand new one out of the box and same noise issue ,
so we tried with an 18 volt adapter and same thing .........so he said that the noise is a simulation of the *Real deal.... which I dont believe.
Just to go a little further ,I tried that day in the store different pedals to get my head clear. So I plugged into an MXR Carbon Copy
and noticed that there was no noise but the noise came only when strumming a note but vanished when decaying.
Then I tried a Wampler Faux Delay and it was very quiet but left without it cause I needed to think about all this.

I've been playing for years and just wanted to share with you my Echorec journey so you can
all decide for yourself if you deal or not with the noise issue ,the owner sold a lot and I'm the only one who
returned the unit so dont believe what I say ,I might be wrong ,..............but one thing for sure is that the
two units I've tried were unacceptable for me .........then again I probably had a bad one!..........you decide !


Let me know !...................................Louis


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

Well, you gave it a chance.


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## Louis (Apr 26, 2008)

mhammer said:


> Well, you gave it a chance.



I did and now it's your turn !!!..........Lol !!


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## The Lullaby (Dec 8, 2010)

exactly why I COULD NEVER BOND with EHX Holy Grail verb...too much white noise amongst that beautiful reverb.


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## 4345567 (Jun 26, 2008)

__________


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## Guest (Jul 2, 2013)

Really sucks if you are micing your amp through the PA...SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH....


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## mhammer (Nov 30, 2007)

nkjanssen said:


> The Holy Grail is pretty touchy about power supply. I had one that would either have lots of digital noise in the background or no digital noise at all depending on which power supply I used (even though all were supposedly up to spec).


This has become a comon-enough problem that I suspect more manufacturers of both power supplies, and pedals, are taking it into account.

Here's the deal....

Anything digital requires high-frequency clocks to step the DSP chip/s through its paces. The clock puts spikes on the power line. Because the clocks are running at such high frequencies, you can't hear those spikes. However, if I have a clock running at 5Mhz in two different pedals, and they are within, say .01% of each other (pretty precise, I'd say; wouldn't you?), that makes one of them around 500hz different from the other. The spikes on the power-line can produce something very much like a ring modulator, called "heterodyning", where the sum and difference of the clashing frequencies results. Obviously, the sum will be inaudible, but the difference can be well within the human hearing range, and shows up in the audio output the same way that your mother's use of the sewing machine, or your dad using a power drill or electric floor polisher, or the fridge/freezer compressor turning on somewhere else in the house, would provide annoying noise while listening to albums 50 years ago, before we learned how to regulate power a little better.

The noise occurred because all these appliances were sharing the same power line and turning what ought to have been "clean" power into something with all sorts of intrusions. When we share a power supply amongst several pedals that have clocks in them the same thing can happen if precautions are not provided by the pedal, or the power source, to block any combining of the noise travelling along the power lines.

To complicate matters even further, the requirement for supplies to provide large amounts of current in compact packages has led to the widespread use of switching power supplies, related to what powers your computer. While highly efficient for their size, they also use clocks to do what they do, albeit clocks at a much lower frequency than what a DSP chip uses. Oh, and let us not forget charge-pump chips like the 7660 or the 1044, which are regularly used to transform 9v into something higher or into +/-9v so an external supply can be used or so a single 9v battery can do what needs to be accomplished.

In short, clocks and clocked devices are becoming omnipresent. Much of the time the clocks are so disparate in frequency that neither their sum OR difference is audible. If I have one DSP chip running at 5Mhz and another running at 2Mhz, you'll never hear their interaction. But the very diversity of clock frequencies amongst all those devices - supplies, charge pumps, HF clocks, etc. - means that it is all the more difficult to predict when to expect line noise, and when one is likely to be safe.

I have a bunch of Line 6 pedals. Run one of them off a standard non-switched wallwart and it is dead quiet. Daisy chain any two of them off the same supply, though, and the noise is unbearable.

Ideally, all digital or clocked devices would include the assorted clock frequencies used in their specs, so that users could do the math and determine that device X is likely to clash with device Y. But I think that's asking for too much. Theresult is that I suspect manufacturers of power bricks will need to include greater isolation between outputs, consumers will need to be cautioned against using any daisy-chain arrangement with digital pedals, and we can expect to see retrofit line-noise filters to plug intot he backs of digital pedals to enhance line-noise immunity. Well, that and boosted sales of nose-gates and other forms of noise suppression.


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## Louis (Apr 26, 2008)

Great post mhammer !!!


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