I’ve never had any noise issues with my Heat. Of course on the higher distortion settings there will be noise. Like some suggest above, using a noise gate helps cuts the background noise, but you shouldn’t have any crackling, that sounds like something’s wrong. Every time I’ve gotten any kind of crackling noise, it was due to the cables… I always start by trying different cables. If this doesn’t fix the issue, it could be a defective unit or… well… hopefully someone else has suggestions on what to troubleshoot. But I would start by trying different cables… I bought new cables, but they were cheap & my Heat doesn’t care for them, actually none of my gear likes them.
