Abstract. The high-intensity noise radiated by an unheated and fully expanded Mach 3 jet is investigated experimentally using arrays of microphones in the acoustic near and far far-field of the jet. This shock-free supersonic jet encompasses Mach wave radiation that is the most prominent component of turbulent mixing noise. Additive to that, an unsteady noise component is present known as ‘crackle’. The latter requires non-conventional techniques for quantification due to its short-time intermittent behavior. Groups of N-wave type structures in the pressure waveform are believed to cause crackle, and so, these do not result in distinguishable spectral signatures that are obtained by ensemble averaging. Furthermore, these waveform sections can look similar to pressure waveforms that were subjected to nonlinear acoustic steepening. During the experimental campaign, pressure time series are acquired along a grid in the (x,r)-plane in order to quantify the acoustical statistics and spatial distributions. The topography of the OASPL reveals a highly directive sound propagation path emanating from the post-potential core region at x/D_j = 20 and along 45̊ from the jet axis; this coincides with the Mach wave radiation angle. Various metrics for quantifying the degree of crackle, or nonlinearity, in a time-average sense produce slightly unique propagation paths, albeit they all follow along similar paths as the OASPL. The distributions support the theory that crackle is formed from local shock formation at the noise source, as opposed to nonlinear propagation effects that manifest themselves over a larger domain. A second effort focuses on quantifying the crackle by time-series analysis. A custom shock wave detection algorithm is applied and was compared to wavelet power spectra for validation. Statistics from the intermittent time of the crackle footprint are presented and reveal a high dependence on the location of observation.