What is causing sine sweep artifacts such as pre-ringing?

When using the sine sweep as excitation signal, artifacts may occur.

These artifacts are pre-ringing (signal before the impulse response starts) and low frequency noise in the middle of the impulse response.

 

It has been reported that these artifacts occur when

 

      Measuring while the microphone holder is not stable (is moving). This may happen if you are measuring in an anechoic chamber. If the floor is not fixed, it   may be vibrating if you don’t wait untill the vibration ends (e.g. after closing a door or changing microphone position).

      If the input signal is very high so the sound card is used near maximum sensitivity. This has been seen on the Digigram VXpocket v2 card.