Marine reciprocating air compressor has many excitation sources and complex structure, poor working environment, the characteristics of complex signal transmission path. These factors affect the signal analysis and fault source to determine. In order to extract the characteristic frequency, using the conventional method and the forced denoising, the default threshold denoising and the given soft threshold denoising method to deal with the vibration signal of the air compressor, By comparing the advantages and disadvantages of the four methods and the applicable conditions, it is found that the default threshold method retains the characteristic signal well and the noise reduction effect is good, so the default threshold denoising method is used to analyze the time and frequency domain of the vibration signal of the air compressor. Through the time domain analysis, it can be found 0.5 × rpm impact interval is obvious, by frequency domain analysis it can be found 1 × rpm frequency and with the emergence of 2 × rpm. The maintenance program can be presented according to the vibration mechanism of the air compressor and the historical maintenance record. The results show that the amplitude of the vibration and the frequency of the main frequency are significantly reduced, the maintenance effect is well.