Sound card recordings sound flat?!

P

Pengo

New member
:confused: I've been lining in to my sound card (on-board realtek ac-97, straight to LINE-IN)with various pre-amps (behringer mic 100 tube pre-amp, sansamp classic) and guitar effects etc.. and it sounds fine coming back out through the headphone jack of that same soundcard, but when i RECORD , in Cubase sx or Cool edit pro 2, and then play back, it sounds noticeably..err..flat?
First I thought it was the bit-rate or the sampling rate, but i've tried these on MAX, (which i realized that soundcard probably doesn't support, but..? Is that It?) and it still sounds considerably different than the Monitored sound..
What is that?
Anyone?

(thanks!)
 
I also figured out the stats for my soundcard, and it will actually handle the the highest sampling rates I've thrown at it..
Still confused....
 
Pengo said:
I also figured out the stats for my soundcard, and it will actually handle the the highest sampling rates I've thrown at it..
Still confused....
Click to expand...

It would most likely be the convertors on the card.
 
Thanks...
I never really looked in to the a/d converter issue, i just sort of assumed that if the sample rate and bit depth I had chosen were handled by the card, then i would get a fairly accurate recording of the source.
But I borrowed a cheap outboard Soundblaster that definitely sounds better, so i guess that was the issue..
 
Built-in soundcards run on a 25-cent chip and are designed by the factories to do simple beeps, boops and some gaming.... and that's it.

'Ya gotta spend $100 or more and get a real soundcard if you want to record....
 
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