bad connection?

[shinemdm]

Hey all,

When we recorded a song this past wednesday, we recorded into my Fostex MR-8 and when I got home I uploaded the tracks to cakewalk. While I was mixing everything (this is acoustic rock by the way), I noticed that there was this really obnoxious distorting sound made every once in a while (particularly on parts with high volume levels). It sounds like my cable had a short in it (but I know it didn't, because I recorded with two different cables overall). I know it's not any individual track, because I tried muting individual tracks and it still did it. I know it's not because of too high volume levels, because i turned the master volume on cakewalk down to as low as it could go while still being audible, and you still heard the "bad cable" sound clearly. i'll try and post a clip of the song with the bad sound in it. Please help! Thanks and peace.

max

[dachay2tnr]

From your description it sounds like digital distortion (clipping). Normally this occurs if you record a track too hot and some passages reach or exceed 0db. However, eliminating the tracks one-by-one should have isolated which track it was on.

Why don't you try it in reverse, mute all tracks except one and see if you can hear it. If not, try unmuting (adding) one track at a time until you find it. At that point it will either be on the last track that you added, or it is the result of the "summing" of the tracks.

[shinemdm]

ah good call. It's definitely the lead acoustic track. Now the next question, how do I get rid of it?

[AlChuck]

You can't undo it once it's done.

You can prevent it by fixing the soundcard's input levels, which you do not do within Cakewalk. Cakewalk's levels just allow you to reduce what it records or plays back, but if the input's overdriven, that does you no good.

I'm not clear here if the data already recorded on the Fostex is the culprit, or by transferring it to the computer you hit the inputs too hard there. What don't you tell us what you did in a little more detail and then we can be more specific.

[maestro_dmc]

You should also be able to see it on the "wave" files. Just look for a spot where the jiggly line goes up flat to the top and bottom of the wave window.

It may also look like a big spike.

[shinemdm]

Originally posted by AlChuck
You can't undo it once it's done.

You can prevent it by fixing the soundcard's input levels, which you do not do within Cakewalk. Cakewalk's levels just allow you to reduce what it records or plays back, but if the input's overdriven, that does you no good.

I'm not clear here if the data already recorded on the Fostex is the culprit, or by transferring it to the computer you hit the inputs too hard there. What don't you tell us what you did in a little more detail and then we can be more specific.

Specific? ok:

Wednesday we recorded the djembe track and rythymn acoustic track together, and recorded the lead vocal track seperately. Then I went home and uploaded the tracks to cakewalk, and then I did the lead acoustic track into cakewalk (because of the time limit on the mr8). My setup was like this: Acoustic -> Boss GT3 -> line in. I think I probably just had the GT3 level set too high.