Guitar coming through twice?

[nuke]

I have my guitar plugged into a Fast Track Pro audio interface. When windows XP starts if i play a few notes they come through on the speakers. I then open Cubase and create an audio track. I click monitor and play a few notes and it comes through a good bit louder. I then volume slider all the way down to zero....however I can still hear my guitar.

So I presume when Im recording and monitoring my guitar Im hearing it twice - once through monitoring in Cubase and once as a standard sound output you get when you plug a guitar in a computer. So how do I turn off the standard sound output so that I dont hear it while monitoring?

Like when Im monitoring a track and I pull the volume slider on the channel all the way to zero I expect to hear no sound whereas in actual fact I do still hear my guitar as it is also coming through over the standard output. I hope you understand what Im saying here.

 

[The Cancers]

I haven't used the fast track pro, but looking at the website I saw that it seems to have a control somewhere for "input/playback mix control for hardware direct monitoring." I would think if you turned this entirely to "playback mix," then it would only play what is coming out of your DAW, ie the armed track you've clicked "monitor" on.

Then again, you might end up with latency issues doing it this way (hearing the note a fraction of a second after you play it). You might not be noticing them now because you're direct monitoring the input along with monitoring the input coming out of your DAW, but it's probable that they're there (the latency issues, that is... I'm losing the thread).

It might not be that distracting, but if it is, you could always just direct monitor and not try and monitor the armed track in your DAW.
Just fix the problem as it is, though, because if you are getting a combined zero-latency and slightly latent signal, you'll be hearing a phased signal that may sound thicker/louder than what you're actually recording (which defeats the point of accurately monitoring your input as you create it).

Why, by the way, are you trying to monitor from your DAW? Are you applying effects with it that you need to be able to hear to play the part?
I'm just curious because, for me at least, direct, zero-latency hardware monitoring was a selling point when I bought my interface.

 

[Washburn100]

I haven't used the fast track pro, but looking at the website I saw that it seems to have a control somewhere for "input/playback mix control for hardware direct monitoring." I would think if you turned this entirely to "playback mix," then it would only play what is coming out of your DAW, ie the armed track you've clicked "monitor" on.

Yep, this is why.

As to why the fader has no effect, when the track is armed it is not supposed to have an effect. It is only for adjusting volume on playback. When the track is armed, you are getting the full signal the DAW is seeing. To lower the volume or signal strength you have to turn down the source (Fasttrack) Otherwise you could have a huge signal, clipping and distorting, but turning down the fader would only make it quieter clipping and distortion.