Hey! Where's my sound...

spantini

COO of me, inc.
:p Oh man.. I set up all my sounds - guitar, amp sim FX chain, all levels for recording - I get a sound from the sim I really like and begin practicing, then I may record a track or two.

I shut everything down for the night. When I set everything up the next day, exACTly as before, the sound I liked so much the night before is not there. What I get is not that much different, but feels different more than sounds different. So I tweak a knob or two to get it back where I think it should be. And when I shut down that night the whole thing is repeated - day after day.

I know this is all in my head, sort of.. I mean, something physiologically going on making me perceive the sounds differently.

The End
 
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ear fatigue and ear fresh and ear wax...i dont think the guitar or plugins are changing sound
 
ear fatigue and ear fresh and ear wax...i dont think the guitar or plugins are changing sound

Must be that ^ I think? When you save a project the DAW must* save all the setting and FX and so when you open it next day, there is all is.

Also, try taking a "prnt scrn" shot of the DAW screen as you want it set, save it to "song xx with extra grunge 01,07,18" or similar?

*I say "must" because surely mastering engineers would go ga-ga if they could not return to project settings day to day?

Dave.
 
Really tiny moves of those knobs on the guitar or headphone monitor level can make a pretty big difference in perception, too, especially when trying to A/B the end of one day against the start of the next.

If you've actually saved a track, just print it at the end of the day and then before you start a new take and listen to those - that would tell you whether you've actually got anything in the DAW going on. Otherwise, it's all in your signal path going in.
 
Really tiny moves of those knobs on the guitar or headphone monitor level can make a pretty big difference...

The one knob I do turn down all the way when shutting down is the interface gain. It is difficult to reset that one because there are no indicator lines to match up, only a DAW meter reading which also isn't accurate enough to get back to exactly where I was previously. Even a screenshot of that wouldn't work for the same reasons. I'll start leaving the interface gain as is and see if this helps.

I guess there's some piece of equipment which can feed a signal through (at the current mixer settings) and provide an exact reference number so I could reset to that in the next session, but I don't have it and probably can't afford it at this point. I'm not a pro studio so I can work with what I've got for now.
 
You might laugh- but I use a pencil, to mark a line for the gain pointer, onto the face of interface.
Dale
 
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