Cakewalk au 25ex feedback, shorts out my house??

[totdub]

Hey everyone. I recently bought a cakewalk au 25ex audio interface. When I began recording a guitar using an aux input I got an increadible amount of feedback, a loud ringing noise or whine through out the air.
I plugged a pair of head phones into the monitor and tried again and it recorded fine, no feedback what so ever (not sure why the head phones made any differences because I tried again later and the feedback was there.??)
Then I removed them and when I hit record the feedback started up again, and then all of the power in my house went. The whole place shorted out. I unpluged the USB from the cakewalk and all the power came back(the computer had a surge protector on so it stayed running). I tried recording after that and got the same noise feedback.
Any info that might shed some light on possibly reasons for this problem, or some know solutions on how to solve it would be very appreciated, perhaps I'm missing something simple. This unit was on sale, so maybe that's why the store was trying to get rid of them all for cheap. If it might be worth it to return it are there any suggestions on portable USB interfaces that you've found to work good? Many thanks,
Walker

 

[MOFO Pro]

To be honest...

After reading your thread...

I would return the interface and never again even think about recording...

Other than that, I have nothing helpful to add

 

[c7sus]

You can't monitor through speakers when you have a live mic.

What do you think causes feedback?

The power issue is something else. If you tripped a breaker it doesn't reset itself and "come back", you have to manually reset it.

And surge protectors don't keep your computer running through a power outage. Battery backup PSU's do that.

 

[witzendoz]

To be honest...

After reading your thread...

I would return the interface and never again even think about recording...

Other than that, I have nothing helpful to add

I often think that some people should just forget about having a home studio and go into a real studio where there is someone that knows what they are doing.