Crappy digital recording problem...

WykedPT

Member
Hi all....I am going nuts with this problem. The sound that is going thru my mixer is not the sound I am getting on my computer...It sounds thin and not at all what went in. I'm running Studio one 5,going thru my Behringer mixer into a Presonus audiobox usb.. When listening to the mixer my acoustic guitar sounds very good and natural with minimum eq. When listening to playback it sounds nothing like it. I have recorded both to the computer and my analog tape recorder at the same time and the tape sounds just like what went thru the mixer. Both were played back thru the same amp and speakers and at the same volume.. I'm an old analog guy and been messing around with digital every now and then. I am perplexed. Any ideas would be great....Thanks..
 
What are you playing back through? Are you going back into the Audiobox and from there to speakers or headphones? Or are you going through some other path to your amp?
 
Thanks for the reply....I am going back thru the audiobox..I am going from that into a Mark Levinson amp and a set of older Advent monitors...I have tried a cpl different paths with the same results..If I monitor as I record from the audiobox headphone jack it sounds just like if I listen thru the mixer phone jack..
 
How are you connecting the mixer to the Audiobox? Into the XLR or instrument inputs (1/4")?

If you are using the Instruments jacks, they are speced at .5M Ohm, and the Behringer line outputs are probably 120ohm. That's a pretty big mismatch. The XLR inputs are a better match, as long as you don't hit them with too much signal level. The Audiobox doesn't show anything as far as a true line level input, only mic and instrument. The fact that the headphone feed from the Audiobox sounds like the mixer suggest that the problem is elsewhere.

What are you using to record? Are you using ASIO drivers, or Windows input drivers? Are there any audio enhancements enabled in the Windows sound drivers? They have all kinds of crap in there, EQ. Spaciousness, Sound Virtualizers, etc. Make sure to turn off any enhancements in the Windows sound setup. If you have Dolby Audio, check under that program. There are additional settings there. Turn all of it off.

If you feed the tape unit into the Audiobox, does the digital sound match the tape? It SHOULD. If not, then there must be something going on with your software settings.
 
I wonder if there's a mismatch related to balanced signals, like when you connect a stereo 1/4" to a balanced 1/4". I'm not at all worried about going from a low impedance output to a high impedance input, though maybe there's something else about a guitar-specific input that's not ideal for a line level output.
 
I'm confused by the fact the audiotex audio out to the headphones socket sounds 'right' - so from the Audiobox to the PC and back to the Audiobox seems to be where the damage is done? Just a thought, but are you sure you have set up the system to be 16, 24 or 32 bit at 44.1, 48 or 98KHz sampling rates. If you have accidentally set it to a lower spec - then the sound difference would be noticeable - considerably noticeable, but once you get to 16/44.1 or above - by and large - you'd expect the recording to be pretty transparent. What software are you using? What settings have you chosen? Plus of course - the audiotex drivers. The system is hopefully using these and not the inbuilt windows one?
 
If you load an mp3 music file into the DAW that was not recorded by you, how does it sound played back through headphones in the AudioBox and Mark Levinson amp?
Have you tried a different DAW for recording and playback? Audacity is pretty simple and almost foolproof.
 
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