Distortion Recording Electronic Drums.. =(

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wasabi25

New member
Hey guys, how's it going? I just joined the forum, and I'm having this one issue... I made a little homestudio, which mainly consists of: my guitars, my bass, couple of mics, my electronic drums, a soundcard, a mixer, and a macbook.
My big issue is: when I play my TD4K drums straight through my Sennheiser Monitor headphones, the sound GREAT, especially on high volumes, very dense and crystal... But, when I send the signal from the headphone jack with a cable, to my Behringer UB1202 Mixer, to my Presonus soundcard, to my mac, and connect the headphones to the phones out, on my soundcard, the sound is SO crappy... =( Honestly, I don't know what to do... Tried to do some reading and researching, nothing helped though.
Worst part is I have no experience with this at all, I'm simply trying to get there... It's kinda sucky: I have entires songs but can't record them properly... Even when I just play a song on iTunes and play along with the drums through the same connection, I get a distortion... =/
Any ideas?! Is my mixer too crappy? What about my soundcard?! I know my instruments are very good, and cables are too... Should this all be solved through a MIDI cable???
Please help me out! =D
And, uh, please excuse my poor english, since it's not my first language.
Thank you so much, any help will be much appreciated!

Sincerely,
Vic
 
Do you have line outs you can use instead of the headphone jack?

Also what presonus do you have? I'd skip the mixer and go straight to the presonus.
 
TetraFish said:
Do you have line outs you can use instead of the headphone jack?

Also what presonus do you have? I'd skip the mixer and go straight to the presonus.
Click to expand...

Hey! Thank you for the very quick reply! =D
Anyways, I don't know for sure, I know there is a line in, which is a smaller input. I'm gonna go outside and go to my studio to check it. I'll post it in a sec.

I guess I have the crappiest PreSonus haha... It's the AudioBox.

And yeah, it will be great if taking the mixer out will help! Hehe...
Only bad thing is: I was also gonna use this set up to make youtube vids with my girl, using 2 mics and a guitar.

Gonna check if it's got a line out! Brb! ;D

And thanks again! =D
 
Yep, it's got 2 outputs! A I that dumb?! xD LOL...
They say Left(Mono) and Right. Awesome haha. Tomorrow I might see if this changes things! Quick thing though: should I use mono or stereo?
Also, I'm installing Studio One... it comes with the PreSonus... I used to use Garageband... Tried figuring out Logic, that didn't go very well haha.

Thanks a bunch! =)
Tomorrow I'm testing the sound of it!
 
This might sound like a silly question, but is the gain on either your mixer or your PreSonus too loud? How about the volume on your drum module? Watch the clip lights on your devices the next time you try to play.
 
For sure use the mono one. Try it through the mixer first. Make sure you set your levels, first set it on the mixer, make sure you're not clipping and then set them on the presonus.
 
guitarplayr82 said:
This might sound like a silly question, but is the gain on either your mixer or your PreSonus too loud? How about the volume on your drum module? Watch the clip lights on your devices the next time you try to play.
Click to expand...

Hey! =)
Well, I still haven't had time to try it through the Line Out thingy.
And, uh, nope, I don't think the gains are very loud... Gain is usually about 10%, and Level on the Mixer channel is about 35%, and the main volume, that thing that goes up and down is on 0db I guess.
 
TetraFish said:
For sure use the mono one. Try it through the mixer first. Make sure you set your levels, first set it on the mixer, make sure you're not clipping and then set them on the presonus.
Click to expand...

Hey!
I'll be trying that once I get home today! =)
Also, what is to clip? xD Does that mean, like, to go being the levels, reaching distortion?
It still looks like an impossible mission to make all this noiseless haha, but let's hope it will work! =)

Thanks a bunch!
 
Quote from Wikipedia: "Clipping is a form of waveform distortion that occurs when an amplifier is overdriven and attempts to deliver an output voltage or current beyond its maximum capability."

There should be a clip light on all of your hardware that turns on when you are overdriving the signal.
 
guitarplayr82 said:
Quote from Wikipedia: "Clipping is a form of waveform distortion that occurs when an amplifier is overdriven and attempts to deliver an output voltage or current beyond its maximum capability."

There should be a clip light on all of your hardware that turns on when you are overdriving the signal.
Click to expand...

Got some news! =)
So... There's this clip thing, on red leds, on top of the main volume, the one you drag up and down. But there are also green leds that if I'm not wrong, read -20, 0, something, and then red clip ones, which are red. I never got it to red, max I get is the first green row.
So, I went out my drums with a cable, from Mono Output, to the mixer... Sound was ok through the whole thing(Soundcard, Macbook, and through the phones out of the soundcard)... Decided forgetting about the soundcard, and plugging the headphones into the phones out in the mixer... TADAM! turns out it works GREAT!!! SOUND IS AWESOME... though, when I go through the soundcard, the sound on the headphones are CRAPPY, kinda really high pitch and distorted! =( Thing is...
It may be that the headphones out in the soundcard SUX, then I can send the Macbook lineout to the Mixer, throw it all to the mixer, but still use headphones going out of the mixer, not the soundcard... but, if the sound that comes out of the soundcard is what really is, my soundcard is messing with my sound quality... =(
Any ideas???

THANKS A LOT, GUYS!
This forum is changing my life! =)
Now I;m off to go rehearse with my band!! =)
Thanks again!
 
What kind of soundcard is it? Does it have any gain knobs? Make sure those aren't clipping either.
 
guitarplayr82 said:
What kind of soundcard is it? Does it have any gain knobs? Make sure those aren't clipping either.
Click to expand...

It's a PreSonus AudioBox. I go in it with left and right outputs from mixer... and then make it "stereo", both of these channels have volumes. I have'em about 30%, big distortion though. =/
 
Hmm... well that's weird. Are you sure none of your software settings are up too high? When you try to record the drums with the AudioBox into a DAW, what kind of levels are you getting?
 
guitarplayr82 said:
Hmm... well that's weird. Are you sure none of your software settings are up too high? When you try to record the drums with the AudioBox into a DAW, what kind of levels are you getting?
Click to expand...

Well, I was doing some reading online, and discovered that PreSonus soundcards are kind of crap... Yeah, everyone seems to get terrible noises/hum sounds while trying to record stuff... I'm seriously about to throw it in the trash and try to get some M-Audio or something... It's terrible...

Anyways... Nothing seems to be high, if I want to lower the terrible noise, I have to turn all volumes down... Also, when I'm recording and listening through the headphones, the volume which comes out SUCKS... It's SO low... I have to put it max and still sucks because there's only one control both for what's coming from the mics, and for what's coming from the Macbook...

Also what's a DAW? Is that the software?! I just used Garageband, playing bass and it was CRAPPY... =/ Even while I'm not playing, terrible noises... And they do get recorded... If it was something I would listen but wasn't gonna be recorded, I could live with it...

Anyone who owns this thing?! I'm really disappointed...

Thanks again!
 
Well, if your mixer is distorting the presonus, you need to turn it down.

The gain controls are there to balance the level coming into the presonus with the level it works at. If you are sending it a really loud singal, the gain controls will be way down. IF you send it a quiet signal, the gain controls will need to be way up. That's what they are for.

Read more about monitoring in your presonus manual. Right now, you are getting confused between recording level and monitoring volume. The recording level needs to be set correctly to record the signal, the headphone volume is a separate issue.
 
Hey man...
Well, uh... I may be wrong, but I think that is not the issue, really...
I've been reading A LOT on all this, especially about the PreSonus AudioBox...
On MusiciansFriend, I've found this review:
"Alright so I've had this box for a couple years now. Works flawlessly with condenser mics. Don't use the SM57 for vocals with this, as the gain isn't high enough, but for medium to loud volume guitar it's fine. Sound quality is excellent; if you need a relatively low-cost interface for a microphone (condenser for vocals, dynamics for louder) then this will do fine. If you're thinking of plugging a guitar into this via the hi-z instrument input, you may run into sound levels clipping even at the input dial turned to zero (it does so by design). The way to get around this is to buy a DI (direct injection, aka Direct In) box that plugs via microphone cable into the XLR inputs of the Audiobox; problem solved. Still, I find this shortcoming unfortunate, that the instrument-in at dial zero isn't truly at zero. Also this box is plug-n-play on a Mac, very easy to use, and doesn't cause any crackling or anything, and the preamp noise levels are virtually silent. Plus it runs off USB power, which is good..."

Makes any sense? This direct box thingy... Seems everyone who has this soundcard and is going in by instruments or mixers, gets terrible noise... It is really meant to be used with recordings made by microphones... What do ya think?

Thanks =D
 
If that's the case, then just turn down the drum module so you aren't hitting the input of the presonus so hard. You could also, and probably should, turn the mixer output down.

One of the problems with the cheap all-in-one interfaces is the lack of useful metering. Are you clipping the meters in the software?
 
Farview said:
If that's the case, then just turn down the drum module so you aren't hitting the input of the presonus so hard. You could also, and probably should, turn the mixer output down.

One of the problems with the cheap all-in-one interfaces is the lack of useful metering. Are you clipping the meters in the software?
Click to expand...

Hey!
Well, I tried and tried everything... But I'm gonna try that again...
And when you say the mixer output, you mean the thing that can go up or down, which says Main Mix?

Also, using Garageband, the little instrument graph hardly gets any close to the point it would get red, but noise and hum are there.

Would it really work to buy two direct boxes(one for left, one for roght channel), to go from the mixer to the soundcard?! I see that as my only hope for now.

Thanks a lot. =)
 
wasabi25 said:
Hey!
Well, I tried and tried everything... But I'm gonna try that again...
And when you say the mixer output, you mean the thing that can go up or down, which says Main Mix?
Click to expand...
That's called a fader. If you are connecting the main output of the mixer to the presonus, that is the control that adjusts the level.

wasabi25 said:
Also, using Garageband, the little instrument graph hardly gets any close to the point it would get red, but noise and hum are there.
Click to expand...
Noise and hum? I thought the problem was distortion. The hum is probably a ground loop. Plug the mixer into the same outlet as the computer (and the presonus, if it plugs into the wall), that might clear it up.

It could also be a gain staging problem. When you have multiple units connected together, you need to regulate the signal level coming into and going out of each piece. If you have the signal backed way off on one thing and then brought back up on another, you could introduce all kinds of noise and goofyness.

Set the output of the drum module to 3/4.
Set the master output fader ot 0db, set the channel level knob to 0db
Set the input (the gain control next to the line in) on the mixer so that you are lighting up the 0db light but not the clip light.
Turn the gain knobs on the presonus all the way down
Look at the meters in garage band and make sure you ae not going into the red. If you are, turn down the master fader at the board until you aren't.

If you still have the noise, then it's the presonus

wasabi25 said:
Would it really work to buy two direct boxes(one for left, one for roght channel), to go from the mixer to the soundcard?! I see that as my only hope for now.
Click to expand...
Probably, but you really shouldn't have to. Two passive direct boxes are going to cost you somewhere around $50-$75, which is almost half the price of the presonus. It might be better to spend your money on a better interface that works properly.
 
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