Hey! Where's my sound...

[spantini]

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

 

[CoolCat]

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

 

[ecc83]

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.

 

[keith.rogers]

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.

 

[spantini]

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.

 

[DaleVO]

You might laugh- but I use a pencil, to mark a line for the gain pointer, onto the face of interface.
Dale