lots of unwanted signals
OK !!! I am going to try to cram YEARS of recording experience here, it is kinda hard to give you exact answers without knowing what kind of music you are playing and how exactly you are recording, 1st of all depeding on what kind of sound card you are using and computer, your level will be very loud off the wall to be exact when you are mixing down to a PC just lower the levels when you are mixing down, it is ok because when you play the wave back it be as loud or louder than the original.
But if you add effects and everthing goes BOOM and SCCCZZZAAA then maybe you need to cut some frequencies, try cutting 50hz- 150 hz lightly at first to see it the sound gets clearer, you see 1hz to about 90 hz gives off just a low rumbling noise that usualy cant be heard by the human hear but it eats up space on your tracks, the only reason why a home stereo can pick up these frequencies on an eq is because these frequencies are controled when mastering, when you are mixing down they may be runnning loose.
Another frequency that is a pain in the ass can be 1khz-20khz dpending on what instrument you are recording ( before you go cutting all these frequecies you gotta remeber that every instrunment uses them different, sometimes these frequencies are bad and sometimes they are godd) 1 khz -20khz is usualy just noise not music about 50% of the time.
It may help you to find a digital parametric eq for your pc that can exaclty pinpoint and cut frequencies. They are much different than the one on the vs 880.
Try this ,...go to your mid range eq on the VS880 and crank it up full blast now narrow down the Q to about 8-10 now move the frequency up or down until your hear noise on your track, once you find it then cut it down to negative 2-12 depending on the noise.
CUt the lows at 150-50hz at about 2-8 then cut the highs at around 7-14khz .
Again this all depends on what you are recording some times you need to leave them alone and sometimes you have to boost!!!
But dont over do all the cutting or boosting because it can kill your mix
such as ....you should cut a guitar around 150 but a bass maybe around 50, but then again if you are recoding female vocals I have just wasted my time because the rules change!!! But like I said it is hard to give exact advice without knowing exactly what you are doing with everything , and also watch out for having the compresser cranked up to much.
I got one of our artists on mp3.com/brokenreality but you realy cant hear what I am talking about because it is in mp3 format and I dont allow our record label to make our music downloadable but if you have a highspeed connection you can hear it on hifi play.