Track noise/distortion

[Zydrus]

I'm working on a song and I get a lot of noise/distortion/static when playing back the tracks. It is most prevalent when the vocals come in but no track is even close to clipping. And when I solo a track, vocals for example, that noise isn't there. Any suggestions on what it could be?

 

[Seidy]

Perhaps there is a plugin in the signalpath you are overdriving (if you are using limiter/compressor you could be reducing levels too much it starts to distort). What are master meters showing on you DAW?

Does the distortion appear when you export your track and listen it on car stereo etc?

 

[FartSword]

Are you sure there isn't any clipping? Even though an individual track might not have any clipping on it, if you play all the tracks together it could push the overall volume into clipping.

 

[Zydrus]

Does the distortion appear when you export your track and listen it on car stereo etc?

Yes, it was very noticeable on car speakers.

Are you sure there isn't any clipping? Even though an individual track might not have any clipping on it, if you play all the tracks together it could push the overall volume into clipping.

The master volume wasn't clipping at all either if that is what you mean. My recording computer is being upgraded now so I can't look at the meter levels but I wonder if I just recorded all/some of the tracks too hot in general? Because what I ended up doing was lower all the track faders and remix the track at a lower level overall, then boosted the master volume as much as I could to compensate for the lower levels and this seemed to cure the problem.