Guitar recording too quietly....

Bonescan · Post by **Bonescan** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 10:30 pm

Hi, hopefully somebody can help me out here, i am totally new to LIVE and i'm trying to record guitar/bass and i'm finding that it's recording really quietly.

I am recording like this....

Bass/Guitar > Line6 BassPod XT Pro > SPDIF > Creative X-FI soundcard.

The BassPod has a setting to add up to 12db gain to the outgoing signal, which helps but recording is still too quiet and i get some distortion as i play (this does not come out in the final recording though, i guess it's just poor design on Creative's part). The difference in volume between what i hear when i am playing and the final recording is substantial, i'd estimate that it halves in volume.

I've heard that the Creative ASIO drivers are terrible so i also tried using ASIO4ALL but the problem is still there. I am recording at 96khz/24bit.

Is there anything i can do to increase the volume of my recordings in LIVE? Or would it be worth my while ditching this card and getting a better one? (something i was planning to do anyway sometime).

Thanks for any help! - and apologies if this is a stupid question, i just can't seem to figure out what is wrong at the moment.

DeadlyKungFu · Post by **DeadlyKungFu** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 10:32 pm

I get the same thing with guitar/bass into my edirol ua101. drop a utility plug-in in the track. just a basic plug-in for gain, not a preset.

Bonescan · Post by **Bonescan** » Fri Sep 22, 2006 10:41 pm

Good to know it's not just me then, i will go give that a try now.

Thanks very much

njh · Post by **njh** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 3:28 am

for one an asio driver is not going to improve on your input db..
two you should use an interface with an instrument input.
i use the line 6 ux1 for guitar wich works great because it has all of the sounds of the pod.

wewillturnoff · Post by **wewillturnoff** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 9:29 am

i would say that turning up the gain is not a very good idea for the long run because of how badly it degrades the sound. i agree with njh, asio driver would be way forward.

Bonescan · Post by **Bonescan** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 1:52 pm

@ njh, Sorry i don't undertsand what you mean, i am connecting with a regular instrument cable to my BassPod, then from the pod to the pc with SPDIF. I can connect Pod>PC with an instrument cable too (soundcard has instrument & mic input) but it makes no difference to the signal level, i have decent quality cables too. The toneport looks cool, but i'm primarily a bassist and it's missing a lot of the features that the B-POD XT-Pro has.

@ wewillturnoff, I am already using ASIO drivers. I agree with you about the gain fix, it's not an ideal solution and i can hear the qualit being affected.

dgkenney · Post by **dgkenney** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 3:09 pm

It's hard to diagnose this over the net. It seems to me that your routing seems right on:
Bass->POD->spdif out->digital input on sound card

If so, it seems the problem is somewhere in the chains gain staging. I am not familiar with either the POD or the creative sound card but here are places I would look

POD: Is there a separate setting for digital signal out and if so are there any limitations being placed on the signal?

Sound Card: Is there an applet that controls the input/output of the card and again, if so, are there any limitations being provided to the input before it gets to Live?

I assume you have your input channel strip in Live at 0db when you record and I am also assuming that the waveform produced is very small as displayed by Live. Correct? As a workaround untill you get this fixed it would be better to increase the waveform withing live (By 6 or 12 db) then it would be to over drive the signal. You would get a slight bit more noise but nothing like distortion.

Good luck,

Dan

Bonescan · Post by **Bonescan** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 4:04 pm

I'm pretty certain that i have everything set correctly, right down to the basic windows control panel settings where i have the spdif input level at max. The Pod's Digital I/O is set up correctly and the Creative control panel (not the most intuitive, or complete thing in the world) is also set up right so far as i can tell, so i am leaning toward it being an issue with the soundcard hardware itself.

I'll try your workaround out and see what happens. Then the next thing to do is to save for a decent soundcard i think

Thanks for your help.

Aural Chaos · Post by **Aural Chaos** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 8:42 pm

The output of the POD (at least the analog ones-mine doesn't have spdif anyway) are at instrument level, because it's made to plug into an amp.
So unless you have a soundcard with an instrument level input,not line level, then you are going to have to go thru a preamp to get a hot enough signal.

Bonescan · Post by **Bonescan** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 9:48 pm

Yeah i knew that analogue outs are instrument level, but i was under the impression that the SPDIF was not. The manual does'nt seem to make any mention about it which is annoying, i'm going to take a look on the forums there and see if i can find anything.

I have a feeling you could be right though.

Cheers.