Recording Discrepancy

[nxixcxk]

In an audio track in ableton, there's a button for "auto," so that you can hear your audio coming thru the headphones while recording. I notice my voice actually sounds good DURING the recording, but via playback it sounds of a lesser quality. I also notice in the volume thing on the far right (it's either green or red depending on level of input), that it is almost always RED, no matter what I do. Even if I lower the volume, lower the input, the input almost always redlines (not sure if it's related to my first problem).

Anyone have any ideas how to maintain the quality of sound of my vocal recording during playback?


Also, I would like to add too that recording my acoustic guitar into my Yeti mic also plays back in undesirable quality too. For instance, if you play the first 5 seconds of this song here: https://soundcloud.com/nickthequick-apm-300/set-free you can hear the crappy quality. I don't really get it : (.

[fishmonkey]

it's hard to make a fair comparison between a recorded vocal and the sound of the vocal recording while you are actually recording it. while recording you are hearing a richer sound as you are also literally hearing your voice bouncing around inside your head.

as far as the recording goes, the sound of the room, and the polar mode you have the Yeti mic switched to are important factors (you probably want to use cardioid mode for your vocal, but it's worth experimenting).

with the level issue, you want to set the gain of the mic (using the dial on the front) so that the loudest part of whatever track you are recording is peaking roughly at around -12 dB on the Live track meter.

this is quite a good rave about recording levels:

http://www.massivemastering.com/blog/in ... Levels.php

[nxixcxk]

thanks fishmonkey--good points (didn't think about it bouncing around my head lol). Going to read that link now.