Ableton Forum

I've had this card for over a year, but so far have only been using it's outputs for Reason and such, never used it to record with. When I got Live I decided to set it up for recording audio into the program, keeping the Digi001 only for ProTools. I haven't had any major gripes with the card until recently. I think it sounds fine but somehow I cant' seem to get enough signal gain into it? I've been recording audio for many years, have a thorough understanding of gain stages yet am completely stumped by this one.

Say I arm record a track in Live, volume is at unity, I can see the input gain meters pegging at an optimal level while playing, then I record the part, play it back, and it's volume sounds incredibly lower that while in record mode. I then have to either increase the gain in the clip properties of the newly recorded part, or increase the track volume to something ridiculous like +5 or more, which is a no-no. Again, before any source enters the card, I make sure to have optimal gains along the signal path.

Is it something I'm overlooking in the Delta Control Panel? To be quite honest, that thing does confuse me a little bit. Also, I use a mixer to monitor all my sources, I don't monitor through the soundcard. So many great reviews about this card, FM, CM and SoS, not to mention user reviews, but they all seem to contradict the performance I'm getting from it. If anyone can assist with some guidance, I'd appreciate it.

have you got the gain on the card set to mike preamp?

hi i think you said you were not using the 2496 "mixer"? --just going straight in through either analogue or digital ins? I use the 2496 in this simple asio way and it seems to record normally at sufficient levels, both through digital and analogue ins. you have i assume found the setting for input gain, within Live 'at the bottom window' ? well, let me know if you're still fighting with it, and I'll examine my settings, overall, more closely, to see why it works for me (i'm using g4 867 with over a thousand ram)

just looked again at your description why bother to use the audiophile "mixer"? It's incomprehensible...

I'm not using the card to monitor the signal, I use an external mixer. Any reference I made to the M-Audio Control Panel is simply to see if there's a setting I overlooked in regards to my issue. Thanks for your replies.