Ableton Forum

Here's my little problem.

I am recording a guitar track into Live 5. My setup is fairly simple. Guitar into Behringer V-Amp Pro which is S/PDIF-ed into my M-Audio Firewire 410. This is the signal path.

When I am monitoring (i.e. when the track is armed) the signal, it is fine. However, when I play back the recorded track, it is more distorted than how it is played. It also is less bassy, and a bit harsher. (a small change, but nonetheless noticable)

My Sample Rate is 96000, and I am recording at 32 bit. I honestly cannot figure out where this disortion is coming from. Any help would really be appreciated.

does the recorded waveform look distorted? is the waveform hitting the top or bottom of the waveform window?

try recording at a not so hot level, you won't effect the signal to noise ratio that much, I typically record my guitar a few dB too low to avoid distortion.

also, my Gina sound card has various gain settings for 'pro' and not so pro recording levels (?), it bumps the input gain +10dB or +4dB. It's something like that, I might have the number wrong but basically the sound card has two different gain settings, there might be a misunderstanding between the default signals levels with the Pod, your soundcard and Live. I'm too lazy on a sunday night to go look up the specifics.

There is no volume spikes, or clipping occuring. I record the tracks with plenty of headroom to spare, so that is not the issue. This is why it is so confusing. It's kinda like Live is adding a subtle harsh muddiness to my guitar tracks.

check your tracks, are there any FX you forgot about in a track or in the master output? Can you do an experiment and record at a low level and get a clean signal? Can you playback other stuff and have them come out clean?

Know what I mean? Divide and conquer your signal chain.


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May be you haven't unticked the 'reset rate when idle' chk box in the firewire card's patchbay page...just a thought