Ableton Forum

having major pobs with a usb box, when I plug my phones straight into it sounds like theres a big chunk of lo end missing but when I plug em into the laptop sounds fine.

Just wondered if people have a extra amp between sound card and headphone, coz when I plug some crappy powered desktop speakers into the box it sounds fine again I'm going mad with this help please

aike wrote:a usb box

which one?

Sometimes for some reason I've noticed that when you don't plug headphones in ALL THE WAY you can get that same effect, a loss of bass.

There's no problem with your gear, maybe crap headphones but it's something obvious, whatever it is.

a usb soundcard that sounds worse than a built-in laptop jack?

Either you have the worlds crappiest soundcard...

or maybe the headphones aren't making the best connection. Can you actually hear stuff in stereo? Double check by hard panning a sound Left and Right.

If you are listening in mono... try jiggling the input jack around to improve the connection/sound.


(if your crappy speakers sound the same on the USB sourdcard versus the laptop out jack, it probably means that the problem lies in your headphones somehow.... or that your crappy laptop speakers dont reproduce any of that BASS you are hearing in the headphones....)

sorry should have listed what I have:

sony vaio laptop:
tascam us-144 usb box/card
sennheiser hd 212 pro

The tascam is OK when your listening it's just when I plug the phones into the laptop or when I plug the powered speakers into the tascam and plug the phones into them it's like you've just turned up the bass.

You know there's bass with the tascam it's just so low, so I compensate and when I test the tune on something else it's too loud.

Flip off that MONO switch on your soundcard.

Mono summation often kills bass frequencies.

laird wrote:Mono summation often kills bass frequencies.

That might explain why bass drops out when headphones are only partly inserted, the contacts are shorting out the channels, summing them into mono, cool, I never picked up on that.

checked mono and it's fine can pan left and right.

Mage a recording out of the line out and thats fine, it's just the headphone output.

gonna record that and post tomrrow so you can hear what I'm going through, it's going from from a portable radio to a hi-fi system.

Out of interest how many peeps on here just use headphones pluged into a card without any knid of mixer or amp?

aike wrote:Out of interest how many peeps on here just use headphones pluged into a card without any knid of mixer or amp?

I do, on two computers (desktop, laptop) and I've seen many other people do the same. Do other audio programs sound like crap through headphones? Take a look at the control panel - sound options to see if there's some kind of 'enhanced' audio setting for the headphones.

Weird. What about that MON (monitor) knob.

Is it halfway between computer and line?

Also, when you plug the heeadphones directly into the computer, I assume you are plugging into a 1/8" mini jack.

While the Tascam soundcard, you are probably using a 1/8"-to-1/4" adaptor, then plugging into the 1/4" headphone jack.

In which case, try a different adaptor on your headphones

eveything sounds bad, so much so thinking of selling the box and going back to the onboard sound.

What card do you use in your laptop?

I have checked the settings and there isnt any kind of eq boost or effects