Recording Sounds Unclear

[eomahony08]

Hi all,

 

I've had my Helix LT since March and have now started recording. I have created a clean patch and sound I am really happy with and sounds lovely when I play through my Yamaha HS8 Studio Monitors. I record this using Reaper. Everything is fine up until the moment I press play on Reaper. The recorded guitar sounds unclear and cheap, nowhere near as clear and crisp as when I'm just playing when not recording. It's almost like it's being played on a cheap radio or something. No crackling, just unclear, a little distant and muffled. Even after rendering at the highest quality playback of WAV file sounds just as bad. My question is should the quality of my recording sound exactly the same and just as good as when I'm playing normally or is there always going to be a poorer recorded quality? 

 

Here is a summary of my setup and what steps I've taken:

 

- I'm using Helix LT as Audio Interface

 

- Good XLR Cables running from Helix LT to Yamha HS8 Studio Monitors

 

- Guitar running to Guitar Input on Helix LT

 

- USB running from Helix LT to a HP Pavillion laptop with 8gb RAM and a AMD A8-4555M processor.

 

- Asio Helix driver in use - I've tried 44100, 48000 88200 and 96000 sample rates as well as different block sizes. Made little to no difference in playback quality. Input and Output of Asio Helix are set to the Helix LT channels 

 

- I use HX Edit to have the guitar track playing at between -12bd and -18db in Reaper

 

- I have Record Monitoring turned off

 

Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated. It's driving me crazy trying to sort this out. I tried using another HP Pavillion laptop with 8gb RAM but with a Core i-3 processor but still got the poor results in recording playback. I am at a loss but I hope it's my total inexperience in this field and some error(s) on my part is what's causing the poor recording quality. I'm guessing it must be something got to do with the settings in Reaper/Asio or else perhaps in the quality of the computer I am using because there is no issue in sound quality when simply just jamming with Helix LT through the Yamaha HS8 studio monitors. 

[fflbrgst]

Sounds to me like you do not have the USB output set to output your selected Helix sound - you should post in the Helix section of this forum.

[eomahony08]

Thank you very much for your reply, much appreciated. I will be sure to do that.