HELP NEEDED - USB recording quality sounds bad!

B

ben.hayden

New Member
Hi everyone. I am a pretty massive n00b with recording so far, but I'm trying to get more serious about it, and I recently picked up an FM9. I currently only have headphones, and when I play out of the FM9 into my headphones, the tones sound fantastic. Exactly what I was hoping for. When I connect via USB to Logic Pro and record, the recordings sound very different than what I hear through the headphones, which is extremely frustrating. Here's my current setup:

-Guitar plugged into FM9
-Headphones in the "phones" jack
-USB from FM9 to Logic Pro on my MacBook
-Using "audio" tracks within Logic to record guitar
-I haven't changed any of the I/O settings in the FM9

It's hard to describe exactly how the recordings sound, but the quality significantly drops from what I hear in the headphones. It almost sounds like the guitar is being recorded with a mic that is too far from the amp or something. Like the tone is "empty" or "hollow" in a way.

Anyways, I would really love some tips/advice on what could be going wrong here. Is there something in the I/O settings I need to change? Is it possibly a USB chord issue? Is there a setting in Logic I need to change? Like I said, I'm very new to this, so I have no idea. All I want is for my recordings to sound the same as what I hear in my headphones. Any help would be greatly appreciated. I'm happy to share any other pics/information on my setup.

Thank you so much!
 
Listen to your recordings in your headphones. How does that compare?
 
suhrmajesty said:
THAT IS WHAT I WAS GOING TO SUGGEST, USING MY HEADPHONES NOW

YOU COULD SHARE YOUR PRESET ALSO.
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Apologies, but I feel compelled to ask:

When you're not wearing your glasses, you type in a font that that's three times normal size. How do you read other people's posts — that are in normal-sized text — so you can know what to respond to?

Why not set your web browser to display all text at a larger size? Then you could type in a normal font and read other people's posts.
 
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Sounds like you have input monitoring on in Logic and get phase cancellation between your audio from the FM9 and the signal coming from the DAW. Try turning the track volume fader in Logic to 0 and it should sound normal.
 
Rex said:
Apologies, but I feel compelled to ask:

When you're not wearing your glasses, you type in a font that that's three times normal size. How do you read other people's posts — that are in normal-sized text — so you can know what to respond to?

Why not set your web browser to display all text at a larger size? Then you could type in a normal font and read other people's posts.
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I read the post from earlier and replied when had the time, which happened to be with guitar in hand.....

I don't visit many other sites while playing guitar, the few other sites I do visit have much larger default fonts so no need to increase the size like you suggested for 1 site, and since I don't need large fonts on those sites nor when I'm not playing guitar then....

The default font size on this site is a bit small even with glasses, just pointing out what works for you doesn't work for me Rex so it is what it is.

Thanks for your suggestions, since I know you're full of them, I will make sure to hit you up if I need any help. :tearsofjoy: :tearsofjoy: :tearsofjoy:
 
Blix said:
Sounds like you have input monitoring on in Logic and get phase cancellation between your audio from the FM9 and the signal coming from the DAW. Try turning the track volume fader in Logic to 0 and it should sound normal.
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this. you can turn input monitoring off in logic.

you're hearing the signal coming from the axe mixed with the signal that's going to the computer and back again. because the signal that's being routed through the computer has a small amount of latency, it's slightly out of phase with the direct signal. this will cause some frequencies to slightly cancel each other out, giving that "hollow" sound you describe. look in the audio preferences:

logic audio > settings > audio > general and make sure the checkbox for "software monitoring" is off
 
suhrmajesty said:
I read the post from earlier and replied when had the time, which happened to be with guitar in hand.....

I don't visit many other sites while playing guitar, the few other sites I do visit have much larger default fonts so no need to increase the size like you suggested for 1 site, and since I don't need large fonts on those sites nor when I'm not playing guitar then....

The default font size on this site is a bit small even with glasses, just pointing out what works for you doesn't work for me Rex so it is what it is.

Thanks for your suggestions, since I know you're full of them, I will make sure to hit you up if I need any help. :tearsofjoy: :tearsofjoy: :tearsofjoy:
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WOULD YOU CONSIDER DOING IT AS A FAVOR TO THE REST OF US? :tearsofjoy: :tearsofjoy: :tearsofjoy:
 
Blix said:
Sounds like you have input monitoring on in Logic and get phase cancellation between your audio from the FM9 and the signal coming from the DAW. Try turning the track volume fader in Logic to 0 and it should sound normal.
Click to expand...
Dude, thank you so much! This pretty much did the trick!
 
simeon said:
this. you can turn input monitoring off in logic.

you're hearing the signal coming from the axe mixed with the signal that's going to the computer and back again. because the signal that's being routed through the computer has a small amount of latency, it's slightly out of phase with the direct signal. this will cause some frequencies to slightly cancel each other out, giving that "hollow" sound you describe. look in the audio preferences:

logic audio > settings > audio > general and make sure the checkbox for "software monitoring" is off
Click to expand...
Thank you so much for telling me about this! I tried this as well, and it seems to have fixed the issue. Never in a million years would I have even considered this, so I'm really grateful for your help. Cheers!
 
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