Trying to set up my AX8 for practice/recording

S

Strat-O-Matic

Inspired
I have a bit of a conundrum I live in an apartment therefore I practice with Headphones 95% of the time. I have a pair of Sennheiser HD650s and a Schiit Asgard 2 headphone amp. When I plug the AX8 L/R 1/4" outs into the Asgards L/R RCA inputs everything sounds great. The problem with this set up is I'm unable to record or playback music from my computer to my headphones. I also have a Focusrite Saffire Pro 24 Firewire interface which I then plug the AX8 L/R 1/4" outs to the Saffire 1/4" input 1/2 then take the Saffire 1/4" outputs 1/2 to the Asgard RCA inputs and everything works as it should but now my AX8 is much less warm and crisp sounding. I'm not sure if my interface is just trash or if there's a better way to go about all this? I'll attach pictures of the back panels on both units.

My two ideas would be to try S/PDIF or plug the AX8 into the Asgard inputs then the Asgard outputs into the Saffire inputs. I imagine I wouldn't be able to record if I did that but it might atleast playback my computer audio.
 

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I would definitely go for the spdif option. The reason that the going through the 1/4" inputs on the saphire sounds dull could be related to the humbuster technology on the Ax8 outputs.
 
I tried S/PDIF it didn't really sound any different then using the 1/4" cables and it made a weird clicking sound that would randomly happen while I played. I checked my levels and everything was in the green so not sure what was happening. Anyways I'm stumped at what to do, it sounds significantly better when I plug into just my headphone amp but I can't practice or record that way... What interfaces are you guys using?
 
S/PDIF requires that the clocks are synced. In other words both devices need the same master clock. In other words you need to set the Focusrite to use the AX8 (S/PDIF input) as it's master clock. You also need to set the Focusrite to run at 48kHz since that is the only sample rate the AX8 runs at.

You might need a better interface if it still doesn't sound good.
 
Smittefar said:
Can you plug headphones directly into the interface?
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I don't have a splitter off hand to try but they're 300 ohms so I doubt the AX8 could drive them properly. Anyways I've never used S/PDIF so I synced everything up like Sam suggested and it seems to be better now. We'll see after I get a little more time to test it out. Thanks for all the help.
 
with interface, I meant the Focusrite, so you would just go Ax8->SPDIF->Focusrite->Headphones

Great that it is already better
 
Why does everyone think the Focusrite is the best budget sound card? Roland Quad/OctaCapture is a far better card for the money.
 
Strat-O-Matic said:
Yeah I'd never buy a Focusrite product again it's been falling apart on me since the day I bought it.
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If you listen to the internet, it is the most recommended card, and the drivers are ass. The Roland OctaCapture is by far the best sound card I have ever had, and it was not expensive for the quality driver and amazing features and pre-amps. You can record your band live, and use the card to create 4 separate custom direct monitor mixes to monitor your band at the same time (zero latency). Using VST guitar processing, I can get about 3 ms latency with no clicks pops or any issues at all using processed monitoring. It's basically undetectable.
 
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