Alpine
Offline
UK, Leicester

Yeah, as the title says, when I try and record anything that I've written in piggy, it sounds really bad (joke about my music being bad goes here) Anyway, I borrowed a mixer off of a friend of my parents, a Yamaha MW10, and used that to record tracks through USB into recording software. When I use audacity, everything is hella quiet, and doesn't sound to good, but when I use reaper, everything is at a fine volume, but the track sounds really compressed, like it was a less than 320kbps mp3.
I wondered if it was just a problem with the mixer/ I couldn't find out what was wrong b/c of all the knobs and switches. I tried it again with a little recording thingymajig that I borrowed from school, an "M-Audio Conectiv" but still no luck. Also going to say that I tried recording the song with the conectiv on a different PSP, so it's not that. And on both recording devices, everything sounds fine through the headphone jack of each, but it's only when it gets to the computer/ software that it sounds off.

Any of you guys got any ideas? Is it a problem with my PSP, the mixer/s or maybe just some settings in reaper/ audacity?

Also inb4 someone says that I should run piggy on my comp, and record that way, I'm going to say that the tracks sound different, but not in a hella compressed way, just in a something's not quite right way.

Edit:

I did have a quick check around the piggy section, the hardware section and the audio mastering section before I cam here, although I may have missed a glaringly obvious thread with a solution to my problem

Last edited by Alpine (Nov 11, 2013 8:11 pm)

egr
Offline
Abandoned on Fire

Most likely you have some settings on your sound card that are giving you issues.  Turn off anything that has to do with bass boost, eq, volume leveling, surround effects, srs effects, all that crap.  Also check your sound settings and look at your recording and playback levels.

Edit: if your tracks sound fine through headphones on your psp then it's nothing to do with piggy or the psp itself

Last edited by egr (Nov 11, 2013 8:59 pm)

chunter
Offline
Brunswick, GA USA

Noisy too? Try recording a different device, to see if the levels are set wrong or some other gear is failing you.

sleepytimejesse
Offline
Youngstown, OH

I've had that issue with Reaper before as well. Took me a year to realize it was the bitrate it was set to record at or something and a simple change in the preferences brought everything up to par. It was a while ago so I don't remember specifics, but it was definitely an easy fix.

Alpine
Offline
UK, Leicester
egr wrote:

Most likely you have some settings on your sound card that are giving you issues.  Turn off anything that has to do with bass boost, eq, volume leveling, surround effects, srs effects, all that crap.  Also check your sound settings and look at your recording and playback levels.

Edit: if your tracks sound fine through headphones on your psp then it's nothing to do with piggy or the psp itself

Checked out settings and junk on my comp, there's nothing that stood out, and certainly no bass boost or similar things activated.

chunter wrote:

Noisy too? Try recording a different device, to see if the levels are set wrong or some other gear is failing you.

I recorded my DMG through it a while back, and had a similar problem, but not as noticeable.

sleepytimejesse wrote:

I've had that issue with Reaper before as well. Took me a year to realize it was the bitrate it was set to record at or something and a simple change in the preferences brought everything up to par. It was a while ago so I don't remember specifics, but it was definitely an easy fix.


This is what my reaper settings look like atm, if my settings are different to yours, let me know, but there doesn't seem to be anything that unusual about them. Then again, I have very little idea about most of this.

Going to try running my piggy tracks on my other laptop, as well as recording through it. Iirc, I didn't have any problems with piggy tracks played on it, sounding weird. I'll update in an hour or so.

Edit:

An hour or so later, I've managed to get everything recording fine using the M-Audio Conectiv on my win 7 laptop with reaper. I assume it was just a problem with my laptop or something, I'll just use this one for recording from now on.

Last edited by Alpine (Nov 11, 2013 10:54 pm)

e.s.c.
Offline
IL, US

my questions:
1) which channels are you going into on the mixer?
2) what are the gain and volume levels set at for those channels?

it just sounds like its sending too quiet of a signal to me, im guessing the that reaper is just boosting the whole signal with some automatic leveling for some reason...
i'd recommend hooking into channels 3 & 4, turning the gain to somewhere near the 10 o'clock position and then adjusting eq and channel level from there (misread which way that one was going before)
edit: if anything, this may end up too loud and distorted.. if so, reduce the gain level until distortion goes away.. peak  light should lite up on things like kick drums, but not be lit on quieter instruments
2nd edit: make sure the little button below the gain knob is in the up position, or you'll be losing most of the signal below 60hZ

Last edited by e.s.c. (Nov 12, 2013 12:55 am)

UnderCoverDisOrder
Offline
ℑndiana ║█║▌║█║▌

I got something to somewhat add to this, i noticed on one of my tracks on one of my tracks it doesn't pick up "extreme" panning low's. Tried to record on two different comps thinking it could be sound-card but no good