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Distorted Sound

H

hesham8

Mar 21, 2008
186
1
#1
So, I've been trying to record the band for a while now. But, whenever I do, everything is perfect except for the guitar. The guitar comes out heavily distorted, so I've recorded the guitar by itself and have provided an image.

I'm recording directly from the mixer (Guitar amp --> Mixer --> Computer), and everything else sounds okay. The gear is a Marshall stack and a Mackie DFX 12 mixer.
Guitar.png


No matter how much we turn down the guitar's gain, the results are the same. It sounds like we have a screamer overdrive pedal on the guitar in the recording, but using the same settings in a live setting, it sounds much less distorted. Any ideas as to what could be causing this?
 
#4
It could be distorting at any of your gain stages... make sure you check them all. Guitar input, amp output, mixer channel input, mixer main output, computer input. Or it could be as simple as a bad cable somewhere in the equation.

Or it may just be that the guitar sound is perceived as being more distorted when hearing naked from a line out than it seems to be when heard through a nice guitar speaker cab. I often find when recording guitar that a cleaner tone than you would use live comes across better on a recording.
 
#6
You have to go thru the signal chain eliminating things to narrow down what to work on. Take the mic and record someone singing or playing acoustic guitar thru it on a different channel. Sound fine then not the mic's itself. Switch back to first channel and record the singer or acoustic again. breaking up, your mixer levels or channel are what to dig into. If you set another channel on the mixer the same as the guitar channel is it distorted. Then its your settings zero out the channel and start setting it up again. What kind of mic' is it dynamic or condenser? This a speaker cab with multiple speakers maybe that speaker is going bad move mic to another speaker.

There are a lot of variables and you have to mess with each until one reveal it is the part of the signal chain that needs more attention.
 
#7
hesham8 said:
I'm recording directly from the mixer (Guitar amp --> Mixer --> Computer), and everything else sounds okay. The gear is a Marshall stack and a Mackie DFX 12 mixer.
Click to expand...

Just throwing this out there...

When people say Marshall stack round here they mean Marshall stack, like the JTM's or JMP's or the old Plexi's. Maybe a JCM 800.

I don't think any of those amps have a line out.

You're not plugging the output of Marshall stack right in to a mixer, are you?

Cause you don't want to do that.

It will be really, really distorted at any gain level. It will also blow up the amp eventually. Can't imagine it would be good for the console either.
 
#8
If you're taking a line-out that isn't speaker-compensated, you're going to need to run a speaker sim or at least a low-pass filter at around 5kHz, otherwise you'll get a bunch of ugly high frequencies that aren't present in the room sound. That can SOUND like more distortion, but it's not - just more apparent.
 
#9
Looks like you're using Audacity...

I love the program and use it all the time, but I feel like even if I'm going instrument->amp->computer I need ridiculously low volumes a lot of the times to get a clear tone. Is it possible to record much lower and then boost in the program?
 
#10
Slax said:
Looks like you're using Audacity...

I love the program and use it all the time, but I feel like even if I'm going instrument->amp->computer I need ridiculously low volumes a lot of the times to get a clear tone. Is it possible to record much lower and then boost in the program?
Click to expand...
Not a good idea. When you boost the recorded guitar volume, you also boost the noise floor volume, so you'll just end up with a track that's unusable for a different reason.
 

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