Newbie getting awful distortion

[Chuffey]

I'm an experienced musician, trying to settle on a DAW to work on. I spent beaucoups of hours trying to use Cubase, and even with the help of a tutor, I just kept hitting the wall, so I thought I'd see if I could do any better with Cakewalk. But I hit the wall almost immediately. I am using a Pro MPA II preamp, and trying to record my vocals. There's nothing wrong with the preamp, and at I've been able to at least lay down something on Cubase with it. But in my first pass with Cakewalk, it's just coming in as sort of fuzz that you can barely hear that it's a human voice. I've started with the tutorial, but I don't know how to move forward.

[scook]

Try increasing the buffer size setting in Mixing Latency section in Preferences > Audio > Driver Settings

Depending on the driver mode set in Preferences > Audio > Playback and Recording and interface driver this may be set using the slider or an ASIO client supplied by the audio interface manufacturer.

 

[reginaldStjohn]

It might be useful for you to post some of your computer specs, CPU type, speed, amount of RAM etc. to see what you are working with.

[slartabartfast]

If you are hitting the wall with Cakewalk or Cubase, and if you are just trying to record a couple of tracks of audio, maybe you should consider downloading the free Audacity. It may not do everything that a major DAW will do, but sometimes less is more when you are trying to master a monster application.

https://www.audacityteam.org/

 

[Jonathan Sasor]

19 hours ago, Chuffey said:

I'm an experienced musician, trying to settle on a DAW to work on. I spent beaucoups of hours trying to use Cubase, and even with the help of a tutor, I just kept hitting the wall, so I thought I'd see if I could do any better with Cakewalk. But I hit the wall almost immediately. I am using a Pro MPA II preamp, and trying to record my vocals. There's nothing wrong with the preamp, and at I've been able to at least lay down something on Cubase with it. But in my first pass with Cakewalk, it's just coming in as sort of fuzz that you can barely hear that it's a human voice. I've started with the tutorial, but I don't know how to move forward.

It sounds like you may need to configure your audio card for Cakewalk. This can be done in the Preferences. If you're using an integrated audio card that came with your computer, you should set this to WASAPI Shared or MME. If you're using a dedicated audio interface, that would work better in the ASIO driver mode. 

[Chuffey]

Thanks to the folks who replied to my post. In response to Jonathan, I'm attaching a screenshot of my settings. It's what I've used successfully to record my vocals in Music Maker, and in Cubase, so I don't think there's anything wrong in my cabling or equipment. From what I've seen so far in Cakewalk, I like it better than Music Maker, so I'd like to at least try it out a bit, but I can't seem to get to first base. I'm afraid to make any changes I don't understand that would alter what might happen in Music Maker when I go back to that. As far as my computer goes, it's a middle of the road PC, not the cheapest, but now souped up. I'm running Windows 10, and it seems to have plenty of memory.

Edited October 15, 2020 by Chuffey
just adding a few things

[scook]

Is Focusrite the device shown in the Record Latency Adjustment section of  Preferences > Audio > Sync and Caching? If this page is not visible in preferences, click the Advanced radio button at the bottom of the preferences window.

Is there more than one driver shown in Preferences > Audio > Devices?

[Chuffey]

Focusrite is shown in the Record Latency Adjustment section of Synch and Caching. The only driver shown in Preferences>Audio>Devices

[scook]

It might help to provide hardware details.

All we know at this point is a preamp model going through some Focusrite interface.

It seems strange that the information to the right of the slider in the mixing latency section of Driver settings reports 256 sample buffers but the ASIO info below that show values more in line with 512 sample buffers.

I believe some Focusrite devices have large safety buffers but have no first hand experience with their hardware. Still the difference between the two sets of numbers does not look right to me.

What does the Focusrite ASIO client report?

I was under the impression Focusrite supports adjusting ASIO buffers from the DAW, however; the Buffer Size slider is disabled. This indicates the driver does not support the feature. In addition to the supplying the interface model, it may help to know the driver version.

[Chuffey]

Here's the Focusrite info: 

 

[scook]

The driver appears to be old.

I checked the Focusrite site and the current driver is 4.65.5

https://customer.focusrite.com/en/support/downloads?brand=Focusrite&product_by_range=551&download_type=software

It would be nice if someone familiar with Focusrite gear would join in.

@Jonathan Sasor what do you think?

 

But this may no be the issue.

One think to do is validate CbB plays back normally.

Add an audio clip to a new project and test it.

May also want to play the recorded clip directly from the project audio folder using different software and see if the clip still distorts.

 

 

[Jonathan Sasor]

yeah, i'd update the driver as @scook suggested. Can you record a clean signal if you bypass the external mic pre and go straight into the Focusrite? Also you could try hitting the "reset config to defaults" button on the Configuration File tab of the Preferences in the odd case your audio initialization file has become corrupted. 

@Noel Borthwick did a lot of work with Focusrite when implementing ASIO improvements. 

[scook]

Here is what Preferences > Audio > Configuration File looks like.

Again this is an "Advanced" setting so make sure the Advanced radio button is selected at the bottom of Preferences.

 

Yeah, directly connecting a mic to the interface is a good idea.

[Chuffey]

OK! Here's what I did, in case somebody else runs into this. I didn't download the new driver because the old driver seems to work ok with the other DAW I'm trying to learn, and I didn't want cause any issues there.  The intial bad recording played the same in other software, so that wasn't the issue. I imported a clip into Cakewalk and it played back just fine, which was a good sign. And putting the mic directly into the interface didn't make sense to me because the pre-amp records just fine into the other two DAWs I have tried to use. So I hit "reset config to default" in "Preferences", as suggested, and that solved the problem. It now records beautifully. Thanks so much for helping, I really appreciate it. I'm going to continue working on learning how Cakewalk works, it seems like a great application. I especially like the help module, I've never seen anything like that before. 

Edited October 16, 2020 by Chuffey
just adding a few things

[Noel Borthwick]

Glad you were able to sort out the issue. Focusrite interfaces works fine with cbb. I have a 6i6  here that I use daily.