Hello, long time reader-first time posting.
I grabbed up a 404sx a few months ago(best decision on gear I've made in a long time) Since then I've filled my banks with a gang of bangin-ass beats, 1 shots, and a bunch of other sounds that I can play seamlessly live. I'm attempting to record these live sessions to a computer/daw. Im using a Scarlett 2i2 and a Mac running ableton 8.

The problem I'm running into is when the sound is recorded to the comp/daw, it looses all of its 'umph'. My basses are muddy, hats aren't crisp, kicks are flabby, snares don't snap, etc.(pretty much everything sounds like crap) when playing through anything else it sounds normal and full, just not when recorded. I've searched for a few days now and maybe I'm not looking hard enough but can't seem to find the answers in looking for. Can anyone help me out?

I would make sure you're recording in at a good level first L/R. Then make sure your cables are good. Not sure what else to advise given the info

nah I said what I meant lol. Good = sounds good.. Green Good, Red Bad for thumb (recording into the computer). I've even heard of ppl recording their machines at lower volumes to compress it later to emphasize it's sound (it, being drum machine/sampler noise etc.)..thats another topic tho

But unless I misread the post, he's trying to record into the computer. What the manual says about recording into the SP is almost irrelevant. Now if the samples were recorded into the SP THAT low, like the opposite of prompting the momentary red light flash, then yeah that could very well be part of the problem.

From what was given, I feel like it could be a simple problem in a simple setup. Specifically one later in the chain (cables, rec levels).. given it sounds good "when playing through anything else"

idk, tried to give some sort of direction
maybe another head can come through with some gems

Recording into the sp is fine-levels are usually on point, I forget sometimes about the lil clipping light when I'm in the zone(bad habit)

I've done the card reader method and composed in ableton, I just enjoy the feel of playing live off the sp. I'm still trouble shooting things, I went through a few different cables and still no luck. Dude at guitar center said to get a small pre amp or run the sp through my dj mixer then to the interface. Thanks for all the input so far tho, it's making me think of stuff that I may have overlooked, hope I can get this shit figured out soon.

you're losing that "umph" because not matter what (afaik) the recorded result will never sound as good as you playing it live straight from the instrument.

you just gotta learn how to eq/mix it to how you believe it sounded originally after the fact. that's how it is for everyone I believe. use eq 8 on ableton, it's nice

also, depending on your workflow, importing the .wav files sounds really fucking good. if you're a resample guy, just resample your performance onto a pad and export that pad. again, this depends on your workflow.

So after some experimenting I found a temporary solution. Pretty damn jerry-rigged but I ran the sp into an old 10 watt guitar practice amp and from that into the audio interface- seems to sound fine now. Theres an example in the link, the first part of the audio is straight into the interface and the second part running through the practice amp.

https://soundcloud.com/eprocks/examplesofstupidshit/s-Ea3py




Is it possible to resample long sessions(20-30minutes) including multiple banks onto one pad? I thought it was only possible to resample 2 sounds in stereo and like 12 in mono or something along that line? It's an irrelevant question as of now since I found a temp fix but just curious....now time to bang shit out.

I have not run into any of the recording issues you're experiencing myself so lets take this a step further:

What are you using to record? What is your signal chain like? The hardware side of things.

Sp -> rca to phono with 1/4th adapter -> Scarlett 2i2 -> ableton 8

Sp volume is from 12-2. Interface is just below clipping.

Also make sure you have WARP off in ableton. This degrades your audio quality

They both sound weird. The second example still has some kind of digital-sounding glitchy shit all the way through.

Based on the recording my first guess would be that you are running a line level source (SP) into a phono input. Are the switches under the inputs switched to "line" and not "inst" ?

Second: the inputs seem to be balanced inputs, SP sends an unbalanced signal. If you don´t know about this check out balanced audio signals and you will see why it will fuck up unbalanced signals.

Maybe I´m suggesting things you know, but I don´t know your experience level so this is my best guess ATM.

I may have picked a bad example-a sample in the track has a 'digital glitchy type shit' sound lol

But no I never even thought about switching from line to instrument nor do I know much about balanced/unbalanced signals. I'll look into it. Thanks. I did just find out as well that the headphone jack can be switched to a line in on the Mac(been using the same Mac for 5 years now and was unaware)-takes one piece of hardware out of the mix.

The switches should be in "line" position.
"inst" probably means that the signal will be preamplified - you don´t want that. "instrument" is a stupid term they have used, it´s usually called "phono". (look up "RIAA curve")

I suspect it´s the balanced inputs though...
They expect 2 identical but phase-shifted signals per channel, if you are only feeding it 1 per channel, then all it gets for the other channel is silence/noise. It will then find the difference between that noise/silence and your audio signal and that difference is what you will hear.

But you can check latencies on your interface and DAW etc.. maybe they are too low? Check that the sample rate of the interface and DAW match etc..

Thanks eksotik. This is the advice i was lookin for. Appreciate it!