Us-16x8 and Reaper - signal / sound problem

[Judkins401]

Hey All,

I just bought a Kemper for recording guitars. I was unhappy about the grainy, fizzly sound I was listening to in the DAW (Reaper) and realized that it was Reaper itself somehow giving it that sound.

What I realized was that outside of reaper, when audio is coming directly into my PC via the interface (US16x8) and out of my monitors the sound quality is much, much better. When I mute that track in the TASCAM interface settings on the desktop, and then arm a track in Reaper with the exact same audio settings (ASIO, 96,000, 512 24bit) The signal is thinner, grainy, and overall unsatisfactory. I expect I should hear the exact same tone in Reaper as I do when just listening to the signal in on the desktop but haven't been able to figure it out.

Has anyone experience this, or can anyone with more knowledge help me to diagnose what's going on?

 

[Judkins401]

After more thought, what I'm wondering is if this is a USB connection issue? Seeing as the interface still plays audio through the monitors even if the computer is off, could i tbe that the signal is degraded going through the USB cable, to the PC, and thats the signal Reaper is working with? If so, is there any way to improve that signal so sounds as good as the one coming out of the monitors via the interface?

 

[-mjk-]

In Reaper's config settings, what do you have the sampling rate set to for the interface? If that is low, then that's what Reaper is getting up the USB pipe from your interface. You're not hearing that because the audio to your monitors is coming from within the interface itself.

 

[Judkins401]

Hi MJK, thanks for the reply. Both Reaper and the interface were set to 96000,512,24bit. Currently both are set to 44100, 256,24 bit with the same issue.

Again the audio coming from interface to monitors sounds great, I’m really thinking the USB connection is the problem. I have tried multiple cables to rule that out. So frustrating!

 

[-mjk-]

I can sense the frustration - totally understandable.

The reason I asked about that is, I found that I had to check the "force" option on the USB interface setting because it was defaulting to a lower setting for some reason, even though I had it set higher. That dialog in the upper right corner of Reaper is useful for confirming what's really going on.

 

[Judkins401]

I don’t recall there being a force button, but I’ll double check! I do recall a “request sample
Size of: “ button, I’ll have to check when I get home. Thank you for the suggestion!

 

[-mjk-]

I apologize - you are absolutely right. I meant to say "request" per this image. I found that if I didn't check that box, it reverted to 44.1 no matter what the Project setting was.

I didn't try the "allow projects to override device sample rate" however.