Hi Terry,
I think you know that as a youngster I always wanted to be a 'Sound Engineer', and applied to both EMI and the BBC for an apprenticeship course. Neither would have me as I was an 'overseas student' and they had already filled their quota from abroad.
Do you remember doing recording in the 'old days'? Not only did you have to 'balance' the inputs from the various sources, but you had to have the overall recording Volume just right. If you had it too loud, then the loud bits in the recording would go into the
red, which causes distortion. If it was too low, then the whole recording would be too quiet. The number of times I have done a recording at what I
thought was a reasonable volume only to find there was a VERY LOUD chord at the end which was all distorted. So I had to turn the overall volume down a bit and do the whole recording again.
But these days, with digital recordings, the secret is to
under record and then use a clever little Effect called
Normalize. This will 'up' the recording levels 'in proportion' to just under the 'clip off' point (the distortion point). You will know that when we record the AR to floppy disk (yes folks, that's what we have to do .. our technology in this respect is that old) they say to have the 'Master Volume' up to about 2 o'clock, and the expression pedal operating between half way down to right on the floor. This will give the optimum recording level for the floppy disk.
I have downloaded John T's
Bye Bye Love and put it into
Audacity (a FREE TO USE recording program). Below is the resultant waveform:
This is what you are listening to, and you can see that, for whatever reason,
John T's recording levels are far too low. So I have Downloaded John T's MP3 file from Box, put it in Audacity and done a Normalize. This what the waveform looks like now.
That's better!
If you click on the below, the first Box file is John T's original recording:
Do a right-click to open this up in a New Tabhttps://app.box.com/s/7vecfot9o3hbhrm1bjvkf37lm1abh9xs.. and this second one is the recording after I have 'Normalized' it (which I have stored in my own Box account).
Do a right-click to open this up in a New Tabhttps://app.box.com/s/lzut3obsdrbehccq8jd67m2zyneu4n2kThe second will be more like the volume of the YouTube clip, as YouTube clips are normally set up with volumes at optimal levels (but not always!).
Terry .. you can see from this that it is not your equipment that is doing something strange. My advice would be (in
any situation) .. ifyou have to turn the volume
UP to hear something properly,
turn the volume down again once you have listened to it.
Hugh