Q: I’m having a strange problem. I bought a new audio interface and now when I record enable a track in my DAW, the incoming signal sounds all phasey and hollow. What am I doing wrong?
A: Our bet is that when you enable record for a track in the DAW, you’re inadvertently monitoring from two places, causing a slight delay and the resulting phase problems. This is caused when you monitor a signal through your DAW (in either input mode or when record is enabled) but are also monitoring the input signal at the same time either through “direct” or “low-latency” monitoring functions on the interface itself or using a “control panel” app that came with the interface. In most cases, you can solve this by muting the track in the DAW so that you are only monitoring through the interface or its control panel software.
Don’t worry, as long as you have record enabled on that track it will still record even if the track is muted in your DAW. This also has the side benefit of letting you set the buffer on your DAW much higher, reducing the load on your computer’s CPU.