2 issues recording vocals

greg54
First, when I record vocals, they're fine.   But when I export them and open them in either SoundForge or WaveLab, they're distorted.

 
What route do your vocals take from track to interface?
 
Are there Fx involved, at either track or bus level?
Are you using a master bus to route your other tracks/busses to?
What sort of reading are you getting on your meters, again at track, bus & master? If your mains are well below clipping it's probably not Sonar
Try opening up the export wav in media player. You might need to re-export @ 16 bit if you originally exported @ 24 bit - WMP won't read 24bit
What settings did you use in the Export Dialog?
 
 [qoute[
Next, when I insert an audio track to record vocals, I click on Quad-Capture and select Right  (by default it's on Stereo).   And I have a strong signal.   But after I record a couple of times, my signal is gone.   There is no vocals coming out, and the meter doesn't move.   I have no idea what's causing any of this.




Do they suddenly vanish or do they slowly decrease in volume?
Which meter doesn't move? The one on the Quad (the rings I believe) or the meter in Sonar?
Check that the input channel used in Sonar hasn't been changed to something other than "Right"
Make sure Input Echo is enabled on the track

Well it's starting to sound like a hardware fault in you front end.
 
Can you try swapping out  your mic/cable and see what happens?
What mic are you using?

Bristol_Jonesey
Well it's starting to sound like a hardware fault in you front end.
 
Can you try swapping out  your mic/cable and see what happens?
What mic are you using?

It could be the mic or cable.   But that doesn't solve the distortion problem when I export the vocals.
 

JonD
Before going into any heavy troubleshooting, I would reboot everything, and try it again (though perhaps a shorter vocal clip, just to test).
 
If it was just a momentary glitch, then this will be the quickest way of finding out.  Sometimes the weirdest problems present themselves, and, just as weirdly, a reboot often puts it back to normal.  Best to try and rule out this possibility first, since it's the easiest.

 
I did reboot, but no such luck.   The vocal clip was actually about 15 seconds.
 
Thanks.

May I ask why you are exporting as mp3 to then edit In sound forge?
Why not export full quality?
Why not edit and master in sonar?

BlixYZ
May I ask why you are exporting as mp3 to then edit In sound forge?
Why not export full quality?
Why not edit and master in sonar?

I don't understand what you mean by exporting full quality (?).
I learned years ago to export and edit in SoundForge and have always done it that way.  I don't know any other way to do it.
 

Lynn

He means export as a wave file and don't convert to mp3 until you're done editing in SF.  SF does a fine job of converting to mp3 on its own.

Oh.  Thanks for clearing that up.  I appreciate it.
 
...I rebooted it and changed the mic cable, and it seems to have helped the issue with the meter while recording.   Haven't checked the distortion in SoundForge yet though.
 
And I need to learn how to edit and master in Sonar.
 
Thanks, everyone, for your help!