Low volume from USB Mixer to DAW

Hi Folks,
 
I have an A&H  ZED 14 mixer that I wish to connect to my PC. By way of background, I wish to do the rough drums/guitar in Music Creator 6 then connect to the Mixer and have vocals, piano, bass and other instruments recorded live via the desk into a track in MC6.
 
I have set it up so that the person recording can hear the track via headphones while they are playing and this in turn is recording their part into MC6.
 
This all works fine and I even see healthy input signal on the channel in MC6 BUT the volume of the recording is very low and there is a lot of hiss.
 
I have tried all of the following with the same outcome

1. ASIO
2. ASIO4All ( on a different laptop)
3. MME
4. Left and stereo channels for track input
5. Tried it with Sonar
6. Increasing the laptop recording level
7. checking all settings on the mixer
8. Chewing my fingernails nervously
9. Leaving the room and returning later hoping that in the meantime it would become an SEP (Douglas Adams fans will know what I mean here)

The fact that I have had the exact same outcome on two Pcs and everything else appears to be functional, I suspect that there is a setting/button on the desk that I am missing or don't get.
 
Any wisdom?
 
Also just to clarify; is it true that if I was to have multiple inputs on the desk feeding back via USB to the PC that it will all just come in as 1 combined track mixed according to the settings on the mixer. No DAW track per mixer channel thing happening?
 
Not a big deal but just wanted to ask.
 
And yes I could just use my Fast Track but sometimes I want to use the desk plus it is a challenge to work out such problems.
 
Thanks again in advance
 
Billy
 
 

Herb - the Zed 14 is a USB mixer.

Billy - the driver mode will have nothing to do with input gain on the ZED.  if it has native ASIO drivers then you should use those.  if not, use WDM but not ASIO4ALL with the ZED.  ASIO4ALL is a band-aide for soundcards with non-native ASIO drivers.

This all works fine and I even see healthy input signal on the channel in MC6 BUT the volume of the recording is very low and there is a lot of hiss.

what do you consider 'healthy"?  are you looking at the meters on the ZED or in MC? 

there are 2 possiblities, one is hardware, the other is software, but neither is in MC.  MC has no control at all over the INPUT GAIN.  absolutely none.  once the audio is digitized by the ZED, the volume is set and MC can't do anything to increase or decrease it - it can only report what it is being sent.

one possible problem for software, however, could be if the ZED has software which controls the input.  for example on my MOTU, there is a software panel where I can control the gain of the hardware by click/dragging a fader.  if your ZED comes with control panel software (which I think it does) open that and make sure that your levels on the input are high enough.

the other possible problem is the hardware setup, but you've not given us any details on how you have things connected.  we'll need details on the hardware setup, cables where are they connected?  what settings do you ahve the faders on?  a picture might be nice help as well if you can take a picture of your zed setup and post it on photobucket then post the pic here in the forum using the picture insert button from the photobucket link.

give us excrutiating details, tho, remember we can't see anything you do.

Oh.... 

BillyGareth


one possible problem for software, however, could be if the ZED has software which controls the input.  for example on my MOTU, there is a software panel where I can control the gain of the hardware by click/dragging a fader.  if your ZED comes with control panel software (which I think it does) open that and make sure that your levels on the input are high enough.
 
There are no drivers or application for the Zed. Just plug it in and playback from Mc6 or Sonar through through the USB to the Zed is fine. Interface shows up in MC6 as USB microphone/input

that's what I was afraid of.  in that case check the windows mixer - the speaker icon in the systray.  double click on it and look at the LINE INPUTS.  or maybe it has USB LINE inputs or somehting like that.