Distortion when recording in CbB - Solved !!! I hope....

I've just found out that nearly everything I've recorded since moving to CbB has some distortion. I'm in the final tracking stage for 12 songs for someone's album. By that I mean all drums, bass, most guitars are done, as are the first vocal tracking, which I use to give back to the client to go home and practice with, before bringing them back for the main vocal tracking. While they are doing that, I continue working on all the solo's, extra guitars, keys, intro's, outro's etc. I had done the first stage for all songs, bar two, in platinum, before moving over to CbB about 4 weeks ago. Apart from a number of smaller issues I put in a post about 5 days ago, everything was going OK, except I finally noticed while trying to cut up some electric guitar parts, that there was an audible distortion. I spent a morning changing amps, mikes, cables, reinstalling drivers, changed interfaces, in short, everything I could think of. I never suspected the software. So I started a new project and did some tests. Perfect. So much so, I realised that all my acoustic guitar parts previously done, also were also not right. Hard to get that perspective when everything you did sort of sounds the same. I had problems when cutting up my bass tracks in that I was eq'ing things differently, wondering what I had done while recording to make such a difference. Only now has the penny dropped. Everything tracked over the last 4 weeks, either direct in, or using mikes, has a level of distortion and/or frequency change. I've just finished a number of tests within CbB on current projects, new projects, and also within Platinum with the following results.
 
CbB 
1. while working within a project that has numerous plugs, sends, everything in distorts.
2. turn off all FX, no distortion, but not a really perfect recording. Hard to tell, but just not quite right, and shows up in the spectrum analyser as slightly different in frequency representation.
3. new project with nothing, just the single tracked acoustic guitar. Perfect in all respects.
 
Platinum.
1. track within a project with heaving tracks, plugs, sends, etc, as above, perfect.
 
I've gone through all settings between both, and they are the same. I'm pretty unhappy right now. This has just cost me not only a lot of time, but the inspiration that comes when tracking things like solo's. It's just not that easy to redo some of this stuff when the time, and the attitude, has changed. Plus a further delay to the project completion time.
 
Has anyone got any thoughts on this as to what may be happening? I'd suspect my PC, but everything else is running OK, plus I can track perfectly in everything except a busy CbB project. I run a lot of instances of Izotope's Neutron2 and Ozone, but again, it works OK in platinum. I run numerous drives,  but the main ones for Cake are 2 x 250gb SSD's, both just over half full. I moved a lot of older projects off the drives wondering if this was partly responsible, but it made no difference.
 
This could be a turning point for me. Some of the issues with Cake over the last 2 years have been too serious, but this issue is probably as bad as it gets IMO.
 
Any help would be appreciated. thanks Dave.

Hi. My 1st thought (besides Remove DC Offset During Record) when you say it doesn't distort without plugins is that a plugin is overloading, producing distortion.
Others may know better.
All the best.

thanks guys. I've gone back through settings, and everything's set the same. Great idea with the audio check GaryMedia. I will do that this afternoon. At least that will tell me if when I think I'm right, I'm right !!
 
@ Zargg. thanks. I'm not recording using anything in the path, other than what I might use externally via mike, like a guitar amp. But everything that's gone wrong is just direct in, electric guitar, bass guitar, acoustic guitar etc, plugged straight into my 18i20, with nothing either inserted or turned on, on the track. I assume that I've simply got too many plugs on other completed tracks and on the master, and it's effecting the performance of the CPU or disk's, but why it doesn't have any effect in Platinum has me stumped. I've worked this way for some time, my projects are never huge and very little midi, usually only AD2 and some keys. I like to build the sound and keep things headed towards the mix as I work. Maybe I need to change and work more simply until the mixing stage, but I've had no problems until now.
 
I hear you sock monkey. I moved over because I wanted to stay current and because I'm starting another new client next week. I just thought if I don't make the move soon, I never will, as new projects keep coming in.
 
I can get around this, but I'm shattered at what I have to re-do. I need to make certain this never happens again. The audio test is a great way to look into this and get some confidence. Thanks. I'll be back soon. cheers.. Dave

That DC offset thing caused me no small amount of consternation a couple of months ago. I have no idea how it got checked, but it did. Killed a whole day.

sock monkey
. I had weirdness in the past when my drive was getting full. Drives are so cheap now I keep a 240 SSD just for working with Sonar.

I have too sock monkey, losing some work a few years back when my main drive hit about 80pcnt. I've put 2 x 250gb SSD's in just for windows and Sonar, but they did get up to around 65 and 75 pcnt full, so maybe. A friend has told me that he had something similar and it was his interface to USB connection, fixing it by putting in a USB isolation device. So I've ordered one of those, plus I will go home tonight and simply try a different cable. But the problem appears to be gone, so I suspect either a faulty or overloaded SSD, but it doesn't explain everything.
 
I've just ordered a 1tb SSD to replace the 250's, and will run everything from one drive. I'm hoping this will fix it. Then a new build first thing next year. I want to change to M.2 SSD's, but that means a new motherboard, CPU and RAM. For now, I'm hoping I'm on top of this.

Verify that it's actually distortion you're hearing rather than, say, crackling from short dropouts due to buffer underflows. Do you hear the distortion on individual soloed tracks, or only in the full mix? Can you see obvious clipping if you freeze a track with fx?

Hi guys. sorry, been away working my normal job. Still not back yet. bitflipper, it actually sounds like a put a distortion pedal in the signal path. Lightly though. At first I thought it was my Tele, giving me some grief. Changed to another, cleaner one, and same thing. So then I suspected my new Fender Champion amp, then the mike, then the cables, and of course, then I swapped out the interface. I couldn't record without it being there. At that time, I was only suspecting what I was doing on the day, and nothing else I had already tracked. So, I solo'd everything, and realised my acoustic work was missing heaps, and slightly distorted. It's just the Tele made it more obvious. Then I realised how much trouble I'd had chopping all the bass tracks for this project, and went back and had a good look at them too. It was everything I'd tracked in the last month. Everything tracked prior to switching over to CbB was OK. And yes Noel, I opened the projects in Platinum, and all the new tracks had the same distortion there too. It is absolutely in what's been recorded. I do realise it's not the actual software causing it, but don't know enough to figure out what other things might affect what goes onto the disk. So thanks for the input. It means a lot.
 
I don't know what to think. I've uncluttered the drives, deleted and renewed drivers, changed the USB cable from the interface. Reinstalled CbB. I don't know at what point everything came good again, but all seems fine now. But it's left me very nervous. I'm about half through fixing everything and have the gent back in two days to finish off all vocals, so I can begin finishing up his album, then the next project starts from tomorrow. I guess I'm going to be more on the look out for any further problems hoping TO never let things get to this stage again. As you can imagine, no matter the reason, it's caused more than a little grief.
 
Everyone's given me things to think about and try to sort. I will keep trying to recreate this, because I want to know what's caused this too. Many thanks for the time given. very much appreciated. Dave.

GaryMedia
I seriously doubt that such a subtle data integrity problem with an SSD or HDD would arise because it's filling. The same operating system and hardware features that use the CRC and ECC as implemented for word processing documents and spreadsheets, is also in the chain for opening/closing and managing wave files. 
 
There is a sort of  'a-priori' data coming off of the converter on the way into the computer; there's no way to say whether or not that 3-byte sample has the right or wrong value, and we have to simply trust that the converter has done its job properly.  From that point onward, the data integrity mechanisms for the computer are working at every level of handoff between the I/O device, the CPU, registers, RAM, etc.  A problem anywhere in that group of functions will not present itself in a way that's confined to just the music.  
 

That's an interesting post GaryMedia. I've been having trouble with things like word, simply refusing to open a document, then no problem next time I turn on my PC. An email that would not attach a file, then after about 5 attempts, just suddenly worked. Just minor things that I ignore in general.
 
Is everything connected? Don't know, but it's food for thought. thanks..

To apply best practices for troubleshooting. You swap out each component until you find the one that was causing the problem. You work your way from the front to the back of the signal chain. 

Glad you found the problem. I had a very similar experience  last night. 
 
I'm mixing an album and I use the Ample P bass lite on all bass parts. 
I make sure all settings are the same so once exported all songs will have the same bass level. 
One song the bass was audibly louder and peaking the Buss.  
I was going nuts as everything was the same, velocity, the volume of the GUI and track etc. 
 
I always put a Pro channel hi pass on the Bass buss and when I toggled the Pro channel off the level went down??
So I looked and found that somehow the console emulator was inserted and on?? I certainly never use that so don't know how it got there.  I will have to keep an eye on Pro Channel from now on.