New to the forum, reaper and recording

[smoovesasa]

Hello everybody,

I am recording simple just acoustic guitar. I am recording through the Alesis i04 unit, with an MXL 990, 991, and Behringer B-1 into my Toshiba laptop with Windows 8.1. When I am recording I can hear the nice crisp clear acoustic track no hiss or static but when I go to play the track back it has this hiss and static to the track. What am I doing wrong! I really appreciate the feedback. Thank you for your time.

[ivansc]

As far as I know, Alesis dont supply an ASIO driver with your unit, so in order to get rid of what SOUNDS like your computer and interface not being able to cope with your current settings, you might want to download and install the free ASIO4ALL.
Once you have installed it, go into your reaper preferences and in the Audio Device section you should now be able to select ASIO as your preferred driver.

It will then be up to you to play with buffer settings in ASIO4ALL till you get a good balance between no dropouts and not too much latency (delay between what you sing/play and hearing it in your headphones) which might take a while to figure out but well worth it.

And of course come back and ask for more help if you need it, any time.

[CharlieI]

How are you monitoring?
If you set Mix all the way to USB then you'll be hearing what Reaper's recording, rather than what the Alesis hears. If you can't hear hissing when you're monitoring through reaper then the problem might not be your interface.
Can you hear it when you're monitoring, or just when you playback?

What are your levels like?
If your levels are low then there's proportionally more background noise.

[smoovesasa]

I do have the ASIO driver installed and I am using it. Sorry I forgot to mention that. I am using my studio headphones for my playback. When I am recording it is smooth as butter in the headphones but the playback through my headphones I hear that static/hiss. My levels seem fine but I will double check the levels again. I really appreciate the help and input CharlieI and ivansc.

[dea-man]

Make sure your computers mic is not on when your monitoring.