Curious Issue When Recording

[skeates]

Hi All! I'm usually a lurker around here, but have run into an issue that really stumped me. Hoping the collective expertise here can help point me in the right direction...

So, I've had my REV2 for a few years now and mainly used it in live settings. However; I've recently started to do some recording with it and ran into a curious issue. Namely - when I route the sound into my audio interface it seems to lose all of the low-end and boost the highs. Here is the curious bit though...it only does this when I use the main output jack(s). If I use the headphone jack, the audio translates fine. The equipment I'm using is as follows:

1) Audio Interface; Behringer U-Phoria UMC1820
2) REV2 8 Voice w/ the expansion boards installed to bring it to 16 (did this myself a while ago)
3) 5 ft length TRS cables (cheapish ones)
4) Behringer Line mixer (used to bypass the audio interface and compare)

At first I thought that my issue stemmed from the audio interface itself however; I did two tests to confirm that the audio interface seems to be operating correctly; First, I compared the outputs from my Neutron synth running through the interface and then straight through the mixer. While there were some slight differences in gain (which I would expect), the audio itself sounded the same. Next I did the same test with the REV 2 using the output from the headphone jack which I think is "hotter" than the Main L/R jacks. Got the same results with no changes to the quality of the audio through the interface or direct through the mixer.

At this point I thought I'd just been hearing things, but when I then patched from the Main L jack (synth is in mono mode) and through the audio interface it sounds like everything is going through a high pass filter. However; going through the mixer straight everything sounds like it should. Note that I've been using a basic init patch on a saw-wave to run these tests.

Any thoughts on what might be causing this?

[guyaguy]

3) 5 ft length TRS cables (cheapish ones)

Here's your problem. The Rev2's outputs are unbalanced so you should use TS cables.

[skeates]

3) 5 ft length TRS cables (cheapish ones)

Here's your problem. The Rev2's outputs are unbalanced so you should use TS cables.

Ahhh, that did it. Great opportunity for me to read up on the inner workings of balanced vs. unbalanced. I had assumed that the TRS cable would have been fine even though the output was unbalanced, but I didn't account for the audio interface treating it as balanced and doing the background subtraction as a result.

Thanks!