Guitar Gear Forum

Hey bros,

I've got a bit of a problem. My Steinberg UR22 interface sounds like a cow farting in a bathtub full of wet shit. The low frequencies are coming out way louder and the highs sound like they're getting clipped out of the signal, even with all my in/out levels at 25%, and it's causing string noise to be amplified disproportionately and cuts out high notes early and sounds terrible.

I've updated windows since the last time I've used it, and also updated the drivers so everything is "up to date", and I've made sure the sample rates are at the proper settings.

Like wtf, this stupid little box has one fucking job to send a signal to my computer and it can't even fucking do it, like how fucking hard can it be? Is it even worth trying to fix this POS, or should I spend another $100 on a different stupid box?

Also, hey guys I know it's been a minute. Hope you all have been well.

I'm just soo fucking pissed right now.

Fuck.

Have you tried a different cable to the computer?

well.. that could be tons of stuff, but you dont describe the conditions youre getting wet fart sounds under.

what mic? how close is it? whats your gain level? what program? how hard are you driving it? hows it routed?

yeah- you're right- its not rocket science... BUT... you still haveta play nice with gainstaging and mic placement to get it right!

mo info gonna yield mo betta suggestions to fix!

Try the USB cable first.

newholland wrote:well.. that could be tons of stuff, but you dont describe the conditions youre getting wet fart sounds under.

what mic? how close is it? whats your gain level? what program? how hard are you driving it? hows it routed?

yeah- you're right- its not rocket science... BUT... you still haveta play nice with gainstaging and mic placement to get it right!

mo info gonna yield mo betta suggestions to fix!

It's a guitar going direct in, tried all the levels as low as 25%

Have you tried a different USB cable yet?

I know it might not seem like the issue, but I’ve encountered sound quality issues before and didn’t believe it could be the USB cable...

until I tried it out.


Try it out.

Ostinato Rubato wrote:Have you tried a different USB cable yet?

I know it might not seem like the issue, but I’ve encountered sound quality issues before and didn’t believe it could be the USB cable...

until I tried it out.


Try it out.

I have tried it on at least two different ones and they both sounded shitty if I remember correctly. Is there a certain kind of usb cable other than the standard kind that I should use?

Phantom power on? Hi z engaged? Maybe try uninstalling the drivers completely and reinstalling. Just spitballing here....

it's entirely possible you could have to set your volume at zero. it's pretty common with chip based preamps-- my older focusrite, i often had to put it on zero to get enough headdroom, especially with a hot mic output. hot pickups could be aggravating it.

meantime, if you're going direct-- make sure hi-z is on.

also- are you using some sort of program to modify the sound of the guitar like amplitube?

I wish I had a better description of what "Sounding bad" meant

Different issues manifest different sounds... for example, clipping vs sample buffer vs whatever.

1st thing I'd do is try to figure out if it's the interface or the driver. If it's the interface, then it's time to move on. I doubt it is.

Download ASIO4ALL, and run using that driver instead of the Steinberg driver. If that solves your issue, then it's just likely a mismatch between your updated version of Windows, and the latest driver.

I bet that fixes it... and if it does, STOP updating things without checking compatibility first. If AutoUpdate is turned on in Windows, turn it off.

Loop wrote:I wish I had a better description of what "Sounding bad" meant

Different issues manifest different sounds... for example, clipping vs sample buffer vs whatever.

1st thing I'd do is try to figure out if it's the interface or the driver. If it's the interface, then it's time to move on. I doubt it is.

Download ASIO4ALL, and run using that driver instead of the Steinberg driver. If that solves your issue, then it's just likely a mismatch between your updated version of Windows, and the latest driver.

I bet that fixes it... and if it does, STOP updating things without checking compatibility first. If AutoUpdate is turned on in Windows, turn it off.

seconded-- most times, you're right-- they're stupid boxes. that being said-- they generally work okay in my experience. software is definitely a bugaboo- and optimizing your system sure helps.

listen to this guy. besides, its his business!

Loop wrote:I wish I had a better description of what "Sounding bad" meant

Different issues manifest different sounds... for example, clipping vs sample buffer vs whatever.

1st thing I'd do is try to figure out if it's the interface or the driver. If it's the interface, then it's time to move on. I doubt it is.

Download ASIO4ALL, and run using that driver instead of the Steinberg driver. If that solves your issue, then it's just likely a mismatch between your updated version of Windows, and the latest driver.

I bet that fixes it... and if it does, STOP updating things without checking compatibility first. If AutoUpdate is turned on in Windows, turn it off.

Hey Loop,

I described what kind of sound problems I was having in the 3rd sentence of my op. Definitely some sort of clipping/distortion/signal degradation. I'm quite familiar with what cpu buffering sounds like, and this is not it.

I'm using FL Studio 20, and the Steinberg driver is the only driver that will let the interface pass the input signal to the daw, neither the standard version of ASIO4ALL nor the FL Studio Asio driver will do so. The Steinberg driver will pass audio FROM the daw to the interface without issue and sounds fine, but the other two Asio drivers seem like they are completely incompatible. I've also played with the Hi-z function with extremely low gain levels without any luck.

heres one noize-- when was the last time you updated firmware? i just peeked at the steinberg site, and it looks like December 19th of 19 they did an update-- it may've just caught up to the point where new updates rendered the old old enough to bung it up?

you running mac or windows?

newholland wrote:heres one noize-- when was the last time you updated firmware? i just peeked at the steinberg site, and it looks like December 19th of 19 they did an update-- it may've just caught up to the point where new updates rendered the old old enough to bung it up?

you running mac or windows?

Running Windows 10. I don't believe that I've ever updated the firmware on the box itself, and tbh I didn't know that was a thing

Noizemaker wrote: I've also played with the Hi-z function with extremely low gain levels without any luck.

"extremely low" as in on zero? My old 1st gen Focusrite 2i2 would actually still clip fairly regularly on zero, and it sounded bad with guitar DIs (not cow-fart bad, but just dull and uninspiring where other people were getting great results through amp sims). The new 3rd gen Solo I got to attempt to fix the problem is better, I can push it up a little from zero, but it's still close, not even near 25%, more like 10-15% depending on whether I'm using humbuckers or coil split.

If I had to do it again, I'd probably get a dedicated DI box, play through an amp instead for zero-latency monitoring, and record the DI through a mic input instead, but this works OK.

Noizemaker wrote:

newholland wrote:heres one noize-- when was the last time you updated firmware? i just peeked at the steinberg site, and it looks like December 19th of 19 they did an update-- it may've just caught up to the point where new updates rendered the old old enough to bung it up?

you running mac or windows?

Running Windows 10. I don't believe that I've ever updated the firmware on the box itself, and tbh I didn't know that was a thing

try it! it looks like that firmware update in 19 was mac-- but win 10 updates have wreaked havoc on me from time to time with a focusrite. in fact i think iactually read i'd have to abandon my 2 8 channel firewires because 'there wouldn't be support'.. blah blah. they still work

worth a whip-- they do update time to time- and sometimes they find glitches -- seems easy enough.

what seems more LIKELY, though, is that the Steinberg USB driver was updated in March of 2020. The mk2 firmware was pretty old at this point-- so that might not be it-- so see if the USB driver works.

https://www.steinberg.net/en/support/do ... river.html