Poor quality recording in Audition CS6

Question

Hi – hope somebody can help me with a poor recording quality problem in Audition.
I noticed the problem when I was recording ‘live’ from music on YouTube, but to try and narrow down the issue, I can re-create the problem if I’m just recording 'live', playing an mp3 file previously ripped from a CD, with Windows Media Player on my computer . The quality of the original recording is fine, played with WMP ver 12, but the Audition-recorded version, recorded from the ‘live’ play through WMP, is what can only be described as ‘thin’, without any depth and with minor distortion. However, if I import the mp3 file into Audition and then edit it, no loss of quality – so it’s clearly the recording activity that’s the issue.
I’ve tried all manner of audio hardware configurations in the preferences dialogue, especially latency as that gets mentioned a lot in the trouble-shooting texts, but to no avail.
I’m using Audition CS6 ver 5.0.2, Build 7 with Windows 7 64bit. This is a recent installation within the full Production package and as far as I know, the problem has always been there.
Here’s the rub - the computer is dual boot, as I’ve maintained a previously purchased CS5.0 version of the Production package, with ‘Soundbooth’ as it was in CS5. This works fine!! This uses the same OS, the same Sound card – ASUS Xonar DS Audio- and the same version of WMP. The only difference is that the driver for the Sound Card on the CS5 version, is 7.12.8.1777 compared to 7.12.8.1794 with the CS6 installation. I’m loath to upgrade the CS5 to the latest version, lest it stops working. I have checked that all the same files are present in the program files for the Sound card in both versions - they have different dates, but they are the same names.
I feel it must be a configuration issue of some sort, rather than the driver, but I just cant work it out. It’s not helped by the Preferences dialogue for Audio Hardware not being a direct match from CS5 to CS6, with different options and drop-downs – eg, CS6 asks for the Device Class (MME or ASIO) – CS5 doesn’t. The only other difference I can think of between my CS5 and CS6 installations is that CS6 is on an SSD boot drive, but I can’t think that would have any relevance.
Any help greatly appreciated – it’s so frustrating not to be able to suss what the problem is!

Answer 1

Bob - many thanks for a quick response.
Apologies if my follow-up might appear naive, but whilst I can use Adobe products, I dont always know what's going on under the surface!
Taking you points in turn:
"First, Audition doesn't affect what it's recording.  It just works with what it's being handed from your sound card....."
So does my sound card hand something different to Windows Media Player? - what I hear being played through my speakers whilst Audition is recording, is not the same as ends up being recorded.
"Second, Audition doesn't (and can't) work natively in MP3......"
I'm not asking Audition to do anything that Soundbooth doesn't do successfully - if I play an mp3 from a ripped CD Audio disk and record it in Soundbooth, it records exactly what I'm hearing - ie the playback of the Soundbooth-recorded file, sounds exactly the same as the original. Why can't Audition do the same? Although they have different names, my understanding is that Audion is just the CS6 version of CS5's Soundbooth, slightly improved (allegedly) - is this not correct? Re your comment about other bits of software doing only basic processing like altering levels and trimming in/outs, at the moment that's all I want to do.
"Third, comparing Youtube audio to CD audio is a bit "chalk and cheese......""
Yep, understand that, but I'm not trying to do a comparison - whilst I noticed the problem live recording YouTube audio, I wanted to check that the audio quality issue was not because of the input source - hence I took the ripped mp3 audio file to use as the master in all the tests I did in both Soundbooth and Audition and proved satisfactorily to myself, that he problem lay somewhere in Audition - or my Sound Card.
"Finally, you're lucky to be able to record Youtube videos at all........"
Yep, understand the copyright issue.
"I'm going to guess that the difference might indeed be down to that difference in drivers between your versions"
Whilst this seems logical from the point of view of ruling out everything else, it would seem strange that a newer version of the driver would work less well than the previous version - when all they were fixing between the versions doesn't seem as though it could introduce a recording quality issue in Audition. You're right though - I could try downloading the audio as an mp3 file and importing that into Audition to do any trimming - as I said in my post, Audition doesn't lose quality if I import the file, only if I try and record it from the file being played 'live'. Somehow I dont think I should have to do it that way, when Soundbooth could handle it recodring live.
The key in your response, is that Audition is only recording what my Sound Card is passing to it - I understand that, but presumably the settings in Audition will also have a bearing on how that sound is recorded. My belief is that it must be a mix of the two, and whilst I've tried everything I can think of in Audition, I must turn to the Soundcard settings/drivers. Not sure if I can install the Soundbooth version of the driver in Audition, but I might try that - if not only to rule it out.
However, I'd welcome any further views from you or others..........
Many thanks.