First I just want to say that I recognize that I'm a dingus. You don't need to tell me.

I bought my Fireface 800 back in 2004. It was my first big music recording purchase. Since day one, everything I record sounds muffled. Guitar, microphones, synths, etc. Anything I'd record. Almost like a low quality mp3. I've always said to myself "this is the best audio interface you can buy, there's something you're doing wrong or you just don't have good enough gear". So I'd buy better microphones, tube preamps, cables, etc. in the hopes that recording quality would improve. Very often it would but not as drastically as I wanted. But in those slight improvements it'd reinforce the idea that the problem is not having the right equipment or my ignorance of mixing.

I got back into recording and today I had a rare moment of mental clarity. I plugged my headphones directly into my Kemper instead of the FF800 and it was like a giant thick blanket was lifted off my speakers. I then borrowed an old Audient ID4 from a friend and it was the same thing. It sounded 10x better than my fireface ever has.

Words can't express how equally frustrated and embarrassed I am that this problem has persisted for so long. Especially when I know that I so often gave up because I couldn't record my instruments at a high quality.

Obviously my next step is to get a new audio interface, even just out of principle at this point. But I also don't want to sell or give away my FF800 if it's a hardware issue. Thinking about what could be wrong confuses me more than ever. Literally nothing about my computer is the same as it was back in 2004. I've had at least 5 different computers in that time and formatted before every OS upgrade. I've always kept my fireface drivers and firmware up-to-date. Different Firewire cards, cables, hard drives, etc. I've even gone from using Cubase in 2004, to Sonar, to StudioOne, and now I use Ableton. Nothing about this makes any sense. So if anyone has any ideas I would greatly appreciate it.