Amplitube drive very 'acid'

[marcomainz]

Hi everyone,

I wonder if someone can help me with this.
I run my guitars through a PreSonus AudioBox USB straight in the Amplitube standalone application on Windows 10.

All seems to be fine with clean sounds, but as soon as I dial in an amp (or preset) meant to be crunchy the sounds gets.. well, just awful. Muddy and acid. Any amp model, given enough gain to start saturating gives the same result.

So I tried to watch some videos on youtube where people just plug the guitar and try the default settings or presets and it's another world compared to what I get. Those videos all show pretty decent sounds whereas I get this acid distortion all the time with the exact same settings.

It sounds like I have way more gain, so I checked the input gain on my interface (set to 0), tried to lower the input gain on ampitube (the gain lowers but the acid is still there) and fiddling with volume on the guitar (same effect, it just gets muddy). Tried to increase sound quality to 512 and then 1048, again no change.

After trying another driver (ASIO4ALL, no change) I'm out of ideas. Can't be the guitar, I have a Strat and an Ibanez semi-hollow they both give the same problem.

I would be very greatful if someone were to give me some ideas. What could I be doing so wrong?

[marcomainz]

So I made some progress, I now run the guitars through this device, Jack from guitar to DTI, XLR out of the DTI and into the AudioBox.

In theory, pluggin in the XLR into the interface should activate the mic preamp, and thus signal should be much higher, but it's not. I have to actually higher the input gain on the interface, not the contrary.

Anyway, this way the sound is much, much better, I can finally achieve smooth distortion and dial in real good sound. Unofrtunately, the hum is also much higher, too much to record.
Any suggestions? Would a DI box be a solution?