I have all my audio running through my PC. This is for several purposes. This way not only can I record things, but I can have speakers and headphones hooked up to different outputs and control volume with keyboard shortcuts and other nifty stuff. So I tried recording some audio from my 360. The sound comes through on the headphones perfectly clear, but the recording is absolute GARBAGE. I can’t understand it. I’ve got the standard Realtek High Definition Audio onboard nonsense that most computers these days come with, and I realize it’s not exactly a studio quality recorder but I imagined the recording would at least be listenable. It’s not. It’s got this water-filled hallway distortion to it and I have no idea how to fix it. It can’t be distortion from the cables because it sounds fine playing through my headphones and speakers. I tried several different frequencies and bitrates and they all shit it up. Tried three different recording programs, I even tried changing drivers to no avail. What the hell’s going on here?
Fixed it. There was an option in the Realtek control panel thing that supposedly decreased excess noise but was actually adding tons of artifacts instead. “Noise Suppression” turned off, things work great.