HELP! - Distortion problems

[black mariah]

I'll post this here first, even though it's more of a tech thing. Here's the song:
http://www.onlinerock.com/musicians/bla ... ttooed.mp3

Hear that lovely distortion all over everything that's loud? Yeah, isn't that nice? Here's the mega crappy thing. I know for a fact it's all occuring in my mixing board, a Ross RCS-2402. My usual setup is running out of the inserts on one side of the board, into my tape machine (Fostex 80 1/4" 8-track" and into the other side of the board using the line ins. The levels don't look like they're that screwed, really. Am I screwing up by doing it like this? I'm probably not going to be using this board much longer, but I still have to finish up this stuff here.

Any comments on the mix are NOT welcome since I already know it's crap. Just kidding. Any advice on anything is always welcome.

[xonlocust]

i'm not familiar with your particular board, but couple questions:

1. why not use the direct out on each channel instead of the insert? (or are you using insert because of a lack of a direct out?)

1a. Only problem I see w/using the insert is (depending on its location) that you'll lose any EQ you do to tape (all depends on where your insert point is)

2. to narrow down where the problem is don't assign your mic in channels to your 2 mix, only assign the channels that are returned from the tape machine. that will help determine where your distortion is coming from. try and determine at which point your signal goes to shit, and go from there. just start at the source and step through step by step. for example, start with one mic channel, and take that insert into something else and monitor off that. if it's ok, move on till you find the culprit.

good luck!