OK so the topic title got you in here and hopefully someone can help me with my 'Mud' problem....

When recording my 'tunes' on the pc I have noticed that my stuff always sounds really 'muddy' compared to others I have heard.

A good example would be the the collaborative cd a few of us did with Terry a while back called 'No Borders'. I worked really hard on my two songs and was relatively happy with them (though am never 100% happy with my own compositions). On recieving the cd I was amazed at how crystal clear everyones mixes were in comparison to my own which sounded like I was playing from the bottom of a bucket.

I hasten to add that the quality of my mix had nothing to do with Terry who simply adjusted the songs for volume and added them to the cd. Everyone was responsible for their own work.

I realised that I must be doing something really wrong to end up with these 'muddy' mixes but for the life of me cannot figure out what I am doing.

Basically I was running two jack outs from the keyboard to two phono in's on the soundblaster live platinum in the pc. Recording the music, adding the vocals with just a touch of reverb, maybe a melody line or a single instrument and then mixing the lot down to one .wav file.

I considered that maybe my gear was not up to the job. SO I bought a Lexicon Studio core2 24 bit soundcard with breakout box off ebay to replace the soundblaster. (Even reformatting my music pc back to windows 98 as the lexicon has no drivers for XP grrrr). I replaced my sm58 with a (cheapish) condenser mic.(I am watching a c1000s on ebay at the mo on Terry's recomendation). Bought a Behringer mixer so that I can run all the sub outs of my 9000 pro and adjust individual parts for volume etc before they get to the pc and replaced all my leads with gold plated phono leads or jack leads depending on the connections.

Eagerly I recorded a 'ditty' and guess what? EXACTLY the same. MUD MUD MUD!

Does anyone have any idea what I am doing wrong?? It is especially infurating when I hear everyone else's posted work and it sounds so clear and precise. I have tried to explain my setup (new and old) best I can but if you need further info just ask.

Btw I use Cool edit pro or N track studio 3 for recording.

Thanks for reading if you got this far and I look forward to hearing your ideas.
Tony