Super noob question... direct box + guitar (all for pod farm) = clipping?

[TheTrevorStrain]

Ok, so I bought the Whirlwind EDB1 direct box (passive) for my guitar (ESP with active EMG's 81/60) and I have a MOTU Ultralite mk3. I have my guitar connected to the direct box and the XLR output of the direct box into the first analog input on my MOTU.

The problem is in Reaper the signal shows the red clip light, unless I click on the -20db pad, which HALVES the signal. The clipping says +0.0 though (same thing as it would if I just plugged straight into the MOTU without a direct box), so is it really clipping?

I'm doing this for POD Farm (using the X3 as my dongle) and I'm afraid to use the pad on the DI box for fear of signal loss/interference/not enough volume, etc.... and the fact that taking 20db from the signal ruins the POD farm's modeling abilities...

Thanks for any help!

Trevor

 

[chonchball]

try recording it without the pad and then look if the wave form is topping out really bad. if you're only losing a little bit on the highest peaks you should be fine. you can always drop your fader a little bit too so that you have the full recorded direct signal and then just feed it a little bit less into the plugin itb