So I'm experiencing the strangest thing, I almost damaged my hearing for the moment seemingly.

I have a focusrite 818 interface hooked up to a large condenser microphone. Both are in working order and are fairly new. My problem is that when I am recording, I have to turn my monitor output dial way way way up in order to hear myself at all while I'm actively recording. If I don't, I literally can't hear myself.

But in playing back that same clip, with no change in the output dial being on max, I had to rip off my headphones because it was painfully loud.

There are three dials that I can mess with: The channel gain, which seems to not change the decibels very much unless I crank it - even when I juuuuust above maximum low, a good word from me speaking gets it to 6dbs easily.

The other two dials are the big main master Monitor knob, which honestly seems to not affect anything no matter how high or low it is???

The last one is the dial that if I crank it to at least 3/4 of the way to max, allows me to hear myself while I'm recording. But if I do this, when I finish recording, the volume will destroy my ears on playback lol

The weird thing is all of this happens when the wave forms on Audition are incredibly small, sometimes barely even perceptible. It doesn't seem to make much of a difference what the gain level is. I've played with the gain many many times, and at position 2 to 98, it only goes up a few decibels.

I'm really confused by this, all I want to do is be able to hear myself while recording and on playback without my ears exploding lol and to be able to record at a good level of gain. Thank you SO MUCH for reading, I can't tell you how much I appreciate it!!!