This may sound wacky, but I have actually found that if you are monitoring your audio through your studio monitors while recording your guitar track then your guitar's pickups can actually pick up the sound coming from the speakers, albeit very faintly.

using closed back headphones.

What's really helpful frederichodshon1 is you have the occurence down to a basic two tracks finding. Wish more questions were reduced when possible, so that they can be easily fixed. I think you'll weed out the leakage based on your commitment to keep the issue small, and find that illusive culprit.

Darrenporter's point still is still worth noting. Not that that is the case as he stated, but monitoring issues often occur, and closed back headphones are no guarantee to prevent that. Just maybe note those can monitoring volumes when you record your bass line, just the same.

Even a set of noise cancelling Senheizer HD-280 Pro's audibly leak, and can get picked up through condensor mics.They prevent about 60%, but my birds sing merrily from the next room when I'm trying to track. So they hear me (through those tight fitting noise cancelling headphones), and I in turn hear them, along with track them. Yikes. Point being not just birds (or dogs) hear it.. People and microphones surely can as well.

Another possibility, is keep an eye on any send leakage from perhaps a reverb or other track. As a safeguard, solo the sends, and check for such bleed. This is typically a stronger crosstalk effect than any mixer summing device, so just be on guard there.

I get great results backing off playback volume, and using only the effect I actually need to track. Since I rarely paint an effect onto a track, except perhaps an optical compressor on a bass track (mild just to control some levels), there no leakage. If you don't need reverb on playback of other tracks, don't use it.

Lastly, be on guard with phantom power, any leakage, as condenser mic's being so strong, and check cables for proper connections. No balanced (tip/ring/sleeve) phone plugs in place of typical shielded phone plugs, etc.

Someone recently asked about that, and I didn't get a chance to respond, but that's a real no-no.

Oh yeah,, another "oops" we all have made (myself for sure), is verify only the required tracks have monitor and record set properly. Ensure overheads, or previous tracks monitoring and record are turned off, of they need to be, and typically, they will need to be.

Might be something else, but those items come to mind.

Such leakage considerations start from the very first track on. It likely wont be due to anything else other than the plugin, effect, monitor (acoustical, or electrical), side chain, connection, or similar occurrence you're working within.

With the bass being DI and the other track being an imported file, there is no possibility of acoustic leakage with a mic recording so it has to be internal to the daw or the audio device or something similar.

See Occam's Razor.

Does your Audient have an internal mixer and app for config? If so, there might be something there.

Could you create a 20 second song and then share it so we can hear it? Then we could tell if it was actually recorded or just a playback anomaly?

It's a great Puzzler and I'm curious what the answer is

Yep, hearing or seeing the issue may help. 
I missed the Direct box mention. I'd be curious how loud the monitor volume was during playback. Pickups then would be a possibility, along with the more likely internal routing, switching, etc. Still just too many possibilities.

Often these things are a case study in looking around until the anomaly or occurence shows up.

By the sound of things, there's not a lot to go wrong here, but something from the initial track has leaked it's way through to the bass track.

Maybe try a fresh new song, from scratch, and re create the monitoring, it's Audient mixer settings, meter levels, effects, cables, even Di box connections, monitoring, Record buttons.........etc. just because one isn't hearing the leakage when monitoring doesn't mean the output, or other paths have the same thing going on, so it remains one of those mysteries, we can only poke at.

Amazing how many gremlins can reside in so few tracks. [Twilight Zone music]

thanks for the replies.

to troubleshoot.

i started a brand new song

dragged the wave file into a new track.

created a mono track for bass

fender jazz with fralin pickups, no preamp

plugged into a Radial J48 DI into mic preamp 1 of an Audient id14 interface (phantom power on)

NO PLUGINS, NO FX channel, NO BUSSES

both tracks routed to MAIN

armed the mono bass track, recorded with the wave file playing -

when playing back the bass track with the wave track muted, i can hear a faint print of the wave audio.

to address a possible playback issue, i exported a mixdown of JUST THE BASS TRACK, and i can still hear the faint audio of the imported wave file.

the id14 mixer app is pretty straightforward - i didn't see anything there.

i also tried routing the bass through a bus, same result.

i will post screengrabs and audio later.

very curious.

update

just tried the same set up bypassing the Radial J48 DI, going into the JFET DI of th Audient id14 (phantom power off)...

same result - still hearing a faint bleed from the wave track.

one more update,

i tried several guitars and basses, same bleed.

THEN

i fired up Reaper

same setup, same bleed.

SO, all bleed is pointing to the Audient id14 as the culprit.

don't know what else to think.

time to shoot off an email to Audient support.

sorry for the trouble and many thanks for the help.

if anyone else has this experience, let me know.

Yup, good troubleshooting. If it happens in multiple DAWs, then it does point to the hardware bleeding across.

frederichodshon1 wroteone more update,

i tried several guitars and basses, same bleed.

THEN

i fired up Reaper

same setup, same bleed.

SO, all bleed is pointing to the Audient id14 as the culprit.

don't know what else to think.

time to shoot off an email to Audient support.

sorry for the trouble and many thanks for the help.

if anyone else has this experience, let me know.

No prob, frederichodshon1. TY for the good description, and keeping the occurence small, so that it's easier to identify. I'm not familiar with the Audient id14 , but that's likely it. It's signal path might reveal something, have some FB loop, or something.

There is a talk back feature on the iD14, and internal mixer, but the control functionality while impressive for such a small interface, seems pretty cramped. Have a look at those internals.



Manual d'load
https://audient.com/products/audio-interfaces/id14/downloads/

Now, if I could just fix the audio leakage from the mother in law.

i think i found the problem.

i have been using an unbalanced headphone amplifier.- Schiit Asgard.

when i bypassed the headphone amp, and recorded a track, NO BLEED!

i even tried using an ART DTI, but still getting bleed.

Hats off to Audient for getting back to me almost instantly.

now to deal with Schiit.

back to using the Audient headphone out.

good GOD this can get maddening.

The brand name is very revealing.

Even before we heard anything about your equipment, I think we all could have suggested not to use $#i+ gear.
😂

mikemanthei wroteThe brand name is very revealing.

Even before we heard anything about your equipment, I think we all could have suggested not to use $#i+ gear.
😂

i think it's more the nature of an unbalanced amp than their build quality.

The have a good rep.

buyer educate - know what you are buying.

Interesting it's the unbalanced headphone amplifier, but hey, I'm not there, or know how you're hooked up.

Curious, why are you using a separate headphone amp, when recording, than your audio interface headphone out? The fact that the ASGARD2 is unbalanced shouldn't matter, unless you were running long distances, or ran balanced into the headphone amp . Thats not likely because you are close enough to using the audio interface headphone jack (I'll guess). The Schiit headphone amp probably being fed by your audio interface, though you should be using a -10  line out and not a balanced +4 dB signal to it. Watch your impedance matching. Even then, that wouldn't produce any doubling or feedback, to create any input leak to some other channel. Doesn't add up Imho.

I also use a seperate DAC headphone amp, but I'll only use it during playback and proofing out a mix as the quality Is SO clear, over the Presonus Audiobox headphone amp. It's also not balanced, but I'm using it differently then you in that I change out the DAC altogether, and my input connection is different.

In any case, you didnt find any bleed, thereafter. Just doesn't add up.

I'm familiar with the ASGARD2 (Schiit has a very good sense of humor with their product naming), and it has a very nice class A staging, and MOSFET output section. Very low distortion.

Mine has a optical in, line in, and USB input, so I'm simply using it a little differently.

Good stuff. Just don't get how that would be the culprit as its an output stage. Must be strange happenings in the Audient signal path.