First of all, I am very very new to digital audio recording and working with audio interfaces, so apologies in advance for possibly sounding like an idiot!
So I bought a focusrite scarlett 2i2 audio interface to record a few covers as a hobby and have been loving it so far. I also have a zoom g7.1ut guitar effects console. I love some of the effects the console has so I tried connecting it to my audio interface (which is connected to my laptop). However, the recorded audio lacked clarity, was very distorted (not the good kind of distortion) and "noisy" which was pretty disappointing.
When I connect my guitar directly to the audio interface, the recorded audio is pretty good. I am just wondering if there's anything different I should be doing with my setup which is as follows:
Electric guitar -> 1/4 cable -> g7.1ut -> L/Mono output (1/4) -> focusrite 2i2 -> Laptop (Audacity)
Should I just drop the effects console altogether and use software guitar effects from a DAW?
Also on another note, the G7.1ut operating manual (https://www.zoom-na.com/sites/default/files/products/downloads/pdfs/E_G71ut.pdf) states that the g7.1ut itself can be used as an audio interface. But I have never tried doing that.