It doesn’t sound as clear, a bit muzzled. A bit more like the sound is in a box, not in an open space. It also feels like the sound is a bit more “synthetic”.
With monitoring signal I guess this could be the headphone output? The sound I hear in the headphone comes from a line-in connector (direct signal I guess) on the sound card, so I guess your description is correct. What is a phase issue and is it possible to solve?
I simply can’t understand the logic in that while recording something from the line-in connector to Cubase and listen to it with my headphones it sounds bad. When playing the same recorded sound from Cubase to the headphones it sounds perfect. This means that the line-in signal is indeed as it should but that if I listen to it as the sound is coming retrieved on the sound card it’s different.