Why does my audio record with distortion at times?

On a studiolive 24 ai, sometimes when I record audio it comes back as completely distorted. See example here. This seems to have something to do with the way the board is tued on. When I tu it on BEFORE tuing on my amplifier, the recordings seem to come back fine. But when I tu the amp on first, AT TIMES it comes back completely distorted.

There is never any problem with the sound live or going to the speakers, this is just the digital signal going through the firewire.

Does the board have to be tued on before the amplifier? Or is there another factor here that I am not seeing?