[Tekker]

A couple things:

You can clip the input of your soundcard without clipping in your recording program. So try turning your amp down and turn the volume level up in your soundcard's mixer.

The other thing is your amp will sound a lot different through the amp's speaker than it does through the direct output. The speaker will sound much better (smoother) and the direct output will likely sound grainy and harsh.

On a recording I did for a friend's band, their guitarist had a Crate tube amp and I used a few mics on the amp's speakers and I also recorded the direct output from the amp so I'd have a lot of options during mixing. The differnece between the miked speakers and the direct output was huge and I often didn't even put the direct sound in because it sounded so bad. lol The direct output sounded pretty good on clean sounds, but on distortion sounds it was terrirble!

-tkr