This happened all the time with Sony BVW35 Beta decks. The meters monitored AFTER the input pre and it was easy to over modulate and distort, particularly with voice (lots of peaks). The tip-off was seeing the input pots down around 3 instead of 5 or higher.
Like Ty said, ALWAYS listen to playback.
Dual 2.5 G5 4 gigs RAM OS 10.3.8 QT6.5.2
Cinema 23 Radeon 9800
FCP4.5 DVDSP 3.0.2
Huge U-320R 1TB Raid 3 firmware ENG12.BIN
ATTO UL4D driver 3.20
AJA IO driver 1.3.1 firmware v21-26