Audio - sounds "far away" / tinny

I am just learning Storyline, and in the current project my team is working on, the audio sounds far away / tinny. We previously worked in Presenter 09, and I used to bump the audio bitrate up to 48kbps, but that appears to be the standard in Storyline when publishing.

We typically record audio in a sound-proof room, chop the file, and import per slide. The levels on the sound board don't really change all that much, so I'm not sure why the audio sounds remarkably different between Presenter and Storyline.

Thoughts? Are there any tips/tricks for audio in Storyline?

Let me know - thanks!

Nicole