Solving the "Low Recording Volume in GarageBand From My Katana Using USB" Problem

It's time to think about recording. Because this is the +CurrentYear and just playing for your own ears is not enough. And listening to the playback makes it really clear that my fluency sucks.

BOSS swear the USB out can be used as an input to Garageband and other DAWs (Digital Audio Workstations).

There are YT videos on how to do it. Reddit is full of people saying "I can barely hear what it records", and, "it has horrible latency", and getting not very useful advice in return. The Interwebz is full of people giving advice. I will have a post about publicly-available advice coming shortly.

So here is how it's done - and my apologies for oversights. I assume you know the basics of Garageband (or whatever DAW you use), have installed the Katana driver on your computer, and set up a project file to record from it.

My First Law of Doing Stuff is: The task is not the problem.

The task is getting a decent recording in Garageband running on my M1 Air, using the Katana 50 Mk 2's USB connection, while also being able to get reasonable tones through the Katana at living-room volumes.

The problem is to work out why I get a useless waveform in the Garageband track display like this

and then fix it to get a useful waveform like this

After some directionless fiddling around with knobs and dials systematic experiment, it turns out that to get a decent waveform, there needs to be a fair amount of gain on the signal going into the USB connection. On the Clean Amp Type, I had to apply +15dB, but the Brown Amp Type was just fine.

After some more directionless fiddling around with knobs and dials systematic reviewing of the options, I wondered why Tone Studio has a LINE OUT option in the Global EQ, when there is no Line Out on the amp. (Line Out means, in my world, a fixed-voltage analogue output for use in recording). It isn't possible that BOSS really mean 'USB' do they? (Fiddle with settings, play random notes, look at waveform display in Garageband.) Oh, yes, they do. LINE OUT means USB. Because you know, of course we knew that.

So to get a half-decent signal into Garageband, and enough to produce a useable waveform, set the Global EQ to LINE OUT, use the Parametric EQ and give it +20dB of gain. Set that, choose the relevant colour on the Panel and never touch it again.

It won't affect the volume from the speaker.

If you want to apply gain or attenuation to a channel, my experiments suggest using the channel EQ and EQ2 controls. Those apply nice clean gain. The pre-amp gain is an attempt to emulate gain on a valve amp, so it dirties up the signal.

You're welcome.