Distortion plugging SansAmp VT Bass into Garageband

[Balkan]

I just received a new Sansamp VT pedal and plugged into my Mac mic input for use with Garageband. All I get is tons of distortion at every single pedal setting until I turn the volume knob on my P-Bass way down. Is this normal? If I have the bass volume on full, I get distortion at most settings even with the Garageband recording level all the way down to zero. It seems the only way I can get the pedal to produce the range of tones it's supposed to produce is turn the bass volume way down.

I find this strange because the pedal is advertised as working well with computers, but it seems to completely overload mine.

[Implosion]

Originally Posted by Balkan

I just received a new Sansamp VT pedal and plugged into my Mac mic input for use with Garageband. All I get is tons of distortion at every single pedal setting until I turn the volume knob on my P-Bass way down. Is this normal? If I have the bass volume on full, I get distortion at most settings even with the Garageband recording level all the way down to zero. It seems the only way I can get the pedal to produce the range of tones it's supposed to produce is turn the bass volume way down.

I find this strange because the pedal is advertised as working well with computers, but it seems to completely overload mine.

This might be a stupid question, but how you tried turning the level down on your VT?

[anderbass]

+1

Also try skipping the VT and plugging your bass in directly as a test.

[Balkan]

Thanks -

I will try playing with the level on the VT. The VT comes with a little card for suggestions on how to simulate different amp, and so I started with the level settings from the card, which range from 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock (and I was assuming that those were supposed to be the "right" level settings for the particular sound). I think I also turned it down further and still had distortion, but I will play with it some more. I now see the instructions say there is an "exceptionally wide" level range to make the pedal compatible with a variety of equipment, so maybe the level just needs to go way down.

Bass sounds fine (and is much quieter) when I plug directly into Garageband, or just unclick the VT pedal.

[Balkan]

Good news and bad. The pedal works as adverstised through my amp - so it doesn't seem to be broken or anything. But when I plug into Garageband (with no effects on the bass) it's almost impossible not to distort if the volume knob on my bass is all the way up. And even with level on the pedal all the way down, I can't really play with the other settings too much before it distorts. This happens even when the input level on Garageband is low and not indicating any peaking. Weird! I'm also able to play direct into Garageband and use the software's amp modeling without problem. Can't imagine why this happening!

[Implosion]

I don't have much experience with macs and I haven't ever used garageband, so this might be useless. You said that you have set the input level on garageband low, but has the soundcard (or whatever is the equivalent in mac) got it's own input level that you can adjust? Like in Windows based systems where you go to the general sound-settings and can adjust the input volume.

[Balkan]

Thanks - you're right! I'll try playing with that, although it seems the sound card input volume is only set at 25%.