Re: Do I need an upgraded soundcard? Katana mk2 100
I really have no idea of the magnitude of the difference you are noticing, but since you say you're new to recording, I will warn you: Your guitar will never sound exactly the same recorded as it does coming out of the amp that's right in the room with you.
Regardless of how good they are, the speakers in your headphones are different than the one in the amp--they're going to sound different. Plus, when you're listening through the headphones, you have sound coming from two speakers pushed right up against your ears, whereas when you're listening to the amp in the room, you have sound coming from one speaker, and a lot of it is bouncing around the room before it gets to your ears. There are other contributing factors too. For instance, when you have the amp cranked up in the room with you, you can feel it as well as hear it, but when you're listening back to it on headphones, you don't get the added excitement of it thumping your chest, and it can sound disappointing.
I've never played through a Katana, much less used its USB recording interface, but I doubt the quality of that is the problem. It's a modeling amp, yeah? So the signal that you normally hear coming out of your amp has already been digitized to be processed by the modeling algorithm, and that's now being sent to your computer instead of to the amp's DAC and power section. Sure, that's another thing that'll make the recorded tone sound different. However, what usually makes an audio interface sound bad is crappy preamps or lousy converters, but with an amp like the Katana, I don't think there's anything in your recording signal chain that isn't in your just-playing-normally-through-the-amp signal chain. If the preamp or the converters sounded bad, you'd know already.
