USB audio interface disappearing when garageband opens

Greetings josh1029,

We understand that you are having an issue selecting your audio interface with Garage Band, and we'd like to help. You can find steps to select your audio interface from within Garage Band here:

GarageBand for Mac: Connect an electric guitar

Take care.

I am having a very similar issue and the suggested steps did not resolve this.

I updated Garageband on September 1, 2020 to the latest version and have had these problems as a result:

I have a Steinberg UR22mkII USB audio interface. I have installed the latest drivers available and my 2018 MacMini recognizes the URmk22II in settings and I can set it as default for audio input and output. I can play music/audio on the music App or through Safari/YouTube and the computer communicates it to the UR22mkII and then in turn to my JBL studio monitors - sounds as good as ever.

However, as soon as I open GarageBand, the computer forgets the UR22mkII. I cannot find it in Garageband to set as input or output anywhere. Furthermore, when I open the Mac general settings sound preferences it has disappeared and is no longer an option for input or output.

If I restart the computer, the UR22mkII is available as an input and output for sound again, but as soon as I open Garageband it disappears again.

On a possibly related note, since I updated Garageband, MainStage has stopped working. When I try to load a project it simply says "No document could be created. The file isn't in the correct format".

Help would be appreciated - maybe a way to uninstall the update?

Thanks.

I am having the exact same issue with my Steinberg UR44 Interface. When I go into Preferences>Sound on my 2017 MacBook Pro "Steinberg UR44" appears beneath "Internal Microphone" as normal -- but as soon as I open Garageband, it dissapears from the preferences window and cannot be selected as an input or output in Garageband. I don't think the steps for connecting an electric guitar are not relevant to this problem. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!

Good luck resolving this - I have been having so many issues since Catalina that I uninstalled it and put Mojave on my machine (long and painful process). But now things are working again...my takeaway is don't upgrade until enough time has passed for the bugs to be worked out.

Quite in fact, my USB interface disappears when I open any DAW, including ones that are browser based.