Bass distorted in garageband- again!

I have since fixed this issue, but also found it strange that no one else seems to have experienced this distortion issue. In my I case, i first suspected the pre-amp to be causing this as I thought that maybe it is getting too hot or was of low quality, but that wasn't it. Then I played around with input/ recording levels, but that wasn't the problem either as even low input levels ended up sounding distorted. Finally, I cracked it. The weakest link in the chain (and actually almost a kind of design flaw by Apple) is the physical Jack input at the back of my Mac (Mini).

All guitar and mic cables are jack to jacks. However, the input jack is built for small headphone style cable jacks (forgive me - I do not know what the proper term or exact size, is but you will know what I mean).

So you are required to get an adapter to make up for it- and that is where the problem is: Anything at all between the original sound source and the recording facility lowers quality of recording, especially such fiddly little adapters.

Anyway, it turned out that the adapter I was using, had a tiny loose contact in it! Yes, that's right, a cheap part (in fact the cheapest and smallest part in all my recording equipment) gave me recording headaches for days on end. The tiniest movement would cause distortion. The moment i found the fault, which was not at all obvious at first, as it was so intermittent, I changed it for the most expensive (goldplated) jack adapter the problem immediately disappeared and I have not had any issues since.

i think, since Macs are very often used by musicians, that MAC should also build in a 'large' jack input, which would make life easier and sound quality better.

So check your 'chain' of equipment between sound source and input as it is most likely a physical issue in your equipment; in my case it was that **** adapter!

All the best!