Miaow Wah Auto Wah Sensitivity

[shasha]

So I'm running my guitar signal directly into Miaow Wah and it's a direct guitar signal...it's low. It sounds great when I'm manually using the pedal with a foot controller, but there's not enough "gain" in the sensitivity knob to really get the thing cooking. I can mess with the input/output levels to try to trick it, but it just seems like it doesn't have enough range or I'm using it wrong.

[Blue Cat Audio]

Hi,

before using the sensitivity knob, input level should indeed be right: it is expected that the input signal is properly calibrated to reach around 0 dBFS when playing at max volume. You can then adjust the sensitivity to your liking, If the level is too low it will not work as expected. BTW you may want to actually adjust the input level on your audio interface/preamp. It will also help minimizing background noise.

[shasha]

I'm using a dedicated guitar interface and I run it flat (0dB gain) because in my testing adding input gain acts like I'm running a boost pedal or compressor into every amp sim (there are a few exceptions). I completely understand the comment about background noise and better SNR and the benefit of using more bits, but I have my virtual rig dialed in and this would screw up my gain staging on everything else.

+7.5dB on the input and -7.5dB on the output of Miaow Cat seems to work perfect for me. The gain seems to be linear and transparent so I'll just compensate that way. On a side note this plugin is ridiculously good. I was able to match my previous favorite wah plugin in about 2 minutes without using any tools other than my ears and then just saved it as preset.

[Blue Cat Audio]

Yes that's indeed the way to do it if you want to keep your levels as is. That's actually the reason why the plug-in has those in/out levels, which may not sound obvious for a Wah .

Glad that you like it!