I'm returning the Gen 3 and maybe the Catalyst is the way to go?

I'm pretty sure the Gen 3 has a different speaker from the earlier versions. Also, my understanding is the Gen 3 has been redesigned "from the ground up."

I see! But is the sound change the same between mkii and gen3 when recording as through the amp itself? Or do you only hear this drastically changed sound through the amp? I'm asking because I want to buy the Katana and then change the speaker to a Celestion one but I'm not sure anymore because gen3 sounds better than mkii.. And I don't know if the speaker is better on Gen 3

Apparently not. I'm finding threads in Reddit where other players are about complaining about the difference in volume in the clean channel. I sent mine back yesterday.

For me the deal breaker was the lack of auto-save with the Panel setting in the software. If you don't use the Katana for recording, you might not care about this.

@@anotherheadlessdemo This is what Thanks for reaching out and contacting Roland BOSS USA Operational Product Support about the KATANA-50 GEN 3. When using the KATANA GEN3 as a USB DAW audio interface, connected via USB to a computer and DAW audio software for recording, in our experience, the CHANNEL VOLUME does need to be cranked almost to max for a good recording signal, regardless of which AMP TYPE is used. This is not really a problem, as it sound great for recording. There may be a firmware update in the future to further improve this feature, however, as it is, it works fine. It definitely blows doors on our NDSP plugin guitar sounds!Boss had to say about this issue.