Tascam US122 USB audio/midi interface

Has anyone used this device. Any opinions? I'm thinking about purchasing
it tomorrow.

I use it together with Sony Vegas. Works perfectly.

Beejay

"finalcut" wrote in message
nk.net...
Tascam US122 USB audio/midi interface

Has anyone used this device. Any opinions? I'm thinking about purchasing
it tomorrow.

finalcut wrote:

Tascam US122 USB audio/midi interface

Has anyone used this device. Any opinions? I'm thinking about
purchasing it tomorrow.

Gee, no, it's never come up. Sorry. Ask somewhere else. Bye.

But seriously,
Google buddy, Google. Start with alt.music.home-recording

--
"It CAN'T be too loud... some of the red lights aren't even on yet!"
- Lorin David Schultz
in the control room
making even bad news sound good

(Remove spamblock to reply)

Well, thanks for the amh-r tip. I'll check it out. That's one ng I didn't
think of.

I have checked it out online. (eopinions, etc) and I can google 'til the
cows come home, buddy, but I thought I would get some sage advice from the
experts here at rec.audio.pro. sorry to be so pedestrian. This is a
discussion group, right?


"Lorin David Schultz" wrote in message
news:iKI_f.18980$4S.1065@edtnps82...
finalcut wrote:

Tascam US122 USB audio/midi interface

Has anyone used this device. Any opinions? I'm thinking about
purchasing it tomorrow.

Gee, no, it's never come up. Sorry. Ask somewhere else. Bye.

But seriously,
Google buddy, Google. Start with alt.music.home-recording

--
"It CAN'T be too loud... some of the red lights aren't even on yet!"
- Lorin David Schultz
in the control room
making even bad news sound good

(Remove spamblock to reply)

Thanks. You don't have any latency problems? Someone mentioned that to me.


"Barend Jasper" wrote in message
...
I use it together with Sony Vegas. Works perfectly.

Beejay

"finalcut" wrote in message
nk.net...
Tascam US122 USB audio/midi interface

Has anyone used this device. Any opinions? I'm thinking about
purchasing
it tomorrow.

finalcut wrote:
Tascam US122 USB audio/midi interface

Has anyone used this device. Any opinions? I'm thinking about purchasing
it tomorrow.

Have it. Use it. Love it. Very quiet, flat and low distortion pre's.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no simpler."

A. Einstein

I've found some glitching while playing softsynths directly to it via
ASIO on the lower buffer size (which I think is about 7ms). The higher
buffer size (13ms) is fine. I don't recall having had any problems with
Cubase.

I've also noticed an issue using the instrument input, where there was
some high frequency background noise that appeared to be related to
activity on other USB devices that were attached to different ports on
my laptop. The noise was also audible when listening to the signal
coming from the insert send, so it may be a combination of poor USB
power regulation on my laptop and poor regulation within the US122.

I haven't tried on a different computer to see what difference that
might make, or done very much to investigate these problems at all - I
bought mine as a cheap stop-gap, as the situation with fairly decent
firewire audio interfaces seems to become more of a buyers market with
each passing month.

Overall, the unit has met my expectations, but if you think your
expectation might be higher than mine, then buy from somewhere you can
easily return it to - there are just too many variables with this sort
of equipment for there to be any absolute guarantees. As I'm sure you
know, else you wouldn't be asking.

Hope this is of some small help to you.

-Nick

finalcut wrote:

Thanks. You don't have any latency problems? Someone mentioned that to me.


"Barend Jasper" wrote in message
...
I use it together with Sony Vegas. Works perfectly.

Beejay

"finalcut" wrote in message
nk.net...
Tascam US122 USB audio/midi interface

Has anyone used this device. Any opinions? I'm thinking about
purchasing
it tomorrow.

finalcut wrote:

I have checked it out online. (eopinions, etc) and I can google
'til the cows come home, buddy, but I thought I would get some sage
advice from the experts here at rec.audio.pro. sorry to be so
pedestrian. This is a discussion group, right?


Discussion group, yes. Repeat ad infinitum group, no.

What I meant was using Google to search this very group, using the very
handy Google Groups search facility...

http://groups.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en

....after which you'll be as sick to freakin' death of reading about it
as we are! g FWIW and with absolute due respect, by the standards
this group once held, a device like the 122 *would* be considered rather
pedestrian. Shame that it don't seem to be so no mo'.

--
"It CAN'T be too loud... some of the red lights aren't even on yet!"
- Lorin David Schultz
in the control room
making even bad news sound good

(Remove spamblock to reply)

finalcut wrote:
Tascam US122 USB audio/midi interface

Has anyone used this device. Any opinions? I'm thinking about purchasing
it tomorrow.

Why so impatient? Why not wait a little bit and find out what you
really need to know? I wrote a pretty extensive review of it in
Recording Magazine a few years ago. You can order the back issue from
http://www.recordingmag.com but you can't read it on line. There have
been other magazine reviews that are pretty honest (and others that
don't say anything useful).

I really liked the concept of what it is (do you really know all of
what it is?) and thought that it worked very well for what it was
intended. The operation and the controls made sense, it did what you
need to do to record multirack one or two tracks at a time (or directly
to stereo), and its electrical performance was just fine. It doesn't
have a pair of $1,000 preamps, but they're pretty good if the mics
you're using and the sources you're recording don't require more gain
than it has. It's gain is typical for devices in this price range, but
don't come back saying it was noisy when you tried to record a
conversation across the room or a dulcimer with a ribbom mic placed 10
feet away.

I didn't hear any funny noises when using the Instrument inputs as
another posted reported, but I'll tell you that while they work OK for
most pickups, they really aren't 1 megohm (or whatever TASCAM states in
the spec sheet) input impedance. They're considerably lower.

I had a problem with the phantom power when using it with my Dell
Inspiron 2650 laptop computer. You should have the phantom switch off
until everything is connected (the USB cable to the computer and the
mics to the US-122), but I found that whenever I switched on the
phantom power with the US-122 connected to the computer), the voltage
through the USB cable would momentarily drop low enough to shut down
the US-122 and it had to be un-plugged and re-plugged (with the phantom
switch on) so the drivers would reload. I didn't have that problem with
two other desktop computers, and I haven't heard of the problem from
any other laptop users, so perhaps my laptop computer just has a "weak"
USB power output. I did measure the current drain and it's a lot (in
excess of 2A, well above the USB spec) for a couple of milliseconds
until the DC-DC converter that raises the 5V from the USB cable to 48V
settles down. Some computers take that in stride, others, like mine,
don't. I don't see this as a reason not to buy the US-122, but it could
be annoying if you have a computer like mine.

Oh, and by the way, I've written this here before, so you should be
able to find it with Google.

None whatsoever.

Beejay


"finalcut" wrote in message
ink.net...
Thanks. You don't have any latency problems? Someone mentioned that to
me.


"Barend Jasper" wrote in message
...
I use it together with Sony Vegas. Works perfectly.

Beejay

"finalcut" wrote in message
nk.net...
Tascam US122 USB audio/midi interface

Has anyone used this device. Any opinions? I'm thinking about
purchasing
it tomorrow.

"Lorin David Schultz" wrote in message
news:koL_f.50399$%H.43150@clgrps13...
finalcut wrote:

I have checked it out online. (eopinions, etc) and I can google
'til the cows come home, buddy, but I thought I would get some sage
advice from the experts here at rec.audio.pro. sorry to be so
pedestrian. This is a discussion group, right?


Discussion group, yes. Repeat ad infinitum group, no.

What I meant was using Google to search this very group, using the very
handy Google Groups search facility...

http://groups.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en

...after which you'll be as sick to freakin' death of reading about it as
we are! g FWIW and with absolute due respect, by the standards this
group once held, a device like the 122 *would* be considered rather
pedestrian. Shame that it don't seem to be so no mo'.


If you don't have anything good to say.. just let the thread move on. This
is a fine place to ask that quetion.. you could just as easilyhave
suggested a search without all of the arrogance.

Thanks Mike.

For whatever it may be worth, my laptop (on which I've had the problem
with noise on the instrument input seemingly caused by USB activity ,
as I mentioned yesterday) is also a Dell Inspiron, though in my case
the model is a 9300.

-Nick


Mike Rivers wrote:

finalcut wrote:
Tascam US122 USB audio/midi interface

Has anyone used this device. Any opinions? I'm thinking about purchasing
it tomorrow.

Why so impatient? Why not wait a little bit and find out what you
really need to know? I wrote a pretty extensive review of it in
Recording Magazine a few years ago. You can order the back issue from
http://www.recordingmag.com but you can't read it on line. There have
been other magazine reviews that are pretty honest (and others that
don't say anything useful).

I really liked the concept of what it is (do you really know all of
what it is?) and thought that it worked very well for what it was
intended. The operation and the controls made sense, it did what you
need to do to record multirack one or two tracks at a time (or directly
to stereo), and its electrical performance was just fine. It doesn't
have a pair of $1,000 preamps, but they're pretty good if the mics
you're using and the sources you're recording don't require more gain
than it has. It's gain is typical for devices in this price range, but
don't come back saying it was noisy when you tried to record a
conversation across the room or a dulcimer with a ribbom mic placed 10
feet away.

I didn't hear any funny noises when using the Instrument inputs as
another posted reported, but I'll tell you that while they work OK for
most pickups, they really aren't 1 megohm (or whatever TASCAM states in
the spec sheet) input impedance. They're considerably lower.

I had a problem with the phantom power when using it with my Dell
Inspiron 2650 laptop computer. You should have the phantom switch off
until everything is connected (the USB cable to the computer and the
mics to the US-122), but I found that whenever I switched on the
phantom power with the US-122 connected to the computer), the voltage
through the USB cable would momentarily drop low enough to shut down
the US-122 and it had to be un-plugged and re-plugged (with the phantom
switch on) so the drivers would reload. I didn't have that problem with
two other desktop computers, and I haven't heard of the problem from
any other laptop users, so perhaps my laptop computer just has a "weak"
USB power output. I did measure the current drain and it's a lot (in
excess of 2A, well above the USB spec) for a couple of milliseconds
until the DC-DC converter that raises the 5V from the USB cable to 48V
settles down. Some computers take that in stride, others, like mine,
don't. I don't see this as a reason not to buy the US-122, but it could
be annoying if you have a computer like mine.

Oh, and by the way, I've written this here before, so you should be
able to find it with Google.

Hello,
I have been using US122 with Nuendo and Sound Forge along some period and it
works perfectly. No problems at all.
The only complain is probably rather high ADC noize level - about -85dB. If
you need to digitize synth or other instruments with wide dynamic signal
range for studio quality recording, it is not sufficient. However, it is
definately good for home recording. All drivers work very robust.

I have updated to RME Fireface 800 in order to get multitracking and higher
quality ADCs (about -100db noize level).

--

Regards,
Pavel


"finalcut" wrote in message
nk.net...
Tascam US122 USB audio/midi interface

Has anyone used this device. Any opinions? I'm thinking about purchasing
it tomorrow.

Pavel Semyonov wrote:
Hello,
I have been using US122 with Nuendo and Sound Forge along some period and it
works perfectly. No problems at all.
The only complain is probably rather high ADC noize level - about -85dB.

Really? With 200 Ohms on the inputs mine measured a respectable -127
dBu of A-weighted noise. The gain is meager as Mike points out, only
54dB at the pre's with full gain but mine measured to be quiet, flat and
low distortion.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no simpler."

A. Einstein