new 18 input Tascam control surface

[Raymond Peter Thomas]

Has anyone bought or used the new Tascam FW 1884 control surface with 8 mic
preamps and Firewire 24/96 I/O yet. Looks good on paper ...?

[EganMedia]

>Has anyone bought or used the new Tascam FW 1884 control surface with 8 mic
>preamps and Firewire 24/96 I/O yet. Looks good on paper ...?

I have a good friend who bought two last week and was planning to get them
working with his two Sonar workstations this weekend. I'm going to see him
tomorrow and I'll check in.


Joe Egan
EMP
Colchester, VT
www.eganmedia.com

[Pinoy]

(EganMedia) wrote in message >...
> >Has anyone bought or used the new Tascam FW 1884 control surface with 8 mic
> >preamps and Firewire 24/96 I/O yet. Looks good on paper ...?
>
> I have a good friend who bought two last week and was planning to get them
> working with his two Sonar workstations this weekend. I'm going to see him
> tomorrow and I'll check in.
>
>
> Joe Egan
> EMP
> Colchester, VT
> www.eganmedia.com
I just got one last week:

PowerMac G4 DP 1.25Ghz OSX 10.2.8
Logic Platinum OSX 6.3.1
FW-1884 ver 1.0

Works like a charm!

Sound is clean, The control surface, with Logic, is amazing with the
touch-sensitive faders. The control layout is great and fairly easy to
use first time without the manual. One "con" I noticed, is that the
data/shuttle wheel is a bit too sensitive, maybe there is a setting
for it, but it turns quite fast and thus flies through your assigned
incremental values. I'm sure there is a setting somewhere to buffer
that effect, but I haven't found it yet.

I also have intermittent audio drop outs when in Logic, but I have
heard it may a bug with soloing tracks. It doesn't happen often but an
occurence that is note worthy if you have a low patience threshold.

Other than that I was able to input 8 audio tracks simultaneously from
8 tape direct outs on an older Tascam 688 Midi Studio with no
problems. It did what it was supposed to do for me flawlessly....I
will do more intense work as my project load increases in the next few
days to really tax it. Maybe more simultaneous audio-ins or hook-up a
guitar or two to see how it handles those inputs.

As a standalone audio interface it really does shine for my use! It is
clean and quiet and is a definate step-up from the US428 on all
accounts(Firewire alone is a plus). As a control surface It rocks, but
of course I have nothing to compare it to except the US428 and my
mouse and keyboard, so I am happy with the upgrade there. No more
mouse mixing for me :)

There is an article in the current edition of Electronic Musician
magazine highlighting all the current Firewire devices and they pretty
much have all good things to say about it.

I would definately recommend it so far!

THanks
Paul