2 interfaces and reaper

steen said:
Hi there.

I 'd like to use 2 Tascam US 2000 interfaces simultaneously with Reaper. Anyone out there experienced? What kind of problems will I meet with?

grtz Steen
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You can't, not with ASIO drivers anyway and I am not sure if Reaper will do it anyway.

What WILL work (with MME drivers) is Samplitude Pro X and you can get a 30day demo to try. Trouble is, Pro X is bloody expensive (but bloody good!). There is a freebie, Pro X Silver but that is limited to 8 tracks. Bit of a downside to the required function?

Also, never been in a position to try this but, if the 2000 has S/PDIF it might be worth looping in to out and running one AI as master and one slave?

Dave.
 
Well, to answer totally the wrong question...

...I once used two Tascam US122 interfaces into Cool Edit Pro. As ecc83 has already pointed out, I had to use MME drivers for this trick--no way with ASIO. However, even though I managed to record multiple tracks simultaneously, when I played them back there was enough difference in clock frequency between the two that the tracks drifted noticeably out of sync every 60 seconds or so.

I don't know if Reaper will let you do it at all but, even if you can record both at the same time, clock issues can be serious. I'd be looking for other solutions. You might get lucky, but...

(and if you do get lucky, buy a lottery ticket and win enough to buy a bigger interface :) )
 
I think this has more to do with the drivers than the software. Not sure how Samplitude Pro X can do it unless they have their own drivers to control the hardware. Then there is the clock issue, this is probably why it isn't done by more interfaces.
 
Robert and David.
Son and I did run two, two channel AIs for about 3 minutes to get 4 tracks some years ago and yes, one AI did start a shade afore the other but Samplitude makes is easy to "magg up" a track to sample level and slide it into exact alignment. We did not notice any appreciably drift over that time.

Sam can run different AIs because with MME drivers you can select "N" mono channels and select any device as the input. At the time we really did not have any other software available but pretty sure Audacity would no oblige.

Back to the drift issue: This is why I suggested locking one AI to the other via S/PDIF. After all, it is how M-Audio sync up their Delta cards (WHEN they were fekkin' making them of course!).

Dave.
 
ecc83 said:
Robert and David.
Son and I did run two, two channel AIs for about 3 minutes to get 4 tracks some years ago and yes, one AI did start a shade afore the other but Samplitude makes is easy to "magg up" a track to sample level and slide it into exact alignment. We did not notice any appreciably drift over that time.

Sam can run different AIs because with MME drivers you can select "N" mono channels and select any device as the input. At the time we really did not have any other software available but pretty sure Audacity would no oblige.

Back to the drift issue: This is why I suggested locking one AI to the other via S/PDIF. After all, it is how M-Audio sync up their Delta cards (WHEN they were fekkin' making them of course!).

Dave.
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I think Delta does it through hardware/software sync. Since they are PCI cards, maybe they have other options that USB/Firewire don't have or since the data is so fast, synchronizing is not an issue or it incorporates the CPU clock. PCI interfaces have a lot more options.
 
It's not so much the drivers as the audio system or API or whatever that those drivers use. ASIO works in such a way that usually one program gets exclusive access to exactly one device. That's just how it works. MME and others will let you run a couple different interfaces, but usually doesn't offer as good performance on things like latency.

There is a free tool called ASIO4All which is partly meant to fake an ASIO driver for gear that doesn't have it's own, but the other thing it does is let you group two or more interfaces in such a way that they look like one ASIO device. This is the only way to have any chance of doing what you're asking in Windows, and even then it can be a bit of a crap shoot as to whether you'll get acceptable performance. A lot of people use it without any trouble, and it's free, so it's worth a shot. Please don't ask me how to set it up or for troubleshooting cause I haven't used in like ten years, and at that time I was doing something quite different from what you're trying.
 
ashcat_lt said:
It's not so much the drivers as the audio system or API or whatever that those drivers use. ASIO works in such a way that usually one program gets exclusive access to exactly one device. That's just how it works. MME and others will let you run a couple different interfaces, but usually doesn't offer as good performance on things like latency.
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Delta PCI cards allows for multiple Delta cards under ASIO, I've just never seen it in USB/Firewire interface, there must be some limitation with those two standards.

I understand how ASIO works for the most part, ASIO is a driver. It is not a limitation of the DAW API as the DAW sees whatever ASIO gives it.
 
DM60 said:
Delta PCI cards allows for multiple Delta cards under ASIO, I've just never seen it in USB/Firewire interface, there must be some limitation with those two standards.

I understand how ASIO works for the most part, ASIO is a driver. It is not a limitation of the DAW API as the DAW sees whatever ASIO gives it.
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Plenty of firewire interfaces allow daisy chaining but I don't know anything about ASIO. Is it a thing that the manufacturers have allowed for in their own drivers?
I think a lot of the interfaces from echo, presonus, and motu are be daisy-chain-able.
 
Steenamaroo said:
Plenty of firewire interfaces allow daisy chaining but I don't know anything about ASIO. Is it a thing that the manufacturers have allowed for in their own drivers?
I think a lot of the interfaces from echo, presonus, and motu are be daisy-chain-able.
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I knew Firewire could be daisychained, since it was to replace SCSI. Just don't know how they would allow each interface to communicate with each other. If I am not mistaken, you can't daisychain interfaces and see them as one large interface. Probably why ADAT is still alive.

But if you can daisychain in Firewire, I would assume it would have to be based on the same manufacturer and a single driver, not a standard where different hardware could talk to each other. In other words, proprietary software/drivers. Just like the PCI cards, they have to be from the same manufacturer.

Just taking guesses really.
 
DM60 said:
I knew Firewire could be daisychained, since it was to replace SCSI. Just don't know how they would allow each interface to communicate with each other. If I am not mistaken, you can't daisychain interfaces and see them as one large interface. Probably why ADAT is still alive.

But if you can daisychain in Firewire, I would assume it would have to be based on the same manufacturer and a single driver, not a standard where different hardware could talk to each other. In other words, proprietary software/drivers. Just like the PCI cards, they have to be from the same manufacturer.

Just taking guesses really.
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Yeah, as far as I know the daisychaining is possible because of the proprietary drivers and, yes, I believe this allows the combined I/O to be seen and accessed by your recording software.

You can do the very same in OS X with damn near any interface by creating what they call an aggregate device.
Annoyingly, Tascam interfaces are among the few known for not playing well with this.


Steen....That's an interesting name. ;)
 
Interfaces set up for daisy-chaining maintain lock use that link to lock the clocks together thereby maintaining sync. The problems occur when you have more than one device, each running on its own internal sync with no reference to the other.

As for ASIO vs MME, there's no mystery there. The whole point of ASIO drivers is that they allow a fairly direct link between the software and hardware, bypassing much of the nonsense involved in Windows audio drivers. It's because of this 1:1 link that in normal circumstances a DAW can only use a single ASIO device...and vice versa. Again, this doesn't have to be a hard and fast rule if two ASIO devices can also communicate with each other such as the PCI example listed above.

The thing is, none of this applies to two USB devices not designed to be used in tandem. Even if you can get them to work together at a basic level, chances are that it won't be totally satisfactory.

Anyway, if the OP must go this route, I recalled an old SOS article that gives some hints on how to increase your chances. It's HERE.

But if I could find a different solution, I'd use it.
 
I run 3 Echo Layla24 boxes with my DAW...been running them for a few years like that, and the last couple of years I've been using ASIO drivers..and even now with my current DAW system I can use ASIO drivers....and all three run together fine.

It's not about ASIO...it's about the drivers that the hardware manufacturer creates for it.
In my case, Echo wrote the drivers so that even under ASIO, multiple boxes could run together be recognized individually and simultaneously.

I also have WDM drivers to chose from, and personally, I like them better...but with most of the plugs and VSTi stuff, ASIO is required, though once I pick the plugs/VSTI...I can switch to WDM and it all works fine.
 
I believe the Echo Layla uses a PCI card again though, with a very nice breakout box attached? Again, not USB.
 
The Delta cards simply sync via S/PDIF.

You can see I hope in the control panel two tiny squares on the right? You select whichever card you want to set.

The other screen grab shows Sam 8se setup for 4 tracks so One and Two are Delta L&R (1) and 3 and 4 Delta L&R (2). Samplitude however allows you to set ANY device mixture as n input this way. Can't run ASIO drivers of course (except in this special case).

Heh! I actually built a new PC with 3 PCI slots to house the cards because Son wanted to run a Teac A3440 in and out. Built the PC, found the cards then he sugared off to France!

I even made a wired remote for the R to R!

Dave.
 

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Yeah but as I keep saying syncing PCI cards designed to work that way (or any interface designed to sync somehow) is a different kettle of fish from plugging in two free-running USB interfaces.
 
Bobbsy said:
Yeah but as I keep saying syncing PCI cards designed to work that way (or any interface designed to sync somehow) is a different kettle of fish from plugging in two free

Ah, just pointing out Bobbs that the Delta cards simply sync via S/PDIF and therefore it MIGHT help with two alien USB interfaces?

BTW. Don't know why the quote function chopped the last part of your post off. Tried it twice!

Dave.
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ecc83 said:
Bobbsy said:
Yeah but as I keep saying syncing PCI cards designed to work that way (or any interface designed to sync somehow) is a different kettle of fish from plugging in two free

Ah, just pointing out Bobbs that the Delta cards simply sync via S/PDIF and therefore it MIGHT help with two alien USB interfaces?

BTW. Don't know why the quote function chopped the last part of your post off. Tried it twice!

Dave.
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Maybe it's because I bit my tongue (and I mean that literally rather than figuratively) earlier today?

Anyway, if you think about it, the S/PDIF syncing is nothing unusual. Any time you have a digital signal running into another digital box, there has to be a system to synchronise the word clocks. The "receiving" device will usually lock and sync to the incoming signal (since the other way around is impossible!).

I use a lot of ADAT inputs on my digital mixer and, theoretically, I can daisy chain the TOSLINK fibres and have the sync to each other. I've tried it and it works..but in a live situation I feel safer distributing word clock properly.
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FFS! What good does all this babble about devices the OP doesn't have actually do for him, or in fact for most people? In most instances where we're asking how to use 2 or more of any interface with about any DAW in Windows, the only answer is:

ASIO4All

...which I mentioned back in post #7.
 
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