Tascam US-800 Interface

squibble94

squibble94

Nature of Force
Just bought one for Christmas... It better be good. ;)

Anyone own it? I have a disease where I don't listen to any reviews and I insist I will not have any problems with it whatsoever.
 
Alright, well I got it. Now, I have to say I haven't messed with it a whole lot, but here's what happened.

Note: I'm using this on a Dell Inspiron (545s desktop) Windows 7

I opened it and got the drivers set up and working. It worked for a while. I was getting little error messages here and there, but they were easy fixes. It was mostly DAW errors (Cockos Reaper). But after that, the fun started. Every time I would shut down the computer and start it again, the drivers would crash and I would get the Blue Screen of Death! So I did a system restore to fix it. This happened about 4 or 5 times before I found the problem. I needed to unplug the interface BEFORE shutting down. I had to plug it back in AFTER I restarted the computer. It seems to be running smoothly now. No BSoDs. I did get an error with the drivers, a pan error. I just restarted the computer. It's fixed.

Some other little annoyances: The audio output will randomly click when I'm doing general computer stuff. For example, if I click a link, I might get a little popping noise along with it. Nothing too major, but I'll try to solve the problem. Another thing is that it has RCA outs and no TRS/TS outs. My monitors are TRS/XLR inputs, so I'm running the interface through a small mixer now (just for the output). I actually like the in-computer window. I get to mute channels and control volume and whatnot. I tried MIDI and Audio. Both work great. I have not gotten the time to find the best latency settings, but there isn't too much latency when you use ASIO instead of WDM. I've only done 3 tracks simultaneously so far, so I don't know how it holds up with 6. I think it's worth the money if you are good at troubleshooting yourself.
 
Yeah, no luck with this interface. Still the clicky audio. I assume once the drivers are updated this will work great. Ehh no one is reading this anyway. If anyone comes across this, hopefully I helped.
 
this is great info. often it s the computer and chipsets and all that crap I know nothing about.

but in the end does it fire up and work for you. I was seriously looking at one of these. Many recommend the 1641 instead for some reason

I was looking at a upgrade from the Original TASCAM 122 little USB paid $50.....but as I read, the converters in it are fine and converters in general, are the less noticeable compared to preamps in these USB type devices. I opened it up and its probably along the same lines as many others.

The bells and whistles(more inputs etc..) seems to be the cost increase.

And really my old pc probably wont be doing 24/192...I had the nice EMU 1820 and never used 192khz, it was at most 24/48 and often 16/44.1.

Did you thoroughly read the manual on turning other stuff off? Your pc should have all other USB's disconnected etc..etc.. the manual should mention a few great tips.
I know in USB world we expect to plug-in and it runs itself sometimes....

good luck....keep updating even if you take it back, post what you got.

google products was at $202 800 and 1641 $220 ....dont know the differences really.
 
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squibble94 said:
Still running smoothly. I can't find the clicky audio problem. It's not the buffers...
Click to expand...

Have you ensured the input/hardware never clips.....just for grins, you could try a real low level recording.

I also found some clipping recently in a track, and as I lowered the volume of that track the clipping went away.
 
Well as of right now it's working better. I know what to do with it, and what not to do with it. I read the manual several times. Nothing seemed to help. It doesn't click when I'm using my DAW. It does it whenever I refresh a page on the internet, or click play on a youtube video. It seems to be a buffer problem, but no matter what I set it to, it does it anyway. As I said, hopefully they will update the drivers. I'm very pleased with the actual unit. The only reason I would say to go with the US-1641 is because more people use it and it has been around longer. Therefore, there is more support with it.
 
I have min plugged into a Mac mini w 8G of RAM. Drivers aren't an issue for me, and it's been pretty flawless otherwise.

Make sure you're not monitoring through the software, and that you've got everything else on your computer turned off. If you're hearing the clicks when you are surfing, that points to a computer loading or memory use problem.
 
Solutions for popping?

I have similar problems and have felt forever that this is a driver issue. It could be that the Mac drivers are better than the PC drivers. If it's happening even without recording software use, how would one go about changing this? I have the exact same problems and was also waiting for a driver update...sick of waiting already....any ideas?
 
Achoriim said:
I have similar problems and have felt forever that this is a driver issue. It could be that the Mac drivers are better than the PC drivers. If it's happening even without recording software use, how would one go about changing this? I have the exact same problems and was also waiting for a driver update...sick of waiting already....any ideas?
Click to expand...

Well, there was an update a while ago but it didn't fix much for me. I'm still having the same problem and I can't find a way around it. I'm thinking it's a driver issue.
 
squibble94 said:
Alright, well I got it. Now, I have to say I haven't messed with it a whole lot, but here's what happened.

Note: I'm using this on a Dell Inspiron (545s desktop) Windows 7

I opened it and got the drivers set up and working. It worked for a while. I was getting little error messages here and there, but they were easy fixes. It was mostly DAW errors (Cockos Reaper). But after that, the fun started. Every time I would shut down the computer and start it again, the drivers would crash and I would get the Blue Screen of Death! So I did a system restore to fix it. This happened about 4 or 5 times before I found the problem. I needed to unplug the interface BEFORE shutting down. I had to plug it back in AFTER I restarted the computer. It seems to be running smoothly now. No BSoDs. I did get an error with the drivers, a pan error. I just restarted the computer. It's fixed.

Some other little annoyances: The audio output will randomly click when I'm doing general computer stuff. For example, if I click a link, I might get a little popping noise along with it. Nothing too major, but I'll try to solve the problem. Another thing is that it has RCA outs and no TRS/TS outs. My monitors are TRS/XLR inputs, so I'm running the interface through a small mixer now (just for the output). I actually like the in-computer window. I get to mute channels and control volume and whatnot. I tried MIDI and Audio. Both work great. I have not gotten the time to find the best latency settings, but there isn't too much latency when you use ASIO instead of WDM. I've only done 3 tracks simultaneously so far, so I don't know how it holds up with 6. I think it's worth the money if you are good at troubleshooting yourself.
Click to expand...

Hey dude thank you for posting this info. It was a great help to me and solved all my problems, so far. Also a lot more peopl read these than post the thank yous, unfortunately. Rest assured we appreciate it vrey much. The key for me, was unplugging the unit before shutdown and replugging in after start up. When it's not powered on my other speakers are defaulted to and it's wonderful, then I plug my unit in and it works fine. Thanks again. One question though, since we have almost the exact same computer (nice!, that never happens! haha), have you done any other trouble shooting or found various things that help your system's performance with the us-800 running? My pc is quite a bit slower than I'm used to, which isn't a huge deal bc I can just unplug my tascam and restart, then it's fast again, but it'd be nice not to have to do that. Any tweaks you know of? I'm on windows vista 64 bit, Dell Inspiron 546 Desktop. Thanks again man!
 
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