FW-1884 User Impressions
Well I'm a new user of
the TASCAM FW-1884 control surface, so I guess I'll share some thoughts with everyone on the unit. I've had the unit for 1 week, and have had a fair amount of time to form some personal opinions on it.
First my equipment:
Pentium IV 1.8 GHZ processor ASUS mobo
1 GIG of memory
2 80 GIG hard drives 7200rpm each
This computer has served me well. Solely dedicated to audio, and tweaked accordingly.
SONAR 2.2 and SOUNDFORGE 5.0f application software
The control surface can act as 3 units, either separately or together.
1. Control surface to control application software inside a DAW. (like SONAR)
2. Stand alone mixer with 18 inputs and 2 outputs. (actually up to 8 outputs, so surround can be mixed, but I do not use it for that.) 8 analog, 8 digital, 2 SPDIF
3. A 4 in 4 out MIDI controller
I obsoleted the following equipment in my studio.
MOTU XT Express 8 in 8 out MIDI controller
PRESONUS Digimax 8 channel mic pre-amp
1 48 point patchbay
MOTU 2804 MKII sound card. (at least as far as SONAR is concerned. I do still have the sound card in the rack and computer to control WINDOWS Media Player 9, (CD player) and SOUNDFORGE playback.)
So the unit does a lot.
I have used it to control SONAR 2.2. I REALLY like it for mix down. It controls 8 audio and/or MIDI channels simultaneously. If you have more channels, you have to hit the bank button to switch to the next bank of 8 faders. Haven't found this to be a draw back yet, because I usually mix down the drum kit first, and bounce it to one track, then bass, then instruments, then vocal, so I have enough faders to handle the mix job. A side box of 8 more faders is going to become available shortly, so you could control 16 channels at one time. I'm going to wait on that until I'm sure I have a need to control 16 channels at one time. It cuts down on mouse work easily by half or more.
The transport controls work the same as SONAR, except they are faster and easier to get at. Play, Rewind, Fast Forward, and Record, are very straight forward.
The jog/shuttle wheel is very nice for precise placement of NOW TIME for any editing you may want to do. Much faster to be very accurate with cursor placement as opposed to the mouse.
It controls only one effect I know of so far, and that is the SONAR FXEQ, but controls the AUX send gain up to 8 AUX Busses. NOW TIME, LOOPING, and MARKERS can all be set with one touch of a button. ENTER is the F7 key, and accepts any request from SONAR the same as the keyboard enter key does.
That's about all I've tried on the SONAR control side. There is more to look at, especially programming additional keys, but I haven't gone there yet.
Stand alone mode
Works fine as a stand alone mixer. Works just as you would expect an analog mixer to work, except there are no channel EQ's. So if you have a need for EQ during playback, this doesn't have it. Also, remember that the unit is connected to the computer via firewire at all times, so it uses the default setting from anything you try to play back off the computer. I had to change the Media Player 9 setting to output to the MOTU sound card, which is patched to the input of the FW-1884 so the faders will control the channel volume. Otherwise the unit thinks it is monitoring, and will only allow control off the monitor volume control. Otherwise an adequate mixer, but no aux or eq on the channels.
MIDI controller
Controls my keyboard, and Roland JV1080, both for recording and playback. Works just as any MIDI controller would work, with the added advantage of controlling volume and Velocity via the faders. Pretty cool.
I haven't had a whole lot of time to mess with this yet, so there will be more discoveries in the future I'm sure
Impressions.
1. It's great for mixing in SONAR. MUCH faster than a mouse, and editing with the jog wheel is faster, and just as accurate as the mouse.
2. Recording and monitoring are very good. Zero latency with monitoring input, and play back while recording. I had no problems
3. Midi control is very good, but nothing more than a good midi interface would do. Not quite as versatile as the MOTU XT express, but adequate for me. Heavy MIDI users may have a different outlook on that.
4. It's adequate as a stand alone mixer, however, it doesn't have the channel control of even basic mixers, so if you need that you will be disappointed.
Goods:
Helps speed up the mixing process by eliminating the mouse work. Very nice
Replaced my big mixer giving me more desk space in the studio
AD/DA converters seem ok to my ears. No better or worse than
my PRESONUS Digimax or the MOTU MKII.
Supports digital input/output, so I'm covered using my FOSTEX D-160 for remote recording, and then flying tracks to SONAR
Has analog inserts so you can use rack mounted gear to add to the recorded signal. (reverbs, compressors, eq units)
Neutrals:
MIDI control doesn't offer anything more than a good MIDI interface. In fact the programming of the input and output channels is a bit more limited than the MOTU XT Express
Stand alone mixer is adequate, but leaves a bit to be desired in the channel strip department
Not so goods:
I have had some audio drop outs. I will admit to maybe having some operator error here with buffer size and latency setups. I haven't played with this too much yet, so I mention it with that caveat.
This is overall a very good unit. It is worth the $1300 bucks I paid for it, to me. It is not for newbies. (at least newbies without help) Signal flow and set up must be clearly understood, or it will give you fits. Particularly if you want to use it as a stand alone mixer as well as a control surface. The control surface was the easiest part to set up. The stand alone mixer, (working separate from the computer, even though the unit is hooked up to the computer at all times, (read signal routing)) was a bit tricky within the software applications on the DAW.
I have only had a week with it, and am learning more all the time, but this is my initial take. So far so good.
