Tascam 424 Line Out issue - help!

[rock320]

Hi everyone,

Am new here but have been reading this entire forum for a while now and really respect all the knowledge and expertise found here. Anyway, I tried to contact Tascam about this issue but when I called their customer support I got a message saying that they were busy with lots of calls and for me to call back and the recording hung up! So much for "customer service". I sent an email with the info below but I think I'll find the answer here much faster. At least I hope so, its holding up my recording!

I have a Tascam 424 Portstudio and I have had it setup as a mixer to a computer recording program (ACID).

To explain my setup, I have a Samson Cue-8 headphone 4 channel headphone amp that I connect to the Effects Send with the line out setting, I also have a mic connected to Track 1 through the mic/line setting, then I have it connected to the PC with the input/outputs. This setup has been working well until today.

I connected everything as normal, no settings were changed. However, with the line out setting today there is no music going back out through the effects send back to the headphone amp (the mixer's headphones work fine). If I put the tape out setting, I can hear the music from the PC through the headphone amp but the PC will get no signal to record from the mic. So I use the line out setting.

I don't know why settings/connections that worked all of a sudden are not but to make things even more strange, if I turn off the Mixer I can then hear the music playback from the PC. It even played back with the Mixer disconnected! So the signal is going through. I'm wondering if the mixer has had some sort of short with the line out connection? If so, what to do to get it fixed?

 

[rock320]

Well, when I have problems like this with my equipment I get rather obssessive in getting it resolved so I can move on. Found the Tascam Forum and went through the posts on there for analog equipment. No one had the same problem I mentioned but I found someone mentioning a problem where his mixer's outputs / inputs were connected wrong and that caused his problem. So I figured let me try that and I reversed my mixer's outputs and inputs (which were correct) and just like that it worked! I immediately got the signal to the headphones and a recording input signal to the PC. I think something got shorted and reversed the mixer's inputs/outputs from their correct settings. It's working though so I'm not going to stress it further trying to figure what happened.

Stupid, strange issue... hopefully if anyone comes across it they'll see this and be able to fix it before they give up or spend money.

 

[travelin travis]

Well, when I have problems like this with my equipment I get rather obssessive in getting it resolved so I can move on. Found the Tascam Forum and went through the posts on there for analog equipment. No one had the same problem I mentioned but I found someone mentioning a problem where his mixer's outputs / inputs were connected wrong and that caused his problem. So I figured let me try that and I reversed my mixer's outputs and inputs (which were correct) and just like that it worked! I immediately got the signal to the headphones and a recording input signal to the PC. I think something got shorted and reversed the mixer's inputs/outputs from their correct settings. It's working though so I'm not going to stress it further trying to figure what happened.

Stupid, strange issue... hopefully if anyone comes across it they'll see this and be able to fix it before they give up or spend money.

that's one of the oddest things that i've ever heard about happening with a piece of gear, ins/outs switching functions. you puffin the cheeba?

 

[rock320]

that's one of the oddest things that i've ever heard about happening with a piece of gear, ins/outs switching functions. you puffin the cheeba?

No puffing here! Yeah its weird but its all working just fine now once I figured that out. I did actually get a reply from Tascam tech support a few days later and their response was that it sounded like a "typical" case of transposed wires. Lol.