rdtmusix Posted March 8, 2001 Share Posted March 8, 2001 Anyone have any experiences with these USB-oriented recording/midi boxes? I would especially be interested to hear from people who are using them with laptops, but any comments on these units would be appreciated. I'm particularly interested to find out what the latency would be when using these with stand-alone soft synths or with VST instruments. Thanks a lot in advance Robert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve44 Posted March 11, 2001 Share Posted March 11, 2001 I don't have experience with either unit, but I can say this: the US-428 is a much better unit than the U-8. Their cost is around the same, but the Tascam can do so much more, from recording 4 channels at once to having dual midi i/o ports and really good quality converters. In the January issue of Keyboard there was an article on road-worthy computers and while it had useful information, most of the people they had interviewed were using laptops and a couple were using the US-428. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lightbg Posted March 12, 2001 Share Posted March 12, 2001 According to the Tascam forum, the Roland U-8 is only a 16 bit processor, while the US-428 is a full 24 bit machine. I've had my 428 for over a month now, and even with the less-than-full-featured Cubasis, it's been great. 4 channels of audio at once with no dropouts. Also, when I shopped between them, I was slightly put off by the fact that the U-8 isn't on ROLANDUS website. I found it at Edirol only ( I'm not anti-Roland, either. My current rig consists of a VK-7, JV-1010, and a DR770 played through a KC-500 amp ). I find the US-428 to be the best interface for my needs. 1967 B-3 w/(2) 122's, Nord C1w/Leslie 2101 top, Nord PedalKeys 27, Nord Electro 4D, IK B3X, QSC K12.2, Yamaha reface YC+CS+CP "It needs a Hammond" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rdtmusix Posted March 12, 2001 Author Share Posted March 12, 2001 Just a short thank-you to everyone who read my post and to those who decided to leave a reply. Well, today I finally "bit the bullet" and went to my local music store and conferred with a friend of mine there. He very graciously spent the morning with my laptop and I, investigating how to maximize its potential. We ended up trying out the Tascam US-428, which is optimized for Cubase and ASIO drivers. After a couple hours of typical befuddlement (i.e. turning off items in the system tray, uninstalling other USB peripherals, installing the original Tascam drivers, then installing NEW Tascam drivers from their website, etc. etc.) I finally achieved what I consider to be the current apex of laptop music: realtime audio performance with soft synths. I was able to do the following: o use VST instruments with ASIO drivers with negligable latency! Amazing! Programs like Native Instruments B4 and Pro52 run great! o use the Tascam US-428 bank of sliders and buttons to control the B4 leslie simulator, tonewheel drawbars for 3 keyboards, etc. Again, amazing! Now that I'm back from the music shop, I'm going to investigate the 24 bit recording possibilities. I must say I'm really impressed with this unit. Anyways, that's my experience, as of today! Hope I haven't bored you too much! Thanks again for writing, and best of luck with your music. Sincerely, Robert Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.