REVIEWED
Tascam US-800 USB/MIDI Interface TASCAM US-800
The latest audio/MIDI USB interface from the company that invented the Portastudio…
Words: Simon Croft
The versatile US-800 offers a lot of connectivity for your money; for both live and studio recording.
Unless you’ve been living in Outer Mongolia with a family of yak herders for many years, you’ve probably noticed that the choice of interfaces for computer-based recording increases all the time. Partly, it’s because computers themselves get more powerful and versatile – hence a whole generation of multi-track audio products based on the USB 2.0 interface. At the most affordable end, you’ve got pocket-sized USB devices that usually give you a couple of inputs and a headphone monitor – great for carrying around and recording on your own but maybe a bit limited for capturing a whole band. The new TASCAM US-800 is at
the affordable end – and it’s certainly compact enough to carry around with a laptop – but it also gives you
TASCAM US-800
SRP £249.00
All prices include VAT CONT
ACT
Tascam UK Ltd T:
W: 01923-438880
www.tascam.co.uk 42 3pickup
additional analogue inputs, making it useful for live, or multi-mic recording. It’s also got ‘real’ MIDI on DIN sockets, which is great if you’ve got older gear from the days before USB.
Bundles of fun
The US-800 has plenty going for it. The six mic inputs can be switched to +48V phantom power for studio condenser mics and the audio resolution goes up to 96kHz/24-bit, which is about the cutting edge of digital audio tech. There is more on offer but let’s hook the thing up and discover the rest as we go along. You’ll need a computer running
either Windows XP, Windows 7, Vista, or Apple OS X 10.6.3. I won’t run through the minimum spec because you can find it on line but if you’re running one of the more recent operating systems and you have USB 2.0, the chances are your computer will do the job. I used my MacBook Pro. The first thing I did was install the USB driver, restart the computer and plug in the US-800. Out of curiosity, I started up Logic, because it’s already on my machine. I went into the audio settings, selected US-800 from the options and, bingo, sound in the headphones. Just to check everything was working as it should, I opened up an existing song and did a quick overdub. That went fine and I was stuck by the sweet sound I
got just by plugging a Strat into one of the two mic/intrument sockets on the front. They’re those dual Combi sockets that also accept an XLR, so when you’re working at home on your own, you probably won’t need to dive round the back for the other four mic/line sockets too often.) A lot of people who but the US-800 will probably want to run the bundled Cubase LE 5 software – and no reason why not. Steinberg has been in the software business for a very long time and even the ‘cutdown’ LE edition of Cubase has all the features most performance-orientated musicians are likely to want. Once you’re set up, I think you’ll find this an easy and satisfying system for making music. There are
plenty of plug-ins with the software to keep those creative juices flowing and of course, there’s the whole MIDI side, which Steinberg makes very flexible and easy to edit. It’s also worth mentioning the digital S/PDIF inputs and outputs, which could give you an additional an additional stereo input if you have a unit with a digital output, for instance. You can also use the box as a stand-alone preamp, which is a bit of a bonus. If you’re sure you’ll never want to
record more than two mics or analogue instruments at once, this might not be the box for you. But you’re not paying much for all these extra inputs and if you buy this interface, it could be one part of your recording system you don’t upgrade for a long time. PM
SHOULD I BUY ONE?
This isn’t the cheapest audio interface around but you’re getting a lot for your money, especially the six analogue inputs. That means on a gig, you could take a stereo mix of the drum kit from the front-of-house desk and still assign guitar, bass and two vocals to separate tracks. You could even use the MIDI input to record a keyboard (which would give you the chance to change the keyboard patches after the event, if you wanted to). Either way, you’re have a world of remix and processing possibilities that simply wouldn’t be there if you recorded direct-to-stereo. If that’s what you want to do, the nearest competitor is possibly the TASCAM US-1641, which has eight mic/line inputs, plus six further line inputs and MIDI. It’s also rackmounting, so a bigger unit physically but it’s only about £20 more.
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