Tascam US-1800 Line and guitar input levels can be perfectly balanced.
people will already have their DAW of choice well in place so perhaps manufacturers could look at bundling in some cool VST packages instead? Just a thought… To test the unit we set up a drum
ratio. We set the latency to its lowest setting and it is exactly this scenario that normally turns up any latency or lag issues. While many recording engineers can pinpoint out the latency levels that the human ear can
preamps a chance to shine. We close mic’d a Fender Hot Rod Deluxe valve combo with a Shure SM57 just off the grill cloth, and then used a Røde NT-1 as a room mic to get some extra room ambience. It was all simply a matter of activating phantom power on mics 1-4 (plugging the NT-1 into channel 1) and plugging the SM-57
of anything close to this price bracket which could perform to this standard. High praise indeed! One last important thing to look at
in this review is monitoring. The US-1800 offers a couple of useful monitoring options. Besides being able to adjust the headphones levels and the overall monitor levels with
The Tascam US-1800 feels perfectly focussed on the job in-hand…
Slim, compact and versatile: The US-1800’s rear panel.
track using the EZdrummer VST and then set aside three tracks for guitars: rhythm on the left and right with two separate lead tracks running down the middle. Rather than grouping these we used individual channels with each rhythm track running its own instance of Guitar Rig. After setting up our buses in Cubase and choosing the Tascam in our ASIO settings we moved to the Tascam US-1800 control panel. It’s not exactly what you would describe as brimming with features but the clean layout nevertheless sensibly opts to offer all of the essential controls necessary to get the job done.
Right on track
When it comes to latency settings the US-1800 lets you choose between highest, high, normal, low, and lowest. With no sliders or buffer settings to play with we have to place our faith in Tascam here but as we shall see our faith was well placed! The control panel also includes options a choice of digital output channels, sample source clock, and digital output format (S/ PDIF or AES/EBU). Back in Cubase it’s time to record. With the drum pattern merrily hammering away we laid down the rhythm guitar tracks, running the guitar directly into one of the US-1800’s ¼-inch inputs and the input level set to match the guitar signal. We immediately found that we were getting an excellent signal with the channel input gain set at around 11 O’clock, which bodes very well for users with far lower output pickups in their guitars that still require a reasonable noise to signal
easily detect, they still rarely take into account how latency – even at fairly low levels – can drastically effect a guitarist’s performance due to changing what the musician can ‘feel’ as opposed to what they can hear.
dynamic mic into channel 5. With our channels assigned in the DAW we were once again impressed with the signal to noise ratio (even testing later using a cheap lavaliere mic there was still ample power on tap
independent controls for each, the US-1800’s rotary Monitor Mix control lets the user quickly fade between ‘Input’, which monitors the raw input signal from your instrument or mic and ‘Computer’ that monitors the
The US-1800 is brimming with features and a clean layout offers all of the essential controls to help you get the job done…
In the US-1800’s case, we were tracking quickly and accurately without detecting any ‘feel’ issues or artifacts and there were absolutely zero latency issues. For recording the lead guitars it was time to turn to microphones in order to give the US-1800’s mic
before any nasty clipping got in the way). With the latency still set at its lowest setting we hit ‘Record’ and the Tascam performed faultlessly and no traces of unwelcome clicks or burps to be found. In terms of audio quality it was near flawless, in fact we did struggle to think
SHOULD I BUY ONE?
Overall there is nothing quite like the Tascam US-1800 on the market either in terms of quality or features. We love its user-friendly simplicity which never seemed to come at the expense of usability. At this price point you might expect some compromise but in terms of what this Tascam unit is meant to do it doesn’t leave the user feeling as though anything important has been missed out. Granted, you don’t get a graphic representation of the inputs with multi coloured LED lights flashing all over the show and you don’t get phantom power assignable to each channel, but you do get everything you actually need in terms of the complete package. The Tascam US-1800 is a very capable device that will happily pull duty as a day to day soundcard or a standalone mic pre-amp. In fact the only real niggle we could find is that the 1U rack format is actually better suited to a 2 U rack space as Tascam recommend you leave a clear 1U space above the US-1800 for cooling purposes. Given the price and performance (and the fact we couldn’t get it to misbehave at all), the Tascam US-1800 is a device that we can easily live with and we can recommend wholeheartedly.
processed signal from your DAW. This feature comes in really useful for isolating potential phase problems at source, such as mic placement, using the Monitor Out control to quickly compare the unprocessed input with your fully EQ’d and processed track. PM
pickup431
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