TASCAM US-800 USB AUDIO/MIDI INTERFACE   (Used)

Pretty basic features.. 6 XLR connections with their own personal controls. Phantom power. Best you are going to get for the price..

As stated above, best bang for the buck in my opinion.

I suppose the only downfall is lack of features, but it does what I need it to do perfectly.

This device worked great with the Cubase LE5 bundled software. Then I made the mistake of upgrading to Cubase 6 (full version). Totally unusable. Every time I launch Cubase, I get a message from Windows saying the US-800 suffered a failure and can no longer be recognized by Windows. AWESOME! Even got the blue screen of death with a message pointing the finger at the US-800 drivers. (And yes, I was completely up-to-date with the latest driver versions.)

So I email tech support and all the support people are out at the NAAM convention, so I have to wait a minimum of 5 days for help. SCREW THAT! Send sales people to a convention and keep your support people doing their job of SUPPORTING customers.

I'm returning my device and buying something other than Tascam.

mediocre

none

Not happy

Get it on sale, then the value is great

This is the abridged version of a long speech I could go on about this product, in short it works great, but I would get it on sale since you may as well go with a tascam US-1800 if you can just spend a little more.

In short, all the nightmares about the drivers on the reviews here are true, anyone who got it to work must have a perfect computer setup since it literally is not a good time. After about a week of experimenting I came up with a way of making it work. Keep in mind I'm running windows 7 64 bit Service Pack 2, so I can't speak for any of the earlier versions of windows (XP, Vista,7)

So here's how I got it to work, literally don't touch the CD or website drivers for the device. Without the power plugged into the US-800 plug in the fire wire USB connection cable between your computer. Now plug in the power and windows 7 should automatically recognize the device and hunt down some drivers for it. Whatever it finds is what you want, and keep in mind that you will only be able to plug the US-800 into a USB port that has installed these. (Use USB 2.0 or you're going to have a bad time)

With this literally super easy way, I haven't encountered the freezing issue at all and the device has worked more than great! The only problems I have are with my DAW which is mixcraft 5, which has some issues recording all 6 channels (I have plenty of computing power).

An alternative is if you have a MAC, you should be ok if you install the drivers from the website and restart your computer. GarageBand seems to be able to recognize it and record without any problems.

You can also use it on an Ipad, but you need to buy the camera./ USB adaptor, and then a DAW program on the App store. Decently cheap if you have an Ipad and you don't have a DAW like mixcraft, Logic, Pro Tools, Garage Band, etc.

If your having troubles with it recognizing you can unplug and replug it back in to reset the device. I would always restart the computer before use as well, It seems to clean everything up and make it work better.

If you're completely new to multichannel recording with an audio interface, you probably want to purchase a better DAW than Cubase, mixcraft is a pretty good choice for being user friendly to begin with. (Cubase really isn't that great unless you have nothing else). It's also worth noting the way the device works it sends channel 1 to mono left, channel 2 to mono right, and so on for all 6 channels. Which means in a program like mixcraft you set each channel to only record from that mono direction, but your result will be in stereo in the end.

My abridged version turned out to be longer than expected.. best of luck though, it is a good little device for anyone starting out.

works as advertised