Tascam iU2 mobile interface

[kpsychedelic]

It works flawlessly with the official apple CCK. All of the problems I was having were due to the knockoff camera connector. Oh well. The main design flaw with the USB pre is that it treats the front inputs as left and right, so they aren't summed to mono in the direct monitoring. The latency is fine though for GarageBand amp simulators, so you can directly monitor.

Sorry if that doesn't make sense, but it's relatively easy to get around depending on the application. I can't wait to get my mics hooked up, etc.

Hey thanks a lot for the answers.
Good to hear about the CCK, see, I knew I can't be wrong all times
So what you meant is that you're monitoring straight from the iPad's audio jack?

[nutate]

Hey thanks a lot for the answers.
Good to hear about the CCK, see, I knew I can't be wrong all times
So what you meant is that you're monitoring straight from the iPad's audio jack?

You're welcome! Yeah, you were definitely right about the audio.

So, no I'm not monitoring from the iPad direct. I'm monitoring from the ART. Here is the basic situation. There are 2 inputs. 1 & 2. When you have nothing running (or just the standalone unit powered on) the 1st input will come out through the left channel and the 2nd input through the right channel. That's for the headphones, I haven't tried the monitor outs.

You'll notice that the front panel says Left and Right, not one and two under the inputs. So that makes sense I guess.

So if you play into ampkit (something that takes a mono input) ampkit will reamp your L channel input into stereo processed output. The blend knob on the back of the ART lets you mix in 0 latency direct monitoring with the processed audio (which has latency). The direct monitoring is always either full left or full right, while the processed audio can be panned either way.

I hope that kind of makes sense. With my presonus firebox, I can use the software mixer to pan the inputs as I wanted for 0 latency monitoring. With the ART, that's not the case.

[polaris20]

Honestly if I'm going to cobble something together, I'll just get a preamp and the MobileIn from Line 6. It's already got the 1/8" stereo that I can run out from RCA, and I can be sure that it'll actually work correctly, without having to worry about hubs, CCK adapters, etc.

[alanmcc]

Bought this interface instead of iODock and others, due to onboard a/d an d/a conversion. The audio quality in and out of this interface is stunning, midi in/out works very well. Since I treat my equipment with a lot of care and respect, the I don't see the attached cable as a problem in any way. To me, the controls seem a bit fragile, but it all goes back to how you treat your equipment. I intend to acquire a USB800 to use for 8 channel input recording, but this unit is good for now. If you need an interface with excellent audio, get it. The book shows using this unit EITHER with an iDevice OR connected to a computer, not both at the same time, connecting a mini-usb to this unit when connected to iPad/iPhone is only to charge and provide for phantom power.

[dixie237]

I thought I would add my experience here, as I took the plunge after reading the not so good reviews.
Firstly I gotta say I am very pleased.
The dials ...well yeah they reflect the price, especially the larger ones. They will " catch" on the body if pushed down on the very outside firmly, but that's minor.
Right away, after connecting spdif out to my Fireworx spdif in, and the midi in and out to my motu interface the unit spat out very clear and clean audio, and midi with no issues.
My daw is ableton live running on XP 32 bit.

First thing I did was fire up Animoog.......lovely to hear that loud and clear.
The cable connecting to the iPad IS TOO SHORT Tascam.......
.....would be nice to have 1m to be able to sit the IPad on my lap ....but again, minor (ish)

First and foremost I wanted quality audio from the iPad...got that.

It was definitely a good purchase for the price.

Cheers
D

[nutate]

I thought I would add my experience here, as I took the plunge after reading the not so good reviews.
Firstly I gotta say I am very pleased.
The dials ...well yeah they reflect the price, especially the larger ones. They will " catch" on the body if pushed down on the very outside firmly, but that's minor.
Right away, after connecting spdif out to my Fireworx spdif in, and the midi in and out to my motu interface the unit spat out very clear and clean audio, and midi with no issues.
My daw is ableton live running on XP 32 bit.

First thing I did was fire up Animoog.......lovely to hear that loud and clear.
The cable connecting to the iPad IS TOO SHORT Tascam.......
.....would be nice to have 1m to be able to sit the IPad on my lap ....but again, minor (ish)

First and foremost I wanted quality audio from the iPad...got that.

It was definitely a good purchase for the price.

Cheers
D

That is a very good use case that I hadn't considered. If you want to output animoog as pure digital audio then the tascam is going to give it to you.

I was mainly focused on using it as a mobile recording unit and it wasn't going to work as well as I would want it to. My m-audio firewire 410 broke one of it's channels because it couldn't handle being moved around in a backpack.

For the short cable I would suggest looking up some of the dock extender cables that are out there. I think they would work.

The ART USB dual Pre that I like so much now has no digital out options. I'm glad you got the iU2 in spite of my superficial (but very negative) review.

[martygras]

I think books are the only thing designed to survive a backpack.

That's probably cuz they're analog though.

[dixie237]

Bad news. After successful first plugin in. Tascam would not output digital signal today. Also iPad kept pinging up with not recognising USB device when usin the supplied cable to charge. After a complete shutdown a couple of times, I did manage to get it locked in and charging. But after unplugging the iPad and taking out of the studio to write some emails, upon return it again refuses to hook up!!! Tried another shutdown of everything......cos ideally want to incorporate my iPad into te studio with this, again nothing. Useless.
Will write to tascam, hope they reply or the unit is going back , shame,but I can't be doing with something I can't rely on .

D

[T5000]

[quote="dixie237"]
Right away, after connecting spdif out to my Fireworx spdif in, and the midi in and out to my motu interface the unit spat out very clear and clean audio, and midi with no issues.
My daw is ableton live running on XP 32 bit.
D[/quote]

That is a pretty cool use case of the iU2. Not sure if I have seen this advertised by Tascam explicitely.

I guess I do not really understand the signal flow within the iU2 but I am wondering if the iPad's digital out signal can be sent to the PC through the USB port directly instead of using SPDIF plus additional gear? I understand that if host=iOS then the USB port is there to provide power (that is how I understand the manual). What happens if host=COMPUTER? Would the USB line carry digital out from the iPad to the PC?

dixie237: Which host setting did you use in your setup?

Thanks,
T

[dixie237]

I was using the IOS setting. This was the initial setting I had it on when I first plugged in the unit. When it failed, I did try the computer option, but still nothing.

As far as my routing goes. My audio interface is a motu 24io, so I only have access to analogue ins. This I why I routed to the spiff in on my firework. This is a very nice bit of kit and from here I output back to the 24io via the balanced outs on the firework.

If I had a motu 2408 I would just hook up directly spdif in on that.

I don't think there is the option to output audio through the USB connection on the iu2.... It's there purely to draw power to charge the iPad whilst it's connected on the 30 pin.

.....I'm gonna try again later with hooking up, but there's nothing worse than something that works "sometimes". It appears right now as though if you disconnect the iPad, it ain't gonna connect again. As I said , I did manage to get all working again, but what the sequence was, as I did nothing different from when it wouldn't hook up, I couldn't tell you

Perhaps I'll figure out what the prob is, or tascam can enlighten me.

Cheers

D

[sold]

I've had my iU2 for less than a week now and I love it. The sound quality is great and I find that I am using my iPad more than ever before. I am actually considering using it for everything I do with music now. And the fact that the setup is truly portable is a major plus. And being able to charge the iPad while the device is plugged in means less having to worry about stopping what you are doing to recharge when the dock connector is in use.

My setup for using the iU2 with my iPad is like this: I connected an rca cable from left/right rca out on the iU2 to an rca -> 1/8" stereo adapter which I connect to a lead which has a 1/8" stereo plug on one end and a mono 1/4" plug on the other side which plugs into the auxillary input on the back of a Vox DA20 guitar amp which can be powered with C batteries. I wanna try the midi in with my Behringer FCB1010 next and see how that goes. Then I just gotta find a way to battery power that thing and I will have the ultimate portable jamming machine

There are some flaws which have been mentioned previously, but I thought I would add my opinion. Yeah, the build quality could've been a little better, the plastic could've been more scratch resistant and matte instead of glossy and easily scratched. The knobs do seem to rub hard against the plastic surrounding them and the knobs themselves could've been better. The adapter cable is a little short (but that's nothing an extension cable can't fix) and Tascam really should've included a proper usb wall charger.

Having said that, for the money and the possibilities it creates for the more musically inclined ios device users, these flaws are comparatively minor imho. And until more devices with the same features and better build quality come out in the future (and they probably wouldn't be the same price), this is imo the best suited audio interface for ios devices that I've seen on the market.

There was one thing I found odd. Out of curiosity, I tried connecting the iU2 to my iPad throught the usb connection using the camera connection kit just to check if it would work. For some reason it doesn't connect in ios or pc mode and I got the pop-up message saying the device uses too mch power. I though that was kinda strange. Wouldn't you think it would draw the same amount of power regardless of which mode it was in?

Anyway, I am a happy customer and I would recommend this product to anyone who wants to make tunes with an iPad/iPhone/iPod/iWhatever (iToaster?). Devices like the Tascam iU2 combined with Audiobus (when it comes out) and the wealth of music apps for ios devices will make the iPad a kickass portable studio.

[sonicflux]

I connected an rca cable from left/right rca out on the iU2 to an rca -> 1/8" stereo adapter which I connect to a lead which has a 1/8" stereo plug on one end and a mono 1/4" plug on the other side which plugs into the clean input on the back of a Vox DA20 guitar amp which can be powered with D batteries.

Curious why you're using both left and right RCA outs when you're only plugging into a mono output.

Also, the RCA jacks have a 100 ohm output impedence and your guitar amp probably has 1M ohm input impedence. You would probably see a better signal at the amp with an impedance matching transformer.

[sold]

Curious why you're using both left and right RCA outs when you're only plugging into a mono output.

I thought that if I was ever in a situation where I may have a track panned left or right, it would be better to be able to hear it even though the amp input is mono. And I will be connecting the iU2 to other equiptment which is actually stereo as well. This way I have all the connections I need for both stereo and mono connections.

Also I figured the rca output would be better than the headphone output. And since I already had a cable lying around because I was using an iRig adapter with my practice amp previously, it was easy to just plug that cable into an rca -> 1/8" adapter and hook that up to the rca output on the iU2 using some spare rca cables I had. When I was using the iRig, I plugged that into the mic input on the back of the amp cause that input bypassed all the effects the amp has.

Also, the RCA jacks have a 100 ohm output impedence and your guitar amp probably has 1M ohm input impedence. You would probably see a better signal at the amp with an impedance matching transformer.

I made a mistake in my previous post that I have since edited. I'm not using the clean mic input or the guitar input atm, I'm plugging into a 1/4" auxillary input on the back of the amp designed for output from cd players and mp3 players and stuff. The volume is controlled from the iU2 by the line level knob. I'm not sure what the impedance at the aux in jack is. And I thought as long as the source device output impedance was lower than the input device's it would be fine. It sounds decent so I figured it would be ok.

There is also a 1/4" mic input I mentioned earlier with it's own volume control. It seems to work fine and I get a decent sound from that input too. But I'm always up for giving any suggestions a shot, especially if there would be an improvement.

In this case, which input would you think is better? And is impedance matching really gonna matter or make a noticable difference?

[sonicflux]

Sounds like you're doing it exactly right. If the Aux input on your amp is designed for CD players, then it's line level, and it should work perfectly. It's a shame it's not a stereo input, but you can't have everything.

Glad to hear the iU2 is working out.

[Storms]

Btw, dixie, I've found that a lot of audio cards using the camera connection kit will get flaky if plugged/unplugged multiple times. Sometimes you actually have to unplug everything and restart the iPad to get it to see an external audio interface again. This is probably either a bug in some implementations of class compliant audio or a bug in the core audio drivers. For this reason, when I'm using the iPad in the studio (I do exactly the same thing as you - SPDIF into Ableton Live), I set the auto lock screen saver to never and leave it turned on the entire session. The iPad battery is 10 hours easily so I've never run out of juice, and this prevents losing a connection and having to go through a painful reboot process.

Another small nitpick I've had with class compliant audio is that sometimes when initially plugging in the camera connection kit, you get high latency, like 200ms between a key press on a virtual synth and the sound. I think this is because an iOS app can request any buffer size it wants, and some don't work well with class compliant audio. A strange workaround I've found is to simply close my synth apps (double tap home button, hold icon until it jiggles, and close everything), then open Orphion and press a few pads. For some reason, Orphion must request really low latency audio. Then, I can load any other synth I want and get low latency audio.

I really do appreciate the camera connection kit more and more... having a really long USB cable means I can kick back on the couch and jam! I suppose if you're using SPDIF, it doesn't really matter the quality of the interface, but I really like the Tascam US-800 because it has 2 nice headphone jacks (1/4" and 1/8") with separate volume control and a separate monitor volume control.