Tascam US-800 (8 Inputs simultaneously)

[gtr]

Is anybody else having troubles with the us-800 dropping its usb signal?
I upgraded my ipad2 to 5.01 hoping it might solve it but it hasn't made any difference.

The units usb light will flash and Multitrack will bring up the internal i/o window, then flash up the us-800 i/o immediately after.

Have tried other usb cables.
Have not heard anyone else mention problems connecting.
Could I have a faulty unit? It happens regardless of software running on the ipad..not just Multitrack

Thanks

[Sonicflux]

Received my US800 yesterday, and so far, it's been a rather frustrating experience.

Everything looked good from the beginning. With MT DAW open, I plugged the 800 into my ipad2 and then my headphones into the iPad. It initially worked well, but after recording for around 30 seconds, the headphone output would start to degrade in a ring-mod type of distortion, and another, more delayed, output would slowly take its place. It is very bizarre, and it took a while to figure out what was going on.

This is all I was able to determine.
- Only happens while recording a signal. (electric guitar in my case. Passive pickups.)
- Doesn't appear on the actual recording. Seems to be purely a monitoring issue.
- Doesn't happen when recording no input. I even tried recording with just a 1/4" cable plugged into the 800 and everything was fine.
- Once the non-latent signal fully disappears, you can still hear the input, but with extreme latency; at least 300ms.
- Doesn't happen with my Sonuus I2M Musicport. Everything else was the same including all the cables.
- Happens with both front inputs and also with my guitar connected via an xlr cable through an active direct box.

Haven't tried it with a microphone, yet, or attached to a computer. It's entirely possible I have a defective unit. Wondering if anyone else is having similar issues.

[Marcosaw]

My iPad dont recognize the tascam us-800 conected by the camera connection kit... The usb led dont turn on, what i can do to fix that problem?

[pwnified]

It initially worked well, but after recording for around 30 seconds, the headphone output would start to degrade in a ring-mod type of distortion, and another, more delayed, output would slowly take its place.

I got this to happen also on iOS 5.0.1. When I originally checked the unit I did lengthy recording tests using the direct monitoring as well as software monitoring, but I can't remember if I also did the length test using the aggregate device (headphones plugged into iPad), so I can't tell you if it works on 5.0 or not. This is definitely an iOS bug with the aggregate device implementation. I'm going to install the 5.1 beta

[pwnified]

Is anybody else having troubles with the us-800 dropping its signal?

I've not had that happen, in fact it's been very stable once connected. There has been a few times where it won't connect, however just power cycling the tascam would clear that up.

[Tacomancini]

I'm having a problem while recording 5 tracks in where halfway through a recording single tracks will fall out of sync, sometimes followed by other tracks after more time. I'm using 5.0.1 as an OS. I am running Multitrack DAW version that enabled 8 track recording (bought the app + the us800 because of it), but haven't updated to the newest version. Montoring is done via the 1/4 phone jack in the us800 sent out to a headphone distribution amp to the other phones. The us800 is set to the default hardware monitoring.

I previously recorded a couple tracks successfully, but one track from that session ended with a corrupted recording. Same thing, halfway into a song a track fell out of sync with the other tracks.

This time every recording fell out of sync halfway through. I always open a new project per song, rather than the lazy way of letting the tape roll and going take after take. I figured it would be easier on the system.

Could this be because I don't have your latest (January) update?

Could this be caused from unplugging and then replugging the camera connection kit? We record a couple takes of a song, then move to another room to monitor the recording, then head back to the live room to record more.

Could it be because I was running sort of low on space? I had 2 gigs or so available, but at the end I noticed only 300mb of space was left. I thought the ssd drives were better at dealing with less available storage.

Here are some examples of the mixed down recordings with the track going out of sync:

At about 1 minute: http://soundcloud.com/tacomancini/s-h-4-m4a

At about 30 seconds: http://soundcloud.com/tacomancini/moon-tan-too-m4a

Thanks

[pwnified]

Dropouts may occur when overdubbing this many tracks. Does this problem only happen on take 2 and above? If it happens on Take 1 for a new song, there is something else wrong with the iPad and maybe background running tasks/notifications/calandar/alarms/email checking/slow ram/etc.
If it happens on Take 2 and above (rewinding and recording over previous takes), the workaround is to delete the old takes (the regions) (select all regions, Erase from the Hotbox) first, before recording the next take. If you are getting low on space I also recommend deleting unused Bins from the bin browser (after Erasing the old regions). With a clean song (no regions) there shouldn't be any dropouts even when recording 8 tracks with effects. Except: (see below)

I thought the ssd drives were better at dealing with less available storage.

This is correct, its all basically memory chips, so there is no difference in access times when the storage is full. However when iOS detects that storage is getting full, it will start a background process "The Cleaner" and start deleting caches and temporary files used by other apps (that are not running). Since MultiTrack is heavily file bandwidth dependent, this will wreak havoc on currently running recordings. I've been trying to get a handle on when this cleaner kicks on in terms of remaining space, but for now I recommend having many gigs free before starting a heavy multitrack recording.

The next version will have a 'free filespace' info box displayed while recording.

[pwnified]

Just a clarification of terms: Overdubbing was the wrong word to use, Recording over is more accurate. You can overdub on other tracks no problem with many inputs, if those tracks are empty. Recording over regions is much more file bandwidth heavy at the moment. Please try to "clear a space" for the take before recording many inputs.

[gtr]

Thanks for replying Pwnified

I was using a 5in1 camera kit and just bought a genuine apple CCK and my usb dropouts have disappeared!

5in1 must have a dry joint or something

Working perfectly now.

Thanks again

[Tacomancini]

Good to know about recording over. Often times I start recording, only to have the band futz around for a minute, and I just quickly stop and roll back. Then record over the previous audio. From now on in I'll definitely delete the audio first.

I always open a new project for each take. SongTitleTake1, SongTitleTake2 etc. I assumed this would be less resource intensive then just letting the tape roll and cutting the performances apart later. In fact I'm not sure even how I would do this. This brings me to a feature request . I wish there was a way to open a new project and quickly have it restore settings from the previous session. So it would automatically load up mono1 for track 1, mono2 for track to, all other i/o settings etc. This way take to take could be much quicker and less prone to error. I always triple check now, and it can kill the mood time wise. If effect/eq/volume/pan settings were recalled as well that woud be even better.

As to my original problem, it was less of a drop out issue. A single, or even a couple tracks seemed to have lost clock sync with the other tracks, and would fall ahead/behind the other tracks. Some times only one track would jump time, then later in the recording other tracks would fall out of sync as well. After recording one take which would usually last under 5 minutes and utilize 5 tracks armed, I noticed that it was taking a really long time for the project to close, and sometimes the app crashed. Upon discovering that the tracks were corrupted when we took a playback break I rebooted the iPad and cycled the tascam, but the next session of takes all resulted in skipping recordings as well.

So this last Weds we tried again, but this time I deleted the app and all it's data first and reloaded the latest version from the app store. Suspecting it was a space related issue I cleared off unused apps and files and went in with 6 gigs of my 16 gig iPad free. This time it was rock solid and flawless. Not one hiccup. So I'd guess it's the nasty garbage cleaners that were wreaking havoc on my sessions.

I'm so impressed with what you have done with this app and it's razor sharp focus on performance and stability. Tascam should license your software to bundle with whatever the successor to us-800 will be. It's a portastudio in the truest sense. Respect.

Couple of questions. When recording simultaneous tracks what is the ballpark time limits that should ensure stability? Is there some ratio like 8 track recordings should be kept under x number of minutes, and 4 tracks x/2 minutes?

How can you clean out bins without mistakenly deleting files that you are actively using? Is the bin manager only accessible using the wifi/web browser interface?

Is there a document with advice for app performance like enabling airplane mode etc?

Does the number of unactive projects in your app affect performance of the active project?

Do you have plans, or even accessibility to APIs that would allow your app to configure the monitoring settings of the us-800 with your app, rather than utilizing a secondary computer with tascam's often buggy and outdated clients?

Thanks again for your great work!