Ableton Forum

Hey there,
Is anyone out there using the Tascam US-122 with LIVE on a Mac?
How is it? I've been wondering about this box with the $199 price tag. Is this thing any good?
~Bitmap

anyone?

This has been my main sound thing on my PC & Ibook for a few months.

It is flawless, sounds awesome.

The usb power, phantom preamps, and hardware monitoring are great.

As far as latency on my iBook, I can get 6ms, although the cpu is happier over time with like 16ms, the pc won't go below ~30ms

It's funny how crappy a PC sounds until you give it a soundcard, I even use it for games & iTunes!

I've never had a problem with it!

I think the only downside for Mac users is the bundled software is not OSX.

The driver is though.

The only other note is that it prolly won't give you a preview out for Live since Live is picky & will only do that on a 4 out soundcard.

have you found the inserts useful?
~bmp

I'm sure they would be, but I haven't got a use for them right now. The only 2 things I left out of my review:

1. The case is solid metal, but the knobs are the puniest plastic.

2. The outputs are 1/4 for headphones and RCA for mains.

Mine is okay for Nuendo but sucks for LIVE. Crashes all the time and hiccups like crazy.

us-122 got a good review in macworld. check out tascams site under support, they have reviews at that section

Well, I've never had Live crash because of my 122, maybe it's just Live. (Needs reinstalling or you have system issues?).

i've had the us-122 for a few months and at first my whole system was giving me shit, so i don't know if it was the tascam or something else (most likely issues with n-track studio), but since i figured out issues with configuration, getting live, and downloading the 122's new driver the whole system is working good with pretty low latency and no crashes. i've got a pc though, so i dont know about mac. centrino 1.4, 512 RAM

I am using the US-122mkII with a mac powerbook. Hate it. At a latency of 40 milliseconds, which is barely usable for recording guitar, it crashes maybe every 10 minutes or so. At lower latencies the crashes are constant. I would really love some advice on a reliable soundcard to use, as I'm really fed up spending money on useless gear.
Sorry to sound so grumpy. It is because I am grumpy.

I almost bought one, but decided to avoid it. Tascam appears to have a history of slow driver releases when new operating systems come out. Look at reviews of some of the previous generation US-series. They all break every time Apple releases a new operating system (which they're set to do in a month), and I don't think the previous generations (except maybe the most recent discontinued set) ever got driver updates to Snow Leopard.

I would go with something class-compliant out of the box, or at the very least from a company with a reputation for robust support.