Tascam US-16x08

Talk about your MIDI interfaces, microphones, keyboards...

Moderators: MattKingUSA, khz

Post Reply
claxxical
Established Member
Posts: 3
Joined: Mon Dec 08, 2014 12:27 am

Tascam US-16x08

Post by claxxical »

I just picked one of these up and can't get my Ubuntu box to do anything besides output audio through it. It's detected fine and I don't see any errors in dmesg output. However my

Code: Select all

pulseaudio -vvvv

outputs:

E: [pulseaudio] pid.c: Daemon already running.
E: [pulseaudio] main.c: pa_pid_file_create() failed.
Has anyone tried using any of Tascam's newer interfaces? I tried installing the usbx2y module and it says my computer doesn't have any compatible devices attached. In the Gnome Alsamixer, there is a "USB Mixer" tab that is blank, where you would normally see all the faders, etc. For some reason, Ubuntu thinks it's a 7.1 card so for the output levels in Pulseaudio volume control, it has all the front/rear/subwoofer/etc levels which don't apply. The interface is also not listed as an input device in either Pulseaudio volume control or Sound Settings.

This interface is supposed to be class-compliant. I'm pretty new to this and assuming that means it should follow a universal standard and just "work" right? Or does that mean only audio output can work and that satisfies the requirement? Anyway, I'd love to help get this figured out as I'm sure I'm not the only one out there with this. Any debug output etc I will gladly give. I just don't want to go back to Windows.

Thanks!
Broomy
Established Member
Posts: 163
Joined: Sun Apr 28, 2013 5:36 am
Been thanked: 1 time

Re: Tascam US-16x08

Post by Broomy »

Welcome to the forum claxxical.

I'm no expert, but from what I've read Tascam doesn't work on Linux.
Try searching the forum and you will find some threads discussing Tascam products.
The Quintar Project:
- Popularizing an all fifths tuning for guitarlike instruments
- Youtube: Playing and Building
- Files: Sourceforge
Gwyndaf
Established Member
Posts: 26
Joined: Mon Dec 02, 2013 12:15 pm
Location: London, UK

Re: Tascam US-16x08

Post by Gwyndaf »

I've been wrestling with an older Tascam US-428, and that just about works, so it's certainly not a total no-go on Tascam products. I've no specific experience with the US-16x08 but had to do a lot of diagnostic work to get mine working, so the following might be useful:

I think the usx2y module is intended for older US-122/224/428 hardware, which is USB1. I've looked at it pretty closely lately and don't recall any mention of US-16x08. From what I've read, USB2 handling might be a bit different.

You might be better off focusing on ALSA rather than pulseaudio, as that's the most base-level communication with the interface. Commands "aplay -l" and "arecord -l" will list the devices ALSA can see for output and input, respectively. Each entry in the output represents a stereo device, so you should probably see 8 from arecord and 4 from aplay for 16in-8out.

Jack is probably more useful for multi-channel work, and might be helpful (if only for diagnostics) to avoid pulseaudio. Disable it in the startup applications, or kill it temporarily with command pulseaudio -k

My ALSA knowledge is limited, but perhaps it's useful if you post the output of "aplay -l" and "arecord -l" to give an idea of how ALSA's seeing your interface.
jdieter
Established Member
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Mar 04, 2015 2:22 am

Re: Tascam US-16x08

Post by jdieter »

just plugged one in to Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS and Ubuntu thinks it's a 7.1 card. Sometimes it doesn't detect it at all - but if you turn it on and then power on the pc it seems to detect it. Anyone get this thing to work? No nutin shows up for audio in QjackCtl - but the two midi jacks do.
peterpressure
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat May 09, 2015 12:19 am

Re: Tascam US-16x08

Post by peterpressure »

It shows up fine for me with
aplay -l and arecord -l

Audacity record worked fine and speaker-test output worked fine.

I think this thing is working in Linux with ALSA!
jdieter
Established Member
Posts: 3
Joined: Wed Mar 04, 2015 2:22 am

Re: Tascam US-16x08

Post by jdieter »

About 90% of the time, if you power on the US-16x08 and then power on your pc it gets detected fine. BUT, in order to select it in QJackCtl settings - you have to drop down the driver selection drop down until the device selection starts working, then select the us-16x08 in the top driver selection box. Don't select anything in the input and output device areas below it. Then it works. But, as I said - sometimes it just won't get detected by alsa. You have to do the whole power down reboot sequence mentioned above to get it to work. When it doesn't work - you wont see it in
aplay -l
You can get it to show up in
lsusb
but alsa will never detect it even after a
sudo alsa force-reload.
A pain rebooting over and over when it isn't detected - but once it shows in aplay -l you are good to go for Qjackctl and ardour.
So, right after you reboot - do an aplay -l and if you dont see the teac - power down reboot until you do.
Once you see it in aplay -l you are golden.
Waldmeister
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Aug 01, 2015 4:26 pm

Re: Tascam US-16x08

Post by Waldmeister »

Hi,
I got mine working out of the box on both, on my laptop and on my PC with ubuntu 14.04 and lowlatency kernel 3.19.0-26. The only issue is, that it is not recognized on every boot as described. But if it works, it is stable and well suited for professional working. The only thing, that does not work is the control panel (for monitoring) which is proprietary for Win/Mac.
As a rule of thumb I would say, if it shows up in your audio control panel it is working with jack too.

cheers
Waldmeister
CharlesB
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Nov 03, 2016 7:29 pm

Re: Tascam US-16x08

Post by CharlesB »

The linux driver in use is snd_usb_audio, sometimes when you plug the unit in the USB crashes. You can tell if this has happened as the orange light on the Tascam units does not go out when the USB is unpluged. Seems to be a problem with the driver on the Tascam (power cycle the unit once in this state). You can see messages with dmesg:

[18532.972512] usb 1-4: parse_audio_format_rates_v2(): unable to retrieve number of sample rates (clock 1)
[18532.972789] usb 1-4: parse_audio_format_rates_v2(): unable to retrieve number of sample rates (clock 1)

The solution I found was to unload the driver:
sudo rmmod snd_usb_audio,
plug the USB in, and let the ALSA config reload the driver or reload by hand.

This seems to give the unit more time to initialise. Hopefully Tascam will look into this.
User avatar
Linuxmusician01
Established Member
Posts: 1524
Joined: Mon Feb 23, 2015 2:38 pm
Location: Holland
Has thanked: 756 times
Been thanked: 136 times

Re: Tascam US-16x08

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

Okay, so this unit is quirky. Very quirky.

But when it does register itself as an USB audio interface, does it work as a stereo device (i.e. two tracks/chanels: left and right) or can you use it as for multi-track recording. That is: does it report all of the 16 output channels via USB so you can record in yor DAW every input of the Tascam to its own discrete track (or "bus" in Qtractor)?

What I mean is: can you use this Tascam to record bass drum, snare drum, vocal, bass guitar and lead guitar to five separate tracks in Ardour/Qtractor in one and the same jam session?
User avatar
troathscream
Established Member
Posts: 50
Joined: Tue Jul 24, 2012 5:29 pm
Location: The Netherlands
Has thanked: 1 time
Been thanked: 1 time
Contact:

Re: Tascam US-16x08

Post by troathscream »

Linuxmusician01 wrote:Okay, so this unit is quirky. Very quirky.

But when it does register itself as an USB audio interface, does it work as a stereo device (i.e. two tracks/chanels: left and right) or can you use it as for multi-track recording. That is: does it report all of the 16 output channels via USB so you can record in yor DAW every input of the Tascam to its own discrete track (or "bus" in Qtractor)?

What I mean is: can you use this Tascam to record bass drum, snare drum, vocal, bass guitar and lead guitar to five separate tracks in Ardour/Qtractor in one and the same jam session?

Hi, found this the other day on Github https://github.com/onkelDead he made a gui to control the Tascam mixer in Linux, a LV2 plugin to control the built-in FX within your DAW (Ardour) and a special kernel-patch for the Tascam US_16x08.

i thought i read somewhere on a forum that you can record all channels simultaneous in Ardour, but don't know for sure since i dont own one, it has kernel support in the 4.11 and 4.12 kernels, this i found on the Avlinux forum :)

And this i found in this post in the Ubuntu forum (from 2015) : https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2267921

Tascam US-16x08
Had a hell of a time getting this thing to work with ubuntu studio 14.04.2
The problem was that in QjackCtl - the "interface" selection drop down was greyed out.
After much of a muchness I figured out how to make it work:

1: power on the us16x08 BEFORE powering on the pc
2: after the pc powers up - start QjackCtl - go into settings
3: use the "server" drop down to select something other than alsa - then back to alsa until the "interface" drop down becomes enabled
4: select the us-16x08 as the interface, set input channels to 16 and output channels to 8
5: save and start jack
You will now have all channels available for patching in ardour DAW.

note: pulse audio sees the board as a 7.1 with no inputs (mics) - thats fine I guess - you can select the US-16x08 and your system sounds will play through outputs 1 and 2

Don't know much more about the device but have read in reviews that it has a bad Roundtrip Latency, so maybe great to record a band and use the direct zero latency routing, but not to use any low-latency RT FX.
Her are some measurements (With official drivers on windoze :roll: ) http://kailuamusicschool.com/tech/round ... y-roundup/
but don't know if it behaves the same with class compliant mode on linux

Grtz
Metal for the Devil!!!!
chris
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Dec 13, 2019 2:03 pm

Re: Tascam US-16x08

Post by chris »

I've managed to import the device into a Windows 10 Virtualbox guest running on Ubuntu-Studio and to use the mixer. Virtualbox (6.0) needs the Oracle USB extensions installed (and a root "modprobe vboxdrv" in the first place), which must be exactly the same version of the Virtualbox installation. Then, in the USB settings section of Virtualbox the Tascam USB entry must be added to the guest. I've had to switch off/on the device and plug out/in and restart virtualbox to see it in the virtualbox USB settings.

Then I started the Windows-guest and guess what: I needed to plug out/in the device again. I was then able to set the mixer and the routing settings to use latency free monitoring on the 1/2 outputs. I had to stop the virtual machine to reuse the Tascam in Jack. I forgot if there was a reconnection necessary but I guess it was. :roll:

But this is still easier for me than to gear up a separate Windows PC or to setup a dual boot system.
Post Reply