Saturday, November 23, 2013

How to use your Tascam US-1800 with OS X Mavericks

Tascam Support: just sayin' ...

The Tascam US-1800 does not have drivers for OS X Mavericks (10.9) nearly a month after Apple released the new OS. Here is the press release from Tascam support, should you be ... as I was ... in utter disbelief.

However, I have discovered a pretty easy work around, read on to get the deets my friends.

First, let me say that the US-1800 is really not a bad interface at all. In fact, if what you need is a boatload of pretty decent inputs and more than one stereo output, you really can't do a whole lot better for $250, which is about what thing will run you. For instance, say you wanna mic up a drum kit, and you'd like to take a DI off a bass and keys, and maybe mic up a guitar amp or two ... this will do the job pretty well.

However if you're asking yourself "why is this thing so cheap?", let me answer those questions for you:
  1. It is not class-compliant
    On OS X the thing needs an actual bonafide driver, and it is not coded very efficiently. The driver uses an insane amount of CPU for what it's doing. So, if you've got beef ... for instance on my 4-core xenon ... it's not really a problem. On my core-2 duo laptop ... you'll be bouncing software tracks down all day 'cause you're gonna hit that CPU wall quickly.

  2. there are actually only 4 outputs, not 6
    Output 1-2 is a hard-wired copy of the L-R monitor output. Output 3-4 is actually a separate output though. The manuals and marketing go to great extents to obfuscate this fact. boo.
     
Well anyhow, it's not bad, if you've got the beef to run it. Which I do, and I presume you do also, and so ... you want to know what the deal is, because you just installed Mavericks and now your OS either can't see your US-1800 or simply refuses to play sound through it ... here's the deal:

  1. If you already had the driver installed and upgraded your OS in place, skip this step, otherwise: Trick the driver installer into installing anyhow:

    1. download the 10.8 driver from tascam such as it is.
    2. unzip / mount the disk image (duh)
    3. the trickery, right click on the installer and select "show package contents"

    4.  install ./Contents/Resources/104/TASCAM_US1800_2.10.mpkg


  2. download SoundFlower and SoundFlowerBed
    Let's be honest ... if you don't have them installed already ... because they are pretty much the ubiquitous duct-tape of OS X audio. If SoundFlower is new to you, you're going to love it. What it does is set up two fake audio interfaces on your computer, one is a 2-in-2-out stereo interface, the second is a 16-in-16-out interface. You can use these fake interfaces to route audio internally between applications on your mac. In the case of the US-1800 we're lucky, because soundflower can see it, even though OS X Mavericks can't. Oh, and it's free.
    1. Get soundflower from Cycling 74 here
    2. Oh sweet. SoundFlowerBed is bundled with it now. Used to be a separate download. SoundFlowerBed, is status bar app that installs next to your wi-fi widget thing and the clock. It looks like a flower.

  3. set OS X's sound output to SoundFlower (2ch)

    Set OS X's output to Soundflower (2 ch)

    Pretty simple stuff. Open your system preferences -> Sound -> Output, and select "Soundflower (2ch) as shown above. OS X is now sending it's audio output to the Soundflower 2 channel pseudo-interface. Next step is to tell soundflower to route the 2 channel pseudo-interface out to your US-1800 ...

  4. use SoundFlowerBed to route audio out to US-1800 (1-2).

    As mentioned, SoundFlowerBed is a tiny app that runs in your status bar. You have to manually launch it. If like me, you find it to be very useful, you might want to set it to run on login (System Preferences -> Users & Groups -> Current User -> Login Items):

    Set SoundFlowerBed to launch on login ... if you want to
    Now just tell SoundFlowerBed to route "Soundflower (2ch)" to your US-1800 on Output 1-2:

    That ought to do it
  5. Logic sees it too, so you're back in business on Mavericks:

    w00t!

    Gosh Darn it, Donchaknow ...

26 comments:

  1. Thanks!! Just about to buy a US-1800 and will take this along to store on my older Mac Book air to test before I buy. Thanks for contributing this to the net.

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  2. i tried your work around no work which version of sound flower did you use?

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    1. used latest version of soundflower (1.6.6.b). NOTE a couple things:
      1) you have to tell soundflowerbed which outputs to use (1-2 or 3-4) on your US-1800. Open up the "Audio setup ..." menu on soundflowerbed

      2) if the *.mpkg driver didn't do it for you, it's worth trying the *.pkg driver instead (in the contents of the Tascam 10.8 driver -- step #4 above)

      3) If the US-1800 isn't turned on when you launch soundflowerbed, it will automatically disable it. So ... for instance if you set soundflowerbed to launch on startup as I suggested above ... and you boot your comptuer THEN turn on your US-1800, soundflowerbed will have de-selected your previous preference and you'll have to select it again

      best of luck ... and here's hoping Tascam gets us proper drivers soon!

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    2. Actually, I take that back. I have Soundflower 1.5.1 installed (checked on wrong machine). In theory this should work also with the latest version of soundflower though.

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    3. Hi Andrew - Ive been using sound flower after seeing your post for along time and everything was working great.... I made the mistake of downloading the new mavericks driver from Tascam but now none of my midi software instruments work... I've tried contacting them but haven't had a response. I even downloaded the new logic x in the hope it would be fixed. Ive tried uninstalling the new driver and reinstalling the original one.... nothing!.. Audio tracks are fine... any ideas???,,please??

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    4. Hmm, that's mighty odd. There really shouldn't be a distinction between software generated or other audio as far as the interface is concerned ... you know unless it's something really obvious, like the "mix" knob is turned all the way to "input" (i.e. you're monitoring the inputs directly and have turned output from the interface itself all the way down.

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    5. i wish it was something obvious (as these things usually are) but no..... at a loss!

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    6. i think its the driver that disables MIDI signal.....and you can't go back.....


      "Note that once the old driver is uninstalled, it cannot be reinstalled to OS X Mavericks (10.9). If you wish to retain the old driver installation, be sure to use Time Machine or another backup mechanism that allows you to revert to a point prior to this uninstallation"

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    7. so what happens if you use something like the shift-lock keyboard in Logic to bypass midi all together. Does the software instrument push sound out of the speakers then?

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  3. I want help with my us-1641 PLEASE!! :(

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    Replies
    1. Got no idea, but guess you could try the same thing and see if it works? If it does leave a comment so others asking will know :-)

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  4. any luck Curry Master?

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  5. Hello. Try to do what you say did not work. I think the problem is that I had installed the Driver 3.00.
    Now try to reinstall the 2.10 but not executed.
    That do not.
    Anyone know anything about when the final driver Ships?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. NOTE: Tascam has released beta Mavericks drivers:
      http://tascam.com/product/us-1800/downloads/

      I can't vouch for it, as haven't tried it. This workaround keeps my studio rockin', and seems pretty stable ... I'll be waiting for the final release personally :-)

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  6. Hey Andrew,

    I'm thinking of trading my current interface for the Tascam US-1800. Do it have the six line inputs or just the two? I'm fine with the 4 outs, but I would like to have a great deal of ins. Also, have you tried the new driver and how is the recording quality?

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  7. Hey,

    I wanted to know if you ever downloaded the newest Tascam US-1800 driver and if so, how did it work? I'm thinking of getting one this week and I would like to know that the quality is worth it.

    Thanks,
    Janaye :)

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  8. Hey,

    I wanted to know if you have tried the new Tascam US-1800 drivers yet. If so, how well did it work and how is the quality on the interface?

    Thanks,
    Janaye

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    Replies
    1. Hi Janaye:

      Haven't tried the new drivers yet. Frankly I'm scared to try it, because of this sentence in the release notes:

      "Note that once the old driver is uninstalled, it cannot be reinstalled to OS X Mavericks (10.9). If you wish to retain the old driver installation, be sure to use Time Machine or another backup mechanism that allows you to revert to a point prior to this uninstallation"

      My studio works as is, and it looks like taking a chance on the beta drivers has a decent chance of becoming an epic up all night time-machine-recovery fiasco.

      Funk Dat.

      I'm frankly starting to get a little pissed at Tascam. I mean it's been since OCTOBER of LAST YEAR that Mavericks came out. I'll say this ... I wish I'd spent an extra $100 and got a PreSonus firewire interface. But hey, I'm stuck with it now, and it works OK with this hack ... so I guess you know. It is what it is.

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  9. Thank you very much :) It was very helpful !!

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  10. Hello! I know this is very old, but I hope you could answer, I would be so thankful... Firstly, thanks for your post, it surely is very useful, but I have a question, I am about to buy an iMac with Yosemite, and I currently have a Tascam US-800, which I'm guessing is smaller than the 1800. According to Tascam's website, my interface is discontinued (seriously!?) and the latest OS compatible is Mountain Lion (which I currently work on). My question is, do you think I could do this with Yosemite? Do you think my interface would work on Yosemite or is it gonna be useless now?

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    Replies
    1. Worth a shot, I guess. Who knows? Tascam support just sucks. They abandon their products astonishingly quickly. Will never buy another thing from that clown patrol.

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