Tascam US-800 Ubuntu Studio 11.x

[timbit1985]

I just wanted to confirm that the Tascam US-800 works well with Ubuntu Studio 11.x

Getting it working involved a little bit of fiddling, but once running it works well.

The process involves the following:

1) Disabling on board sound through the BIOS ( I Was getting all kinds of frustrating hardware addressing conflicts)
2) Installing a new Kernel (3.1.5-generic, x86. I can't comment on whether or not x64 works as I haven't tried it) The kernel that it comes with 2.6 or something like that doesn't play nice with the US-800. Every time I plugged the us-800 in, I got a soft hang on processor one. It went straight to 100% duty until I unplugged the audio interface. There are plenty of tutorials around on how to patch kernels, so I'm not going to do an indepth one.
Basically, download the appropriate kernel files and then navigate to the folder in a terminal and type the following.
1)sudo dpkg -i header......_all.deb,
2) sudo dpkg -i header..._386.deb
3) sudo dpkg -i image...._386.deb
If you don't know exactly what you are doing, go and read up about it. It's pretty hard to screw the machine up with kernel updates cuz you can always boot into the previous version using grub.

3) Manually setting up JACK with the following;
Interface: US-800 (click the > button, and choose the appropriate HW ID)
Number of inputs:8
Number of outputs:6

Jack didn't start until after I saved it, quit, and reloaded it. Apparently it is an ALSA bug or glitch.

I picked the card up for 99 bucks + free shipping from musiciansfriend.com

[steevc]

That's a lot of interface for the money. Do we know what development has been done in the latest kernels for supporting interfaces like this? If more USB 2.0 interfaces are supported it will give more options to those using laptops.

I've added it to the wiki http://wiki.linuxmusicians.com/doku.php ... cam_us-800

[timbit1985]

That's a lot of interface for the money.

Yes it is It is still on sale, I just checked. I'm not sure how long it will last, but it is a sweet piece of kit for a beginner like myself.

Do we know what development has been done in the latest kernels for supporting interfaces like this? If more USB 2.0 interfaces are supported it will give more options to those using laptops.

I am a relatively new linux user, so I have no idea what else is all out there. I didn't even know if I could get it to work when I purchased it. I'd read some place (i don't remember) that it worked. I certainly hope that future kernals have more usb 2.0 audio support.

[stewball]

thanks for the info timbit. Now I got this working on 10.04 LTS with the 3.1.6 kernel. What jack settings are you using for latency? Best I can get without Xruns are frames 1024, periods 6, with total latency at 128 msec. Are you getting anything better?

[slowpick]

Periods should be 3 for a usb device. 256 or 128 for frames should be easy. xruns that are
inaudible can't be heard so you can ignore them

Turn off cpu scaling, or set it to 'performance' instead of 'power saving',
your system jargon may vary. Don't use a usb hub, remove other usb devices.
Make sure you use the fastest usb port you have, some computers have both
1.1 and 2.0. If it's a new computer with usb 3, there may be a bios option to
step down to usb 2/1.1 or a rare case where a hub would be a lesser evil.

use the command ps ux to see a list of
running processes, in case a cpu hog got out of its pen.

killall name-of-process

[Capoeira]

xruns that are
inaudible can't be heard so you can ignore them

there is danger they "suddenly appear" after some proccesing

[chubasco]

Reports of functionality on 3.1.5 seem a bit overstated to me. I've tried several of my boxes, with kernels from 2.6.35 all the way up to 3.1.8, and they universally report -32 errors on the usb controller in dmesg when you plug the thing in. I thought my kernel upgrade to 318 didn't take, but uname -a dutifully shows 3.1.8, only no US-800, both when hotplugged, and when plugged in before booting. Not that I think it's relevant, but said boxes I tried it on were also both ubuntu 10.04 and ubuntu 11.10. No joy.

I hereby rate this device *for hackers only*.