Tascam US-4x4HR. Yay or Nay?

[kendor]

Anyone here use a Tascam US-4x4HR audio interface with Sonobus and Linux (or just Jack in general)? I'm interested in this: https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B08MFPKQ4M/ ... _lig_dp_it

Curious as to how it worked out?

[Loki Harfagr]

Short version: It works.

Long and full of OT version:
Well, i can't tell for 'Sonobus' since I never tried it, though I have this Tascam and it works fine in Linux and Jack (if any relation to Sonobus I used it on Ardour and Mixbus with or without Jamulus.
It had sometimes some glitches with being recognized at boot with some varieties of kernel befor 5.10, the quick repair was to simply disconnect the Tascam USB then disconnect its power alim then reconnect the power and then the USB and it worked then fine.
Since 5.10 kernel series and up I didn't meet that hazard glitch again (maybe luck or maybe kernel went right sometime somewhere).
Only problem to go further on the answer is that at the moment this US4x4HR is in a box at my other (and hopefully next) place waiting for the heavy house repairs to end so I can move and I won't get ther until at best early spring so I won't be able to make any tests for you now!

[AstralLovebird]

Made an account just to reply to this thread.

Well, i can't tell for 'Sonobus' since I never tried it, though I have this Tascam and it works fine in Linux and Jack (if any relation to Sonobus I used it on Ardour and Mixbus with or without Jamulus.
It had sometimes some glitches with being recognized at boot with some varieties of kernel befor 5.10, the quick repair was to simply disconnect the Tascam USB then disconnect its power alim then reconnect the power and then the USB and it worked then fine.

Recently purchased US-4x4HR and attempting to get it working with Ardour. You mentioned it working with JACK, which I am unfamiliar with using (I have been using ALSA). I noticed plugging in the Tascam US-4x4HR with the packaged cable (USBC to USB A) into my linux machine slowed some applications down. Firefox specifically would freeze, and immediately resume when I unplugged the Tascam device. I'm wondering if this is what you experienced as well. Perhaps the DAW has some issues with PulseAudio running with Firefox which I've seen before.

I am also curious how to get it working with JACK since ALSA doesn't seem to pick up the device correctly in Ardour. ALSA does not let the Output Device be the Tascam device. I must choose another Output Device or I'll get this error message.


When I do choose a separate output device and Ardour starts, I cannot find the Tascam hardware inputs. I'm hoping switching to JACK will fix this.


Any input would be appreciated!

[Loki Harfagr]

Well,

it'll absolutely be "any input" then since I'm still 500miles away of the stuff for a few months

anyway, here are a few ideas off my rocker:

1. I always had trouble with "pulseaudio" since it was written, any distro, any card any old time, so that POS might well be quite workable nowadays and I wouldn't possibly know as the first thing I do when installing a system where I want to use audio is to ditch/remove/dustbin the pulseaudio stuff. Anyway the only possible use for pulseaudio would be to be able to listen to external apps while usind the DAW and there's Jack to do this in a better and stable way (even with browsers but of course I don't even understand the idea of trying to do synced stuff on a DAW while running sync trouble generators as global network apps).

1b. There are mentions in some other forum that at least in the past the US-4x4HR was not recognized correctly by/with pulseaudio, no idea if that's still the case but I wouldn't know

2. I'm not certain I tried to use that Tascam card with a 44.1 setting (but AFAIK it *should* work fine), I'm quite certain though that I never use a 2 periods buffer on any USB card, so it might well still work (though prolly degraded) but I'm sure I don't know and can't tell

3. I used it with Jack (when using it with ext apps like Jamulus or standalone synths for example) and also simply ALSA most of the time.

4. As I mentioned it happened that in case of a system reboot the card was not correctly "seen" if it was on while booting, in those cases I used this mantra:
1: unplug the alim on the card side
2: unplug the USB-C cord on the card side
3: plug the alim on card side, wait 2 seconds or so
4: plug the USB-C cord in the card

Then it'll usually work fine (in some cases rinse, repeat) this command should show something akin:

Code: Select all

# lsusb | grep TEAC
ID 0644:8071 TEAC Corp. US-4x4HR

and if you like, using the given ID you could check if anything fishy visible:

Code: Select all

# lsusb -vd 0644:8071 | less

I guess that's quite the whole I can say in my actual possibilities, so good luck!

[kendor]

When I do choose a separate output device and Ardour starts, I cannot find the Tascam hardware inputs. I'm hoping switching to JACK will fix this.


Any input would be appreciated!

Disclaimer, I don't have Tascam (I was the OP of this thread).

Not sure what distro you are using, but if you are using anything related to Ubuntu (I use Mint), perhaps the easiest way to get Jack configured and running is to set up the KX Studio repositories: https://kx.studio/Repositories (this is related to Ubuntu Studio)

I use one of the apps: QjackCtl - JACK Audio Connection Kit - Qt GUI Interface which makes this be pretty straight forward.