[LAU] hardware: recording voice and acc. guitar

[Steve Fosdick]

On 27/05/08 18:19:45, schoappied wrote:

> What do you guys think about a Tascam US122L USB 2.0 Interface  for
> example?

You have just reminded me that I have a Tascam US-122 in the cupboard 
which I have not used for ages.  You'd be welcome to make me an offer 
for it but read on first...

I bought it because it seemed a good entry level unit.

It has two channels so you can make a very basic stereo recording of a 
classical concert with just a main mic pair, or you can record voice 
and guitar etc.

It has mic pre-amps built in and also has phantom power available.

The phantom power is not individually switchable - it is either on for 
both channels or off for both channels and I ran into a problem with 
that.  I was trying to record someone singing and playing guitar.  The 
guitar was one of those that is acoustic but also has a pickup built in 
so I tried connecting that to one channel with the mode switch set to 
guitar and connecting a LD condenser mic to the other channel to record 
his voice.  The result was a buzzing noise on the guitar channel.  If I 
turned the phantom power off the buzzing went away but then the mic 
wouldn't work!  In the end I gave up on the pickup and used a second 
mic on the guitar.

The other problem I had with it is that the ALSA driver often did not 
succeed in setting the sampling rate to 44100 (for a recording 
desitinted for CD).  It reported to jack that it had done so but 
actually it was working at 48000 meaning you then had to resample.  If 
you have material from elsewhere which you are playing to the performer 
for them to add another part to this also means what they hear is in 
the wrong key!  Of course, this may be a bug in the driver and it may 
have been fixed since then.

Regards,
Steve.