Tascam US122L USB2 interface
Tascam have established a reputation as a manufacturer of high quality domestic and professional audio products. They have particular credibility within the multi-track recording genre and were one of the first companies to launch the “Portastudio” back in the early 80’s.
In today’s market they concern themselves with digital based recording and also ancillary products that provide an interface between musical instruments, PC’s and Macs and software based recording packages.
The Tascam US-122 can best be described as a USB audio and Midi interface although if you scratch under the surface you’ll find a whole lot more.
For those who are unfamiliar with software recording and Midi this box is in its most simple configuration - an interface that allows all of the aforementioned formats to connect with each other, although as previously stated it is not just an interface and has many other features.
The US-122 connects itself to a PC or Mac via its USB interface, once connected this allows the user to insert either 2 x XLR fed microphones or two line level inputs (keyboards or switchable to guitar) and thereby record live instruments or voices onto a software based recording package. The live signals are converted to data and are effectively seen as “sampled” audio parts by the software package.
High quality audio is maintained by the 48 KHz, 24 bit res sampling rate and both the Mic and line inputs have separate level controls; additionally there is also a separate headphone output again with a level control.
The US-122 also has full MIDI capability providing 16 channels of Input/Output for keyboards, synths and other sound generator instruments, MIDI can also be used for synchronisation and automation of external devices such as sequencers.
The device also comes with a full range of Audio drivers that includes ASIO, WDM, GSIF and Apple Core Audio (OS X) to ensure that the US-122 is compatible with all popular brands of audio plug-in effects and soft synths.
The package also includes the Cubase LE 48-track / 96 kHz audio recording/MIDI sequencing software and the Tascam GigaStudio 3 LE 64-voice sampling workstation software.