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Audio DAW Replacement

Darren Wright

Darren Wright

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Springfield, Missouri
I know a few of you bought some audio devices a while back for connecting your guitar to your computers. I have an older Tascam US-200 that has started to flake out on me and seems to be hardware or driver related. I have to unplug it to let it power cycle and reset, then it's ok again. Sometime I come in and the lights are just off on it.

I do use it to play with some guitar rig software with time to time and have a midi keyboard that I can interface into my software as well, but mostly I use it to play music and audio out to my monitor speakers day to day.

Just wonder what other Audio DAW devices (tascam, focusrite, etc) others bought and see what your opinions were of them?
 
I've been using a Mackie 402VLZ3 but it's been discontinued and replaced with the 402VLZ2. Behringer and other companies make similar ones. If you want to also have a USB output, something like the ART USBMix4 would be the equivalent (and less money than the Mackie). I also have the computer's audio output going to the Mackie, and the output of the Mackie goes to a pair of little 2-way JBL studio monitors that serve as my computer speakers. (Sounds like you're doing the same type of thing with your Tascam.) I use this setup for everything from watching YouTube and streamed content, to regular guitar practice, to recording. It's also where I keep my headphones plugged in for nighttime listening after LOML goes to bed.

If I want a pure digital signal chain, my Fractal modeler can act as an interface and output via USB (or S/PDIF) to my computer, where I record with Reaper. But for the sake of simplicity, 99.9% of the time I just run the Mackie.

Our keyboardist uses a Focusrite Scarlet as an interface to plug his keyboards into on stage, and the output of the Focusrite goes straight to our PA mixer. The Focusrite is an industry standard for a lot of home recording setups. But for home use, I like having a small mixer for the flexibility.
 
I have one of the US-200, and my old FCA1616 is still going strong. I hate to talk about it, but my music making machine is I think 14 years old, with that fca1616 on it and it still does what I need. Knock on wood.
 
Awesome, I will check those out.

During one of its episodes today I mess around looking to see if I could get it to stop stuttering by killing some processes and changing settings. I went into the windows sound settings for it and changed the output format, and the stuttering stopped.
Screenshot 2026-01-07 182702.jpg

I don't recall was it was set to, but set it to the lowest at the time, have since went back and set it to the highest to see if it starts doing it again. It's been several hours and usually it would have happened by now, so hopefully it was just a driver setting issue. I've come out to it with all the LED's off on the unit also, so could still be a hardware issue, but only time will tell.
 
Oh yeah, that can make a huge difference with the audio quality. Typically it affects the latency for recording, i.e. a small delay between what you sing/play and when you hear it through the headphones. I've had to mess with that from time to time, depending on various updates that get applied to the machine.
 
Kept having the issue. Might be a power issue too, not sure I haven't had to do this since changing to this computer. I had a usb3 powered hub, so have put it behind it to make sure its getting enough power.
 
So the lights went out again on it. Checked the device manager and saw this error.
Screenshot 2026-01-07 203204.jpg

Some googling and found a video about a possible fix of shutting off the usb selective suspend option. I've disabled it, so will see if things improve.
Screenshot 2026-01-07 203302.jpg
 
Still didn’t fix the stuttering issue. I did pause the music and restarted it a minute or so later and it wasn’t happening and didn't have to rest the device, so could be a resource issue, but going to take some time to debug.
 
I went ahead and ordered a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 gen 4. The drivers for the Tascam are over 10 years old, so rather than spending time chasing this, I'll just upgrade.

51Ny1JFOEuL._AC_SL1500_.jpg


I did look quite a bit at the ones @Vaughn linked to, but I keep this on an upper shelf next to the desk and the inputs and controls being on the front seemed more convenient. I was looking at a Presonus, but compatibility with mac and ios seems to work better on the Focusrite from what I read in the reviews.
 
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