How to solve US-1608 v3 driver problem with surround sound playback to stereo

[And I]

Hi,

I use a Tascam-1608 as the sound device on a computer that I use for music production and also gaming, watching movies, etc. I have the main outs (1 and 2) plugged directly into my monitors.

When the 3.0 driver came out, any movie that has surround sound audio is missing the center channel and presumably the surround channels. Prior to the v3 driver, I would set the audio device in VLC to "US-1608 Mixer" and it would combine everything to stereo. Now, the drivers have been combined (says so in the v3 release notes) and I was at a loss since there is only one option--the "mixer" option is gone.

The good news is I just figured out how to solve it so I thought I'd share. On the output setting tab, set the Line Out 1 and Line Out 2 to Master L and Master R. The default is Computer 1 and Computer 2. This doesn't seem to adversely impact anything coming out of my DAW.



Hope this helps anyone who also uses the 1608 for both business and pleasure.

 

[And I]

actually... it's not quite right. the center channel seems to be only on the left side. Channel 15 seems to control the right speaker, if i turn it up the balance moves more toward the center. no other channel in the mixer shows anything...



sadly i am going to have to downgrade the driver to be able to use my PC for both audio production and personal entertainment... :\

 

[And I]

confirmed, center channel is routed to the left speaker only.

 

[And I]

ok looks like i just needed to vent on a messageboard to find the solution. I had to go to the sound settings, playback tab, press "configure" instead of "properties" and then set it to stereo instead of the default, which was 7.1. now i can undo the first set of settings in the mixer from my first post. THIS is the proper fix.