My experience with the model 24 as an audio interface

[J Ryan]

TL;DR A very nice looking, expensive, frustrating, ultimately worthless piece of gear

Firstly, my setup
tascam model 24
FL studio and Mixbus as DAWs
Windows 10, Version 10.0.18362 Build 18362
Software version: 1.10 (despite being the 1.20 driver???)
Firmware Version 1.50 0082 (The SD card I ordered hasn't arrived yet)

I have had the model 24 for a grand total of three days. On the first day I uninstalled my old drivers, and installed the new ones (from the US site) restarting all the way! I tried sending ins and outs to fl. And my entire PC crashed. Reinstalled what may or may not be a newer driver from the EU site, restarting all the way of course, and those seemed to be fine.

I have friends, I like talking to them on discord. So I plugged my mic into channel 11, windows seemed to pick that up, but it turns out it only really receives channels 1+2. Which is weird, but fine. Discord also had a real problem with the tascam's drivers, it wanted to hog them all and crashed my system sound. But it worked fine when FL and/or mixbus was open. Reinstalled discord. All was fine. Aside from the occasional loss of system sound where I had to reset the default device to get it back. That one's on tascam.

Day two was not too bad, besides those random crashes I spoke of. But I didn't do much music ITB. I ran my outboard gear into FL, though I didn't record anything, just had some fun. It was nice. I thought I might actually like this board after the previous days headaches.

But!

Today, I decided to try some mixdowns, using the the model 24 as an outboard mixing desk. This had worked before in a few tests where I imported audio and ran it through the board. So first I opened a project that hits about 40% of my audio buffer, and I routed it out to the board. It was un-bloody-usable. Just a crackly mess. Like awful, ridiculous downsampling. "Maybe it's the project?" I thought, stupidly. So I import some rendered out tracks into a new project and sent the through the board. And honestly it was fine for about 20 minutes. "Surely some extra reverb couldn't hurt?" I thought, once again, stupidly.

Horrific, crackly mess.

And frankly after dealing with this crap for hours I am done.

So now I'm waiting to refund this £800 piece of rubbish and buy something that can do what it's designed to do without breaking when the wind changes. Between pc crashes and sound driver crashes, the only worse software i've actually encountered is the one time my pc got a virus.

Yes, I'm currently very angry with what I've had to go through these past few days. I'm also very disappointed that tascam has such a golden opportunity for a good product but it. Just. Doesn't. Work.

Also the headphone pot was out of whack. About 2dB louder on the left side. Somehow not the worst thing in all of this.

 

[Phil Tipping]

Welcome to the forum. Sorry to hear your story. I can't help, but there are several members using this machine successfully, so I hope you find a solution.
I realise it can be very frustrating, but anything involving computers runs the risk of issues like this, and it's one reason why the stand-alone products will always be in demand, even though they may not have as many bells & whistles. Computer-based interfaces/systems can be excellent tools for the job, but you need to be au fait with them and not mind doing the tinkering required to get things working (and keep them working when you're forced to upgrade).
Good luck.

 

[Mark Richards]

For the benefit of others coming to this thread seeking information:

In order for everything to work together seamlessly, you need to assure you're running the most recent release of Win10; and the most current version of the TASCAM Win10 software driver for the Model 24; and the most current version of the Model 24 firmware. It's also important to use a TASCAM tested/approved SD card to avoid unexpected file and boot-up errors.

Perhaps this demo video (starting 1:25 in) may be helpful. IMO it shows the most effective way to make use of the Model 24.

I don't own the Model 24, so can't help further.

 

[robin courtenay]

Sorry to hear of your troubles, all i can suggest is the same as Mark, make sure you are using the latest firmware ver 1.60 and model mixer ver 1.20 ,i've had the model 24 for three months now and use it with reaper and it's worked flawlessly so far.All the best.

 

[Matthew Fogel]

I'm sorry to hear of the issues you experienced on your PC and with configuration, as well as the headphone pot behaviour. Regarding non ASIO windows applications seeing only Channels 1+2, the latest FW 1.60 does address this by finally adding an application mode. https://tascam.com/downloads/products/tascam/model_24/e_model24_rn_vh.txt

F/W V1.60 additions

- Use on Windows computers with applications (including OBS Studio) that support two-channel audio devices
is now possible.

[NOTE]
See the Setting procedures for use with OBS Studio and other streaming applications "E_Model24_INS_vA.pdf"
for setting procedures and other details.

This essentially allows one to switch between the studio mode where all 24 tracks are visible in the ASIO drivers and a streaming mode where just the master channel is sent to the Windows applications (to behave like some other mixers do by default). This would have likely addressed your Discord specific issues.

Ironically, this firmware was only released on July 17th and might not have been available for download when you purchased the unit. Bad timing, I guess.

 

[MrFeenix]

So i just looked at the Driver and in the system page for installed it states 1.10 I thought i'd accidentally installed the wrong one so downloaded 1.20 again and when you go to install it you see 1.10 version as the installer not 1.20. I then looked on the US site (me being in the UK) and downloaded that 1.20 driver and again shows as 1.10. So have Tascam updated it and not changed the installer or the link goes to the wrong driver? Has anyone else apart from the OP noticed this?

 

[Logrinn]

What happens if you delete the driver from your computer and then reinstall it? Will this force the computer to show the right version?
I’ve often seen different systems and software that doesn’t update drivers/files/things as they’re supposed to when an older version is present.

 

[MrFeenix]

Tried that it still shows 1.10 but when you open the Panel it says 1.20 0016 which is correct but the installed version still says 1.10
The most weirdest thing is the Driver not working when used to play Mp3, YouTube ,Iplayer any audio device on my laptop I get Glitches Dropouts and Laptop freezing when trying to play anything. Its completely set up correctly and i've been in contact with Andertons to try and find the problem. Today however i decided to run my DAW (Ableton) and see if i can use the audio and to my total amazement everything works without any problem as long as Ableton is running in the background!!! I'd like to hear anyone explain that to me as far as i know it should make things worse not better!! So i have to run a DAW just to use it for audio?? That makes no sense at all to me. I have 30 years experience with PCs and Laptops and Making music with them and i'm completely dumbfounded by this.

 

[JSchmo_Bass]

Gosh although I have the Model 16
not the 24, those issues don’t sound anything like my experience.

I use Mixbus version 6 on a windows laptop and have zero issues with connectivity - either sending signal in from the M16 to DAW to record or back out (via sends) to either to record to SD and flow down the channel strips to sum mix on the board.

I am really sorry to hear about these troubles.

 

[MrFeenix]

It works fine with sending audio to and from the DAW that's not the issue. It states in the updated manual that as long as the Sample rate and Buffer size are the same you can use the ASIO Driver and WDM at the same time. BUT what i've found is the Audio from the WDM stops working properly when i turn off my DAW. I can't play anything without Glitches etc and if i use Ozone 9 it totally freezes my laptop. It won't even play MP3's .Yet if i run the DAW in the background the audio WDM side works fine. With Ozone it just won't work either way and i have to change over to my laptops builtin soundcard for it to work. I didn't have this issue with the Tascam US1800 or the really old US122L (which both still work perfectly on all issues above) . So as far as i can tell its a Tascam Driver Issue with this model. Or the driver uses some functionality that my Chipset/CPU does not have. As an example I can't use MassiveX by Native Instruments because it utilizes a part of a CPU that my older one does not have they need a CPU built after 2011.