tascam us428 and live?

sunfish · Post by **sunfish** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 5:04 am

considering purchase of live to use with my powerbook 1.25 2 gig ram os x 3.5 .
is anybody using a 428 as and input for live . don't suppose any control surface maps have been written for it .
more importantly how is the audio performance over usb ?

thanks dave

tribalogical · Post by **tribalogical** » Mon Oct 25, 2004 8:46 am

I find that the 428's performance is fine, as you're already limited to 4-ins / 2-outs...... you can record a couple of channels @ 24-bit as well (24/44), and the audio quality isn't at all bad...

There might be a Live map at the tascam site, I don't know. I just created my own Live set as a template, using midi learn, and it was painless... works fine here!

However, one thing rather critical (and the reason I just picked up an M-Audio FW-410 for my mobile rig), is that you only have 2 mono outs available on the 428...

What this means is, you don't have a separate output pair/bus to cue with (e.g. send your browser selections to headphones only, while the mix plays to the house)... Technically, you can send one channel to Cue Out, and the other to Master Out, but that's mono to Master, and probably wouldn't work as desired for most things...!

So, although I really like my 428 for general use, I can't recommend it for use with Live, for that one reason alone...

This assumes you're planning to do some live performing with it... believe me, you'll really want (need!!) that second bus to cue with. I still use the 428 with my home studio, and that's fine, as I don't need the 2nd bus for composing at home.

For stepping out, you might want to look at something like the FW-410, it's small and light, powers off the firewire bus, etc.... not the best latency around, but I find it manageable. An alternative might be one of those Echo Indigo DJ cards? Those have 2 pairs of outs specifically designed for this kind of use...

Then you can add a separate control surface, like one of the Behringer B-Control's, or a UC33e, or some such. That won't add a whole lot to the mobile kit, really, compared to packing a 428........

Anyway, hope something here helps!

peace,
tribalogical

sunfish · Post by **sunfish** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 8:06 pm

hey thanks tribalogical for your quick reply , and your too the point comments .
your informing me about the bus limits of the 428 has made me wonder if it is somehow possible to hack so that you could similtaneously use the built in audio output to monitor similtaneously as using the 428 output/inputs .
thanks dave

Vercengetorex · Post by **Vercengetorex** » Tue Oct 26, 2004 8:58 pm

sunfish, there are infact several threads on this forum related to using two audio interfaces "hacked" into Live.

Some tools to look for:

Jack and Jack Tools (osx)
Soundflower
ASIO4all (win)

hope this helps!

madison · Post by **madison** » Wed Feb 08, 2006 1:45 am

Are you on OSX with your US428?

sunfish · Post by **sunfish** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 2:22 pm

sorry for the delay i;m running osx 4.6 (now) on a G5

johnpitcairn · Post by **johnpitcairn** » Tue Apr 25, 2006 11:40 pm

Can the US-428 send CC messages? Mackie Control emulation might be a useful option if so ... see my signature.

sunfish · Post by **sunfish** » Fri Apr 28, 2006 6:35 pm

johnpitcairn wrote:Can the US-428 send CC messages? Mackie Control emulation might be a useful option if so ... see my signature.

i am not sure but using the control panel that is also installed on mac with the drivers you have options to change the control surface too either 428 native,4 control banks (pots),4 control banks (encoders) and other possibilities .
you can also get the master fader to control midi only .
have you seen this software that helps with gargeband www.muratnkonar.com/otherstuff/garageremote/ is what you are offering similar in which case I am interested .
thanks DAvid

ashleybrown · Post by **ashleybrown** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 6:18 am

Hi all,

I've had a US-428 for a very long time - since they were first released. For a long time I've been pretty frustrated with it - especially Tascam's crappy support for the device. It has a lot of potential that just seemed to me to be wasted because of it's lack of flexibility when it comes to programming.

I've attempted for a while to manually map the US-428 (and my other controller a UC-33e) into Live, but found this to be quite frustrating - in the end I'd just give up... use the faders and the Audio Interface only.

But I've been looking into this a bit and played around with the demo of the LC Xmu software that John suggested, either in this thread or another one somewhere (http://www.opuslocus.com/lcxmu/index.php). It took quite a while to configure, but it is nothing short of brilliant. I now have around 95% of the functionality of a Mackie Control via emulation. I "joined" my US-428 and my UC-33e into one virtual controller, mapped to the Mackie Controls vis the LC Xmu. Definitely worth a checkout for any US-428 user or anyone else who owns a controller and is unsatisfied with how it is working within Live. It even emulates the dynamic control display so you can see what your knobs are tweaking as you dive into one of the three devices on a track and start tweaking beat repeat parameters, or fiddling with a filter. Absolutely awesome.

p.s. One big advantage of the LC Xmu approach is it gives you access to a lot more controllers than just customising the automappings as enabled by Ableton and described here (http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=47157). You can achieve this without buying the software IF your interface is programmable (like the UC-33e is), but alas the US-428 is not. Plus, the LC Xmu gives you that great screen emulation!

p.p.s. By the way John (if you're reading this), you might need to take a look at how your site is being captured by search engines because I only stumbled over this after plowing through forums for weeks - and I've searched everything and I mean EVERYTHING looking for a solution to this problem.

sunfish · Post by **sunfish** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 12:34 pm

thanks for that update ish

really great news . and I appreciate your posting what information you have gleaned with regard to this .

i have just finally purchased a copy of live , so I am looking forward to experimenting with it and the 428 .

scientist · Post by **scientist** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 4:58 pm

i've used a 428 since they were released too. it makes a great midi controller, i've never had any problems with set up. re: multiple outs...its built into os x, somewhere in the audio midi preferences controls there is the ability to "create aggregate device". you can combine any audio interfaces you want (including the built in) and you'll be able to select any of the aggregated ins and outs from within live.

johnpitcairn · Post by **johnpitcairn** » Tue Nov 28, 2006 9:38 pm

ashleybrown wrote:p.p.s. By the way John (if you're reading this), you might need to take a look at how your site is being captured by search engines because I only stumbled over this after plowing through forums for weeks - and I've searched everything and I mean EVERYTHING looking for a solution to this problem.

The site is pretty well indexed by Google, and ranks very highly given suitable search terms. I'll take another look at my meta tags soon, but in general the problem is that the subject area is very very wide, and people may use wildly generic search terms - for example "midi control live", which will (and should) bring up a lot of info about Live's MIDI mapping well ahead of LC Xmu.

Thanks for the kind words - is it you posting on my forum about getting the US-428 jogwheel working via LC Xmu?

ashleybrown · Post by **ashleybrown** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 12:05 am

Hi John,

No that wasn't me - although I do have the same problem. The damn US-428 sends CC on the jog-wheel instead of encoder, might look at using some kind of translator like midipipe or whatnot to fix this, but it's not a biggy (afterall a jog wheel is just a big knob right?! And I've got 24 of them on th UC-33e!

).

You're probably right about the meta-tagging - I was trying pretty hard to narrow the terms, but may have been too narrow - eg. 'US-428' mackie emulation. Anyway, it's an awesome app John - very impressed!

johnpitcairn · Post by **johnpitcairn** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 12:29 am

ashleybrown wrote:No that wasn't me - although I do have the same problem. The damn US-428 sends CC on the jog-wheel instead of encoder, might look at using some kind of translator like midipipe or whatnot to fix this, but it's not a biggy (afterall a jog wheel is just a big knob right?! And I've got 24 of them on th UC-33e! ).

A jogwheel is a big endless encoder. LC Xmu's three generic modules don't support encoders (yet), but we've just figured out how to use the Tascam's wheel via the JL Cooper CS-10 module:

http://opuslocus.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=278

ashleybrown · Post by **ashleybrown** » Wed Nov 29, 2006 2:22 pm

Cool, I'll check that out. I haven't really used the CS-10 mode much (couldn't find a lot of documentation on it), but I'll look into it.

tascam us428 and live?

tascam us428 and live?

thanks tribalogical

tribalogical

US-428 was getting tired - until...

Re: US-428 was getting tired - until...