Tascam US144 USB 2.0 Audio and MIDI Interface with digital Connection for Portable Recording

Great... but
I recorded a CD with this product and was very happy. However, the limitation of one mic and one instrument (Line In) at a time is disappointing and took a lot more time and work. In other words, you cannot for example, plug in two mics, or a synthesizer Left and Right output (for stereo) and one guitar at the same time. You will be able to record one mic (mono) and one guitar, or Line In (mono) at one time only. This requires a lot more work. It's okay if you have time to waste, but it really should have more inputs working at the same time. But, for the price I can accept the limitations. I especially like the fact that you can use a headphone and mix the background and the US-144 input (in Cakewalk for example) and hear both at the same time, and adjust which one you want to hear more of in real time. I think this is a big plus...

Look Elsewhere For A Working Audio Interface
I have owned the US-144 for a little over a year and have rarely had a recording session that wasn't a headache. Apparently, the drivers are unstable making it unpredictable whether the unit will be recognized by my recording software, Garageband. So invariable I have to unplug my USB cables and plug them back in again, quit out out of Garageband and constantly reset Garageband preferences to select the US-144, turn off the Mac, download new drivers, delete old drivers, and this has been going on for over a year. One need only do a search of reviews on the US-144 to hear a chorus of complaints. The unfortunate thing is Tascam was once a brand you could trust for professional grade recording equipment. Tascam has discontinued the US-144 leaving loyal Tascam customers in the lurch. I am going elsewhere for a working audio interface and I recommend you do too.

Good sound quality, bad drivers, horrible support, constant crashing, stay away.
The sound quality is very good. However, the interface crashes at random intervals throughout the day. On a fresh install of Windows XP SP3, I frequently got the Blue-Screen-of-Death blaming tascusb2.sys. There was no warning. Computer could be on for hours before doing it, or not. I haven't been able to discern a pattern as to when it happens -- it happens most often when I listen to music, but sometimes it will crash when I'm doing nothing at all with it.

Installing the newest drivers from the Tascam Website actually made my system crash more often than the old drivers. The interface also takes 20% of CPU power to run on a Core 2 Quad Laptop, even when I'm doing nothing with it. The Interface actually crashed my PC once while I was writing this review.

Google it; there are dozens of reports online of people having the same issues as me, and hundreds of reports regarding Tascam's worthless customer support, even here on Amazon. The instruction manual is also littered with typos.

Even when it does output sound, you can't use it in a production environment due to very high latency. If you set the latency to anything other than the highest setting, you will get all kinds of crackling and skipping, even when just listening to music in Winamp or Windows Media Player. It often doesn't get properly recognized in Cubase 5. Recording is nearly impossible.

Support is unhelpful, telling me to disable my anti virus and firewall(not an option due to security concerns, but even when I did do it for an hour, my system crashed again), and outright lying to me, saying that Mac users don't have issues with the Tascam Audio Interface, when even the reviewer above me has problems getting it to work on his Mac.

Bottom line: When the thing works, it outputs some nice, clear sound for the price. Unfortunately it's nearly unusable due to constant crashing, latency issues and worthless support. Stay away until they put out some new drivers, which they have been promising for nearly two years.

Nice device, but Win7/64bit drivers don't work
As far as home studio recording, this little device is really nice: 24 bit stereo audio with MIDI, and USB 2.0 speed. The phantom power works great on condenser mics, and runs off CPU/USB power. Tascam has made great products all the way back to my 4-track cassette dubbing days, and this device is great in all those same ways.

The problem comes with drivers. I've verified that the stock (v2.0) drivers work fine in Snow Leopard on the Mac, they DO NOT work on Win7 64-bit. They only claim to offer 64-bit Vista drivers (and 32-bit Win7), however if you look around the web you'll find that nobody running a 64-bit windows Vista/7 setup can get the driver to work. Sound comes through, but it's noisy and attenuated. This is a real shame, as I just built a Win7/64bit box that would be much better for digital music than my MacBook. From what I can tell, XP drivers are rock solid.

Anyway, something you should know. Otherwise, this is a great way to start recording/podcasting.

Works great with Vista 32-bit and version 2.00 drivers.
My son has been using Sony ACID Home Studio 7 for months, mainly playing around with the built in loops to create his own music. He also plays a little bass guitar, and wanted to create some of his own tracks to integrate with the loops that he downloads. So, I went off on a quest for a USB interface, as our built-in soundcard on our desktop is very low-end.

Let me say, I'm a very technical guy, but I found the search for the right USB interface to be a little challenging. I had read that one needed to be careful about software and hardware compatibility issues. That is indeed a true statement.


I purchased the USB-144 locally, after returning a different product that had just too many little challenges. I spent half the day yesterday toying with the US-144, making sure that I understood it before turning a less-technical kid loose on it. I immediately downloaded the latest drivers and firware from TASCAM's website to install on my laptop, and finally managed to get it all working late New Year's eve. My major stumbling block was not knowing how to drive the included CuBase LE software.

Today, I installed it on my kid's system, but installed an earlier version of the drivers. Reading the release notes, I was dismayed to discover that my kid's system had an incompatible USB chipset (!!! - there's that hardware compatibility issue!# Tried using it anyways, but the sound was crackly throughout. So, once again to [...], downloaded the latest driver #2.0#, without much hope. Loe and behold, the latest drivers do seem to have overcome the compatibility issue with nVidia USB chipsets. Mic'ed vocals sounded fine, and when I plugged in his bass guitar it sounded great!!

Sony ACID was much easier to configure properly to work with this device. Just select it as your input device, create a new track, and select which input to record from. CuBase is much more powerful software, I'm sure - but with that power comes a steeper learning curve. I'll probably use it on my laptop, but for now I think I'll let my kid keep using the software that he already understands.

So, make sure you have the latest drivers and firmware, and prepare to spend some time learning how to set up your inputs and outputs #more complicated than I anticipated).

No matter which device you purchase, make sure that it supports the hardware and operating system that you're running. Go to the manufacturer's website and read the release notes, look for hardware compatibility lists, and search the net for reviews and message boards. Bottom line is that many if not all of these audio interfaces have compatibility issues with certain types of hardware, and a little research ahead of time can save a lot of frustration.

One last thing: I set the US-144 as the default playback and record device under Control Panel, Sounds. It has a much richer sound than the built-in motherboard soundcard, so I'm planning to leave it attached and in use as the sound device on a permanent basis.