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Published on 10/31/11 at 11:08
The Tascam US 122 MK II is a very affordable small interface made by Tascam, and it accompanies the US 144 MK II. Both of these interfaces offer two microphone and two line inputs each. They are both very affordable and very portable, and they both include midi, headphone monitoring, and line outs. What the US 144 MK II has over the US 122 MK II is its inclusion of digital. This US 122 MK II does not. Another strange limitation that seems to both me is the lack of separate knobs for headphone and line outputs, which the 144 has. This bothers me because I find this lack of inclusion very convoluted, and nothing but a way to upsell the customer to the 144. Either way, the line and phone output situations should not affect a recording situation too much, especially since this device probably will not be used in a situation where the lines and headphones will both be used anyway.
UTILIZATION
The drivers for this are very stable, and the latency is very low from when I used it. I have heard some strange things about them being incredibly unreliable on 64 bit systems though, so if that is true, and this is a universal complaint, so maybe it is, then it would mean that this product is practically unusable, since most people have already moved to 64 bit systems. Buyer beware, and test this out before you commit to this unit.
GETTING STARTED
Personally, I have found that the drivers on the computer I tried this on to be very simple and run with incredibly low latency. The preamps on this machine were also very pristine, oddly enough. I found them to be entirely sufficient, especially for the use that I know this machine will see. So I am not worried by this. Again though, the drivers seem to not work on 64 bit machines, so be careful!
OVERALL OPINION
I love this interface for what it is. I has a couple of silly limitations like the lack of separate knobs for headphones and line outputs, and the strange driver issue on 64 bit systems. The truth is, while this is a good unit in its own right, I cannot really recommend it to anyone for these annoying problems!
UTILIZATION
The drivers for this are very stable, and the latency is very low from when I used it. I have heard some strange things about them being incredibly unreliable on 64 bit systems though, so if that is true, and this is a universal complaint, so maybe it is, then it would mean that this product is practically unusable, since most people have already moved to 64 bit systems. Buyer beware, and test this out before you commit to this unit.
GETTING STARTED
Personally, I have found that the drivers on the computer I tried this on to be very simple and run with incredibly low latency. The preamps on this machine were also very pristine, oddly enough. I found them to be entirely sufficient, especially for the use that I know this machine will see. So I am not worried by this. Again though, the drivers seem to not work on 64 bit machines, so be careful!
OVERALL OPINION
I love this interface for what it is. I has a couple of silly limitations like the lack of separate knobs for headphones and line outputs, and the strange driver issue on 64 bit systems. The truth is, while this is a good unit in its own right, I cannot really recommend it to anyone for these annoying problems!