[Ryan D]

Hello everybody, as some of you may know, a couple months ago I made the dive from a TonePort UX2 to this shiny new interface, the US-1641 in an effort to get more simultaneous inputs for recording. At the time, the FirePod was in my sights, but $500 was simply too much to spend at the time. I needed something cheaper, but with the same amount of flexibility and, well, usefulness.

I was drawn to the $370 ($400 - $30 rebate) price tag of the US-1641, but at the same time, repelled by the USB 2.0 interface. Why? I don't know. The industries have given USB 2.0 a bad name. However, in an environment where a FireWire device competes against a USB 2.0 device on a card with nothing else plugged in, the USB 2.0 device is faster.

Firewire hits a constant speed of 400mb/s. USB 2.0 has a shared bandwith with all other devices plugged into the same card of 480mb/s. When nothing else is plugged in, all 480mb/s of bandwith go to that one device on the USB ports. So really, all you need to do is buy a $10 PCI card with a few USB 2.0 ports and your USB 2.0 device will function like a FireWire device (if you have nothing else plugged into the new USB card. You can plug all your other stuff into your motherboard or something.

However, I went ahead and bought it, and in two days the package was on my doorstep. I don't have a rack, so I just placed the US-1641 on the top of my desk. This worked fine for me. Right out of the box, I plugged the US-1641 into my computer and the driver and firmware updates took little more than a minute. The process was simple and quick - something I really appreciated.

It came with a copy of Cubase 4 LE but honestly, the digital e-licensing bull#@&* that they make you go through a) is frustrating and b) failed to work at all for me, so I'll stick with my own program.

The workmanship on the device is excellent. Tascam really pushed their assembly line to the limit when they manufactured this device. The shiny, dark blue finish with the chrome knobs is visually stunning, and the lights next to each gain knob for the inputs turn a nice shade of green (until you approach the clipping level, from which it turns orange to a flat-out red, so you can know when you have to man the knobs). Everything is well-in place and easy to access, and I think that's great.

Me, being the idiot that I am, re-plugged in my UX2 into the same set of USB ports and ran both at the same time, so at the time I was recording 5 microphones, digital input via SPDIF (RCA) from the UX2, and a bass direct into an instrument input with a special switch to activate a preamp. Along with that, my USB keyboard, mouse, and USB-MIDI cable were plugged in.

During recording, I had no clicks, pops, or dropouts (however some dropouts would occur occasionally, but for what I was doing, I was stunned). The rumors that USB 2.0 sucked dissolved away as I fell more and more in love with my new shiny box with cables dangling out of it.

Anyways, for the sake of recording, I bought a 5-port USB card for the PCI slot in my computer for $5 off of Newegg.com and installed it, and now I am running everything at top speed with not a single dropout. I love this box. It has 8 XLR inputs, 4 1/4" inputs with a -10/+4db switch for each pair, two more 1/4" inputs with a toggle-able switch to activate some preamp thing inside, midi in/out, and SPDIF in/out. Phantom power has two switched, for microphones 1-4 and 5-8.

There's also 2 pairs of 1/4" TRS jacks for outputs you can configure in your program, and one thing that I really like is that it allows you to fade the input that your monitors are sending between the live input and what your computer is sending, so with the turn of a knob you can tweak settings live and then play it back through your computer after.

One last thing. The latency goes as low as 49 sample (2ms), but rests comfortably at 64 as well. No pops or clicks.

The only things I didn't like about the US-1641:
The headphone jack only sends live input. I was hoping I could mix with some headphones, but was annoyed to find that that was not a possibility.

There's a minor driver error, but it CAN BE FIXED. The current drivers (1.01) will cause a latency problem to occur after recording large audio files for around 3-5 minutes. The problem is easily solved by changing the latency or any other parameter in the control panel. You'll have to do that between each recording. Or, you can use the ASIO4ALL drivers (which are free) from asio4all.com and not have to worry about it at all.

Oh yeah, and Tascam tech support is out hiding under a rock. They're very hard to reach, but their products are extremely stable, and if you DO need service, they have a number you can call. I've never had to get a Tascam product serviced, though, so I can't say how responsive they are over the phone.

Thanks to BBJones for this (I completely forgot about daisychaining!) - Daisychaining is currently not an available feature, but it has been stated that drivers making this usable are possibly in development.

Generic conclusion (as always):

All in all, I think the US-1641 was an excellent value for the money, and I will have no need to upgrade anytime soon. Even at $380 (current price counting the rebate), the extra $10 spent for an extra PCI-USB2.0 card is extremely minor, and in some cases, unnecessary. I love this thing. With the money saved, I can put some in for a nice, quality pair of monitors.

If anyone has any other questions, feel free to ask, and I can answer them to the best of my ability.