Recording - November 2011 - 20

B Y M I K E M E T L AY

TASCAM US-2000
USB 2.0 Audio Interface
More ins, more outs, more power... and no fuss
TASCAM’s audio interfaces, at least to this reviewer who’s constantly being bombarded by “more better cooler newer” hype from a wide range of manufacturers, are among the nicer open secrets in the world of audio. They don’t get talked about as much as some other brands, but if you look around, you discover that there are a lot of them in a lot of studios, quietly producing great results day in and day out for very satisfied recording musicians and engineers. To people who are laser-focused on getting the job done with very high audio quality and reliability, and less interested in add-on features and frills that might benefit some users but merely get in the way for others, TASCAM’s interfaces have represented exceptional value for money. They offer high-quality preamplification and conversion, reliable drivers, and good usable feature sets, all for very affordable prices. In simple terms: very little flash... and lots of substance. With the US-2000, TASCAM offers a step up for studios that are outgrowing their old track counts, while hopefully retaining the quality and affordability that make these interfaces such a bargain. Let’s take a closer look and listen. Getting in, getting out The US-2000 is a 1U rackmountable audio interface using the USB 2.0 protocol to provide up to 24-bit/96 kHz performance on 16 inputs and four outputs. It’s designed for the studio that does most if not all of its signal processing and mixing “in the box”, bringing in a large number of analog sources and providing basic monitoring and digital transfer capabilities. Note that unlike many of the “16-channel” interfaces on the market, which offer an 8-channel ADAT I/O pair on top of only six or eight analog inputs (so you have to add a separate 8-channel preamp/converter to get a full 16 input sources in place), the US-2000 offers 16 real physical inputs, 14 of them for analog signals. There are eight mic input channels, six on the rear panel and two on the front, plus six rear-panel line-level inputs. All inputs are balanced. The rearpanel mic inputs are on XLR, the line-level inputs are on 1/4" TRS, and the two frontpanel inputs offer combination XLR–TRS jacks for mic or Hi-Z instrument inputs. The last two inputs are S/PDIF coaxial digital, via a rear-panel RCA jack. The rear panel also offers a pair of TRS inserts for the two front-panel inputs, and three pairs of TRS balanced outputs: two pairs of line-level outputs and a pair labeled Monitor Output. A USB connector and a socket for a conventional IEC power cable (no wall wart!) complete the rear panel. Every pair of inputs has a switch to determine if the inputs are monitored in mono or as a stereo pair; the rear-panel line inputs have microswitches on the rear panel, which can be inconvenient to get to if you’ve racked the US-2000 but aren’t something you’d normally mess with in the course of a session. The rear-panel inputs also have level switches, +4 vs. –10 dB.

On the front panel, aside from the Power switch and the two front-panel combination inputs, there are eight level pots for the mic inputs, grouped in pairs. Each pair of adjacent inputs has its own switch for Mono/Stereo monitoring, and a 48V phantom power switch, offering a fair bit of flexibility when mixing mic types in a session. Watch and listen The front-panel monitoring controls deserve some explanation. There are separate pots for Phones (with front-panel 1/4" TRS jack), Monitor, Computer, and Input, and they break into two general categories of listening control: actual hardware levels, and blending of input audio and computerreturned audio for zero-latency monitoring. The Phones and Monitor pots control the level of audio going to the headphone jack and the rear-panel Monitor Outs, whereas the Computer and Input pots stand in place of a single wet/dry direct monitoring control. I actually prefer having two pots, as it makes zero-latency monitor blending easy to set up while also maintaining optimum listening levels. The two pairs of Line Outputs are selected in your DAW software, so you can feed two separate stereo signals where they’re needed. You can select which pair feeds the Monitor/Phones analog output, and which pair feeds the RCA coaxial digital output jack, which can send S/PDIF or AES/EBU digital audio. (AES is supposed to be cabled up with 110-ohm XLR, but it’s not unheard of to offer it over a 75-ohm RCA cable in a pinch.) Last but not least, the US-2000 offers something that is missing on too darn many audio interfaces: real metering! There are 5-step LED meters for all 16 inputs and all four outputs. That simple addition makes it much easier to take the US-2000 seriously as a drop-in upgrade

RECORDING NOVEMBER 2011

Recording - November 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - November 2011