Recording - June 2015 - 34

B Y M I K E M E T L AY

Thunderbolt is the high-speed connection
protocol introduced on Apple computers in
2011. Now available in two versions, it offers
either 10 or 20 Gbps (yes, that's Gigabits per
second) throughput-fast enough to reduce
latency on audio connections to unheard-of

Zoom

TAC-2R Thunderbolt Audio Converter

Thunderbolt audio in a portable format-plenty of quality, plenty of speed
levels, a few milliseconds at most. Thunderbolt
can carry more power than FireWire or USB,
allowing it to bus-power interfaces that provide
plenty of phantom power to microphones. It
can stream audio, video, MIDI, and more, all
down a single cable, with nary a hiccup, and
it turns a lot of the concerns that plagued early
computer-based audio systems into non-issues.
We're now seeing a significant number
of Thunderbolt audio interfaces on the market. The latest entrant is Zoom, which is now
offering a pair of 2-in/2-out Thunderbolt
interfaces that combine portability and
power. The TAC-2 was first on the market;
it's a tabletop unit with onboard meters and
a large multifunction control knob. Today
we're reviewing the TAC-2R, which has a
slightly different feature set and is packed
into a compact, rugged enclosure.
The grand tour
The idea behind the TAC-2R is to take
the standard feature set that recording
musicians have come to expect in small
audio interfaces, and then supercharge it
with the speed of Thunderbolt. Aside from
the Thunderbolt cable in the box, the TAC2R will be completely familiar to anyone
who's used a small audio interface for
DAW work.
The front controls are protected
somewhat by a pair of metal "rails."
There are two combination XLR/TRS
balanced inputs on the front panel,
each with a gain pot, Signal/Clip
LED, and a blue-backlit Hi-Z switch,
plus a 48V phantom power switch
that's global to both inputs. Next to
that, there's a large, smooth output
volume knob with a large blue
power/connection LED, and a 1/4"
TRS headphone output with its own
volume knob.
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RECORDING June 2015

The rear panel sports a pair of 1/4" TRS
balanced outputs, a Direct Monitor switch
(Off/Mono/Stereo) for zero-latency listening, a single Thunderbolt port, and 5pin MIDI In and Out. (The TAC-2 doesn't
have MIDI.) Because it's only got a single
port, the TAC-2R must live on its own
Thunderbolt connection to your Mac, or
at the end of the daisy chain if you're also
using Thunderbolt hard drives or other
peripherals. The entire enclosure is solid
metal and the pots are silky smooth.
Installation and MixEfx
The TAC-2R won't turn on if you plug it
in without installing its drivers first; the latest version is available for download from
Zoom's Japanese and North American
websites, along with a software utility
called TAC-2 MixEfx. Installation is
straightforward; you don't plug in the
TAC-2R until the drivers and MixEfx are
installed, and then it comes up and is
available as a stereo in/out audio device
and a single-port MIDI in/out device in
Apple's Audio MIDI Setup utility.
MixEfx is well worth a mention, because
it exposes some hidden features in the
TAC-2 and TAC-2R. As you can see in the
screenshot, in addition to the hardware-

switchable Hi-Z access and global phantom power, the inputs have lowcut filters
and polarity inversion, plus input meters
with persistent overload indication. The
computer's playback and recording sample rate is displayed in this software
(although it's set in Audio MIDI Setup) and
it has its own metering, plus a Loopback
function that allows audio to be played
back from the computer, mixed with the
inputs, and re-recorded into your DAW.
A built-in mixer lets you set panning
and levels for the inputs and computer
audio before sending them to the outputs.
On the TAC-2R, level control for the
Phones output vs. the rear-panel outputs is
done in the analog domain with two separate knobs; on the TAC-2, the front-panel
knob does double duty and the MixEfx
software has separate metering and Mute
buttons for both outputs.
Also of interest in MixEfx is the Effect section, which offers plug-in effects processing
to add ambience to the outputs for confidence monitoring. There are eight presets-six reverbs and two echoes-and the
two inputs and the computer playback can
each have their own effect levels in the output mix. When you've set up your inputs,
gains, and effects to your liking, you can
then save them to one of three patch
memories inside the TAC-2R.
In use
The TAC-2R supports up to 24-bit
192 kHz audio I/O, and its converters
are well up to the task. The inputs have
plenty of headroom and the preamps
are flat, clean, and uncolored without
being sterile. The spec sheet claims 0
to 60 dB of gain in 1 dB steps, and all
but the last few dB of that gain range
is noiseless and clean. You could use a

Recording - June 2015

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