Tascam US-122 with UbuntuStudio 7.10

Installation & Configuration Linux
#1

Hi,

I am new to using Ardour/Linux for sound recording. I have a Tascam US-122 audio/midi interface that I used to use with Cakewalk. I tried installing the fxload alsa-firmware-loaders and adding 55-55-tascam.rules as explained here: http://alsa.opensrc.org/index.php/Tascam_US-122. All that did was to make all my other audio software fail (Amarok etc could not find audio devices) and Ardour did not register anything I played. The green USB light on the Tascam did turn on when plugged in, so it did something. If someone could give me a gentle nudge in the right direction to fix this that would be great. Or, alternatively, perhaps someone might want to suggest a different, more linux friendly, audio input device (very low budget).

Thanks a lot in advance, I look forward to recording with Ardour.

#2

You might try running alsaconf in a terminal window as root. I am not familiar with the Tascam hardware, but an M-Audio 2496 is an economical interface that works very well with Linux.

http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?query=m-audio+2496&MfcISAPICommand=GetResult&ht=1&ebaytag1=ebayreg&srchdesc=n&maxRecordsReturned=300&maxRecordsPerPage=50&SortProperty=MetaEndSort

It does not have phantom power and hardware inserts like the Tascam, but has MIDI.

#3

Thanks picothinker.

I will try messing around with alsaconfig (hope I don’t do too much damage).

The 2496 is not an option for my laptop. I think I will look around for an inexpensive firewire interface.

Peace

#4

Just some random comments:

To start with the obvious: in case you have 122L model, note that it is not equivalent (qua driver) to the 122. See http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~smimram/tascam/ (help is on the way)

Your audio software not being able to find any devices is probably due to changing /etc/asound.conf or ~/.asoundrc Undoing the changes made there (or removing the file, in case you created it) might help.

Did you check (as suggested in the instructions page you mentioned) if you card shows up when you do: cat /proc/asound/cards ? If it does the problem is likely that the 122 card is not selected for recording/playback. There is a useful tool asoundconf-gtk for selecting the default card among the available cards. after using asoundconf-gtk all apps that use the default soundcard should work with the card you specified.

In case you want to use jack (e.g. for running ardour), you could try qjacktl for configuring jack. Its setup panel lets you select the input/output devices for jack to use (from a dropdown list). If it doesn’t show up there, something went wrong with loading the driver for the card.

Hope it helps.

Maarten