Tascam US-122 with Lion

Thanks for the info.

I have had the interface for a while and hated the idea of getting rid of it just because I upgraded my computer situation. It works well with the driver that I installed. The Driver was the "Mac OSX Ver. 2" driver that is really for the MKII series interfaces. The website does not explain this at all!

The US122l works well with GarageBand and with my midi inputs. I don't know how it performs in other Multitrack/Midi programs for the Mac but it does what I need it to do.

I agree that if you just bought one (Tascam US 122l)--TAKE IT BACK!!! there is no support for this unit and there are more updated interfaces. The Mac doesn't seem to have latency issues like Microsoft PCs so the best bet these days looks like a USB Mixer. I think that is what I will get in the future. A simple USB midi cable works great with the Mac and is what I use most of the time for just plugging in a keyboard for recording.

But if you have a US122l that you have had for a while (too long to return it) this might work for you. Good luck!

I looked around forever for this fix and this was the only thing that worked.

Peace.

Hello everybody. First post and a long-time owner of a US-122, probably since 2004 as per this good review in Sound On Sound: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct03/articles/tascamus122.htm

Decent device. Sturdy. Very happy on both Windows and since I went to OS X in 2007.

Unfortunately a bit of a late adopter of Lion and only now trying to record some parts for a track and finding the US-122 doesn't want to play.

This seems to me to be a terribly cynical move of Tascam's as there's no reason they couldn't have retained legacy compatability in their drivers. It just seems like an attempt to force us onto new hardware.

Well... for sure I shall likely buy a new device but equally certain it shall firmly avoid Tascam from hereonin. That's a terrible way to treat customers who've invested in your product.

Congratulations on alienating your user base, Tascam!

Well, blow me (don't literally blow me), but booting into 32 bit mode does seem to make the US-122 work. It's lit up and alive (albeit untested).

I have no idea what the implications of running on 32 bit mode means whatsoever but my 2007 iMac (2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo) seems fine. So far. 😕

Lack of support from Tascam still very disappointing however. As I look to expand/upgrade my setup I certainly know one brand which I shall be avoiding (TASCAM!).

Ummm why don't you try the solution posted by Mark Jenkinson half-a-dozen posts ago? Looks cleaner than having to reboot each time.

I'm about to move to Lion, now having a bootcamp Win-7 partition setup because VOX refuse to update their software for their ToneLab SE pedals to not be PPC binaries. I also have a US-122L so am not liking the possibility I'm going to need a reboot just to do some recording as well as a reboot to program my effects pedal and a reboot to get back to normal OS X. It's a long way from 'it just works' isn't it...

@Jemster - I've not got a US-122L, but an original US-122. I did try the mkII drivers as suggested by Mark Jenkinson but it didn't work for the original device. The mkII drivers just failed to recognise there was a device plugged in. Unless of course I was doing something wrong or simply misunderstood of course...

US122 (the first model which is what I've got):

US-122L (what I've not got):

US-122MkII (also what I've not got):

The US-122L DOES work on Lion. But not with the US-122L drivers for Snow Leopard as listed on the Tascam page, but with the US-122MKII drivers for Snow Leopard. Not entirely obvious.

Pesky Tascam!

Ahhh! Gotcha! Sorry, my mis-read there. Nightmare huh.

I must say I'm more than slightly dubious about all this rapid pace of obsolescence in OS X at the moment. It's not good for us, the poor users (and fairly awful for resale values too). Seems there's a huge list of incompatible apps with Lion and, rather than give the vendors time to address the issues, Apple are just jumping forward onto Mountain Lion. I wouldn't like to be supporting my software on OS X with this rate of re-work.

I've just managed to get my tonelab software working under VMWare Fusion Win-7 and am keeping the fingers crossed Logic Pro & the US-122L of mine are going to be ok but I don't have great confidence. Unfortunately I develop software too and XCode is forcing my upgrade. Bah! Rock, hard place!

Sorry for your loss! :(

Hehe. No worries re: mis-read. Pain the backside though to have perfectly good hardware become obsolete just due to tardy software support policies. At the very least Tascam should open source the drivers.

I mean, seriously, how much has changed in 8 years of a bog-standard 2-in-2-out USB sound device? It's got onboard DACs, phantom power, MiDi ports. Nothing special. There are loads of boxes that do the same stuff. Loads.

Tascam themselves state the US-122 has been replaced with the US-122MKII. But as far as I can see there's no functional difference.

http://tascam.com/product/us-122/specifications/

http://tascam.com/product/us-122mkii/specifications/

Where was the great requirement for a MKII? I don't recall the street marches insisting that version 1 was dangerously unreliable and therefore ought to be replaced by a seemingly identical (??) MKII. I suppose the newer version is prettier...

What is annoying is that whatever I get to replace it will largely be the same on spec alone. I don't need to expand my rig necessarily. And even if I did what hope of futureproofness is there?

My professional sound engineer buddy has told me Firewire is more robust so perhaps I'd get something a little better... Can anybody make any good reasonably-futureproofed recommendations?

For now, the discovery of holding down the 3 and 2 keys at boot to initiate Lion's 32-bit mode is sufficient for me to buy a bit of time with this now-legacy device.

I just don't understand whatsoever what the diffference is in layman's terms either in running of the Lion OS in 32-bit mode or, aside from the business drivers (by which I mean BUY MORE STUFF!), why Tascam have stiffed their customers like this.

Hi

Got the new driver and booted in 32 bit mode.

look on devices in logic pro 8 and no tascam....

I wonder what Im doing wrong?

THIS WORKS!

Hooooray:

Thanks craig

To everyone else - get the right driver us122_0sx_3_4_0

🙂

I too was able to get my US-122 to work by booting in 32-bit. Not the most ideal option, but it will work for mixing until I can afford to repalce this thing.

Hi

I had the same problem with my US122 (the original) and just gave up eventually. I bought a Presonus Audiobox which does pretty much the same thing (except it works).

Today I tried plugging the US122 into my crappy Dell desktop in the office. Installed the drivers and it worked fine.

I think the issue is not just Tascam's lousy support, or the software borking the hardware. There is also an issue that Apple have caused some of these issues (well documented with other USB devices too) with their software updates. In my case it was moving from 10.4.10 - 10.4.11 which killed my Tascam as well as killing one of my USB ports.

So in summary: Apple, you should respond to known issues. Tascam, you totally and utterly suck. I won't buy any more Tascam gear. I was initially moved to buy the US122 because of the rock-solid pro-quality audio gear they USED TO produce. Not any more.

Mark

Well this worked for me!! Glad i dont need to buy a new one!

Cheers

In all fairness to Tascam, the original US-122 interface (silver box with blue plastic band) came out almost nine years ago. For digital devices that connect to computers, this is extremely long time. When it came, Windows XP was just released, and Mac OS X was on version 10.2 (Panther). USB2 hasn't even come out yet, and fastest PC was running Pentium 4 at 2GHz (fastest Mac was running G5 at 1.8GHz).

While we all may feel entitled that Tascam continue to provide drivers for their old devices indefinitely, they will only do that for a reasonable amount of time. Since their most up-to-date driver for US-122 supported Snow Leopard (and it will even work if Lion is booted in 32-bit mode), this means that this particular Tascam device worked at least 8 years after it was released, and may even continue to work 9 years later, or even longer (unless Mountain Lion permanently disables booting into 32-bit mode).

We got a decent ride out of these devices and it is time to fire up that eBay app. Today, they seem to be fetching some $40 or so. That is not such a bad deal.

Well that argument smacks of wanton capitalism! 🙂

How irresponsible of Tascam/TEAC to implictly justify the "built-in obsolescence" of material products when we're approaching peak oil, plus the impending perils of manmade ecological catastrophe.

Just buy more stuff. What a great solution. Buying more stuff indiscriminately has done our civilisation and planet a world of good. Just look at China. And the broken banking system. No wonder 2012 will be the end of the world.

Paranoid tabloidesque hyperbole aside, we should not just have to chuck out perfectly functional physical devices because the producing company decides - ARBITRARILY! - to cessate driver development at some undefined point in the future.

When I bought the device I thought nothing of future OS and hardware upgrades. I am not technical enough to understand why the driver from 2003 will not still work given the technology contained within these devices is NOT rocket science; it's just a couple of DACs, MIDI and phantom power, right?

Also this is a precedent in the relationship between producer and consumer. Whilst I certainly see your point that "8 or 9 years isn't a bad lifespan" (to paraphrase), what's to say that next time a producer stops creating the firmware in 5 years? Or 3? 2?

I don't believe I entered into a particular licensing agreement..... Or on reflection perhaps I did??

MAYBE in pretending to read and agree to some End User License Agreement we accepted that Tascam/TEAC would one day stop updating the firmware?!

If Tascam/TEAC don't want to update the driver then fine, they should at least release it to the open source community. Hopefully some techie wizard could tweak the code and compile an executable file for it to work on future editions of OS X.

But no, obviously it's in their interest to cause people to buy more hardware. Won't be from Tascam/TEAC though...

Or maybe there is some uber-precious intellectual property in the source code that is too valuable to let out of the vault...

ACTUALLY another practical point is to ask: why bother keeping up to date with OS X?? Save yourself £25 and massive download hit and retain compatibility... It's not uncommon. My employer for example still run WinXP on across 10,000+ workstations all over the world and are only now *considering* a move to Win7. Maybe!

Your argument is quite valid, but the problem is certainly not with Tascam/TEAC. Other makers aren't really any different than Tascam. Planned obsolescence is a concept invented way back in the 1930's, and has been working quite effectively for everyone; from car makers, to appliance makers, to tool makers, to consumer electronic manufacturers. Hardly anyone ever keeps a car for longer than 5 years. For that matter, not many household items live to be 9 years old and still in use. In that sense, our little hundred-dollar Tascam device fares rather well when compared to some other devices (such as cellphones, which cost twice as much, and live for about two years before being junked and replaced). While most of these things can technically continue to work beyond that initial replacement period, we as a society have been pretty much conditioned to expect to replace everything within a few short years. When we look at our little Tascam, I doubt we'll find others (M-Audio, PreSonus, Behringer, Alesis, MOTU...) any better, when it comes to providing software support for their hardware beyond the usual initial 3 to 5-year period.

My little Tascam is often hooked up to an iBook G4, running Leopard, and is working quite fine. GarageBand does struggle on the anemic Motorola G4, though, but the laptop is 10 years old and it still works.