Tascam FW-1028 & Logic Pro X?

You might want to check with Tascam.

There are no Mountain Lion (Nor Lion for that matter) compatible drivers for the FW-1082....and according to Tascam, they have no intentions of writing any in the future.... as they consider it an "End of Life" product and have done so for some time now.

Apple have admitted they made a mistake by not updating the compatible hardware list.. which they simply copied across from LP9... (LP9 could run under Snow Leopard 10.6.8 which was the last OS X version for which Tascam wrote drivers) and Apple stated they will be updating the compatibility list in the 'near future'.....

Note: It's not normally about if a piece of hardware is compatible with Logic Pro X.. It's about OS X version and it's CoreAudio compatiility that's important.

It works fine, or at least as "fine" as it ever worked. I don't have the FW-1884, but it should be the same.

There is one detail. The old Firrewire drivers don't work on 64 bit OSX. And another detail, Logic X can ONLY run in 64 bit mode. Hmmm. What some might call an unfortunate coincidence, or a perfect storm. Bummer.

So? So you have to find another way to get that controller's stream into Logic and back out to the Control Surface! Your mission, should you decide to accept it ...

I've been beating my head on this for a while, unwilling to concede, unwilling to buy another (probably much better) controller. I'll fill in details later, but suffice it to say it started working tonight, with that familiar leap of the motorized faders that says "I'm ALIVE!". Everything so far is working on the control surface, I'm not shooting for audio, but a little more testing is in order.

Premature to drop that puppy off the roof!

p.s. Is there a template that assigns READ/TOUCH for automation to some keys. I remember setting those myself, so I guess I can relearn to do it, but maybe there's a ready-made setup?

Did you get anywhere since the last post? I've go the 1028 and compatabiliy was one of the reason I bought logic pro and like you I don't want to buy a new controler.

Thanks!

Jim

I guess you mean Tascam FW-1082, like mine. Yes, I got it working by bridging. Any PC or Mac can be used that the device has a driver for. That includes older OsX Macs and all PCs through Windows 7 64 bit. I don't knows about Windows 8. Once you get the Tascam working on the bridge computer, you connect the bridge PC to the DAW mac preferably over hardwired Ethernet, but Wifi could be used in a pinch with shakier stability. Then you create a Live Link on the bridge PC using Rtp.MIDI. The port should be created and mapped ahead of time into Network MIDI on the mac side. Once the Live Link is established, you can pick the port for your Control Surface in Logic preferences, select Logic Control or Mackie in the Control Surface setup, you can select the matching protocol in the Tascam driver window on the bridge PC where the Tascam is connected.

The faders and controls work fine, as well as the Tascams ever did. Logic is not a perfectly well-behaved app in this respect, but it's not Tascam's fault, nor is it due to the bridging technique. One good side of Logic's approach is how well you can merge multiple control surfaces. I use a wireless remote too. RemoteDAW HD works well with iPads, and doesn't require the latest iOS or iPad hardware. Their non-HD version works well with iPhones. On Android there's TouchDAW. a lot less polished but usable. The network config on such a setup is tricky for sure, every time I change anything it takes hours if not days to get it stable again, but once set up it works fine.

The audio is another matter, I never even tried, but there are ways to bridge audio as well, someone with a little more time on their hands could probably solve that one too, and with today's machines and Gigabit Ethernet, I wouldn't even expect much latency.

Sadly I see that in Logic X 105 they have deleted the templates for the Tascam devices. I noticed because my Tascam setup in Logic vanished, but It should work OK as a Mackie or as generic Logic Control. We'll see I'm just starting on getting everything working again.

Let us know when you get yours working.

NewPeak, Yep the FW-1082. Would it work with a virtual windows machine? I've plugged it in to my MacBook Pro but it doesn't seem to be making a connection. I was hoping to connect it virtually to a windows VM and then try your instructions.

I'm going to plug it in to another machine just to make sure it's not a cabling problem. I've got 400 to 800 adapter for the Mac but it may not be working.

Thanks!!!

No, wait, unless I'm misunderstanding, I don't believe it can work this way. The whole issue is that Tascam has not provided a 64 bit driver for OsX, the last driver they (actually it was Frontier) wrote was a 32 bit driver for Snow Leopard. The machine that you physically hook the Tascam up to MUST have a working hardware driver for the device. It can't directly connect through a virtual driver, because there has to be a connection to the low level hardware layer FIRST. I mean how can it even see the Tascam if the Firewire isn't talking to it? THEN you can bridge or virtualize it or redirect it however you want. So unless your MacBook Pro is running an older 32 bit version of OsX, like Snow Leopard, I don't think it can work.

In my case I can use Windows 7 (64 bit, Tascam DOES provide a 64 bit Windows driver), or my old PPC running 10.5. Or I could use my old XP machine I used to run Cubase on. If you have a funky old mac, or an old PC running 32 or 64 bit XP or Vista, or any version of Windows 7, it can be your bridge. Scrounge around for an old machine. The nice thing about an old mac is that the network MIDI stuff is more integrated than the (third party) rtp.MIDI on Windows, Bonjour is built-in, etc. On Windows you need to download and install rtp.MIDI and (preferably) install Apple's Bonjour (it comes with Apple's printer support), without which you have to manually enter the IP addresses.

The hardest thing about these setups is when you change anything, because the whole Bonjour approach makes it reconfigure itself to make it easier, and instead it gets everything confused. Because I use both Cubendo and Logic, I use my iPhone and my iPad and my Kindle Fire and my Android Note 3 mapped as control surfaces into both my PC and into my Hackintosh, I don't always have all of them on hand, my wife steals them, so I have to switch, and it's always getting VERY confused. I go to use the iPad on Logic and find it's talking to the dog instead, I move the faders and the dog's ears start flopping up and down ... almost that bad.

The best way would be to use an old machine and hard wire it to your Logic mac with ethernet, not WiFi, plug the Tascam into it, configure it with just one Network MIDI port, define the Live Link, and let it be. Maybe even dedicate an old machine to bridging your Tascam. If you use a wireless device too, add it after the Tascam is rock-solid, and don't change anything after that. Don't let your wife stael your devices. Good luck.

Thanks. I have an older Win 7 machine that I can use. It used to be my Cakewalk machine so I konw the Tascam will work just fine. It'll be fun to connect the two. Still wish Tascam would just write a driver. Not sure I'd buy another.

I don't know about "fun", but in any case, I got it working tonight in the absence of the Tascam template. You have to use the Mackie Control template, and I'm not sure yet how well it works. I had some trouble, like the banks switching by 8 tracks being a little odd, but it's usable. Here's a screen shot that may help you. It shows the mac desktop shared onto the Windows desktop so you can see all the settings. Hopefully it's not scaled to illegibility.

Clearly the new EQ can't directly map, and it may only be usable for very basic functions. Still, having physical transport buttons, jog wheel and moving faders makes my day.

To make it more functional there are a lot of issues to deal with, like whether it's better to start over with our own Mackie or HUI mappings or try to recover the old FW1082 template from a previous version. Truth be told, the FW1082 template was never all that great anyway, as the bigger FW1884 was favored, with more buttons, and I had to create my own mappings to engage automation write etc. And the way all the controls had multiple functions that inexplicably switched on you made for a bit of a madhouse. Even the way fader 8 and 9 are sometimes ganged was bizarre.

You're right to say this wouldn't be a first choice device, though I'm not sure what is these days, and a Tascam in the hand ...

It seems something in Control Surface handling has changed in Logic X with version 105. Controllers that worked ok before are acting odd. This is such a messy and thinly documented area I can't begin to understand what, if anything, is different. They do list changes to control surface handling in the 105 release notes.

The way the Tascam worked with Logic was very different from its interaction with e.g. Cubase, because in Logic they used nested assignment trees, with the small number of controls changing functionality in different modes. This without informing the user because there's no LCD on the FW-1082. When it worked it was ok, but it was hard to keep track of where you were, and it all easily fell out of sync. With Cubase functionality is "flatter", more limited, but much more predictable.

Even if Tascam had Frontier program a 64 bit driver, Apple would have to update and improve their template, and for an end of life product that's out of the question. Using the FW-1082 in Mackie mode requires some new mapping, and the basic 8 fader/track paging seems broken.

I Imagine that for Apple their own iPad remote is their priority. So it's possible that they would optimize for that unit, even if it degrades compatibility for others. I'm a bit discouraged at this point.

@Jruddel, don't let me discourage you. I'm trying to get everything working at once, and feeling a bit frustrated. The basics work ok, I'm using the FW1082 "as we speak". Let us know how it goes for you.

Wow - dead silence ... Nobody trying?

Well, FWIW, it's working better and better here. One important trick is to keep the bridging PC up with the rtp.MIDI control pamel shown, and make sure the FW-1082 panel comes up when you press itsControl Panel button.

Sometimes you have to switch its mode from "Native" to Mackie Control to get it "primed", but them it keeps working OK.

The by-8 bank switching then works OK too. In other words it can take a little blind tweaking at the beginning of each session for the pieces to recognize each other. Same with grouping a WiFi controller with it. A little squirrelly but it's worth it.

Because there aren't quite enough buttons on a Tascam to duplicate a Mackie, it takes some manual editing in Logic Pro Preferences to map what's most important to you.

The proof-of-life setup below has the 27" Mac screen on the left, the 27" Windows screen on the right. The FW-1082 is in the foreground, running with Logic X. It's always plugged into Firewire on the PC, but can be routed to control Logic X or Cubase, depending on which DAW is the master.