Tascam US 20x20

As a follow up to my posts on the Tascam US 20x20, it really is a good sounding interface. It has pretty good effects built in, so you can hear reverb in your phones when singing. The user interface is pretty confusing...I guess I'll figure it out as I have to LOL!
I can record with midi, mics, etc, and get it to the right tracks, as well as hear a decent mix in my phones while singing.
 
Also, I'm running at 64 a 64 kb buffer without any problems yet...which really helps when playing the keyboard and triggering samples. I used to have to run at 256 or more, and there was a terrible lag, which made playing drums on the keyboard really difficult.
So...I really recommend this unit.. Cheers! DannyJ

Thanks for responding:) One question you might know the answer to....
 
When using Sonar, even with the "share drivers with other programs" checked, having Sonar open keeps an audio or video file from playing audio if they are both open at the same time... do you know of a way around this?
other than using another driver or interface?
 
Thanks for any help!

Thanks again!

Hmmmm - I wouldn't have thought asio4all would reduce latency more than the asio driver written specifically for your interface. It is really a fallback 'faux asio' driver for soundcards that don't have one (like onboard laptop audio), and generally not recomended if you have another option.
 
Glad to hear your interface is a roaring success though!

dannyjmusic
I think there was an update recently, maybe that's the reason ...the Tascam driver was up around 9ms round trip!
I thought ASIO for all was not supposed to be a good driver, but I gave it a shot anyway...seems to be working fine right now...we'll see :)

Cool. 9ms does seem a bit high if you were running your buffers @ 64kb.

Congrats on your purchase. I almost bought the US 20X20 recently but ended up buying another acoustic guitar instead. My 18i20 is still going strong. Maybe next year? Then again the Focusrite Clarett interfaces look great too.

9 ms round-trip sounds about right with 64 samples with the US-20x20...there are USB safety buffers that add several milliseconds. FWIW that's about 4 ms more than Thunderbolt on a Mac, for a lot less bucks...in any event, for me 10 ms is the crucial dividing line for real-time playing. Playing guitar below 10 ms feels good; the feel becomes progressively worse about 10 ms. 
 
Also note that the US-20x20 uses class-compliant USB 3.0 drivers, i.e., it communicates directly with the host rather than through chipset drivers. I believe this is what makes it more or less independent of the chipset (remember that with Windows 7 and before, there wasn't native OS support for USB 3.0 so you needed to install a chipset driver for your USB 3.0 chipset). I don't know whether a custom driver could lower the latency further; that seems like a possibility. However the tradeoff might be some chipset incompatibility issues.

I think the main reason why TASCAM is using class-compliant drivers is not to be dependent on chipset drivers that are subject to change without notice.