Help with Tascam FW-1884

Having had much success under Vista 64 with a very old US224, I purchased a FW-1884.

1. I can't make it work well under Vista 64 (Vista 64 SP1, all updates, Sonar 7.02, Tascam 1.60, firmware 1.83).
The audio is horribly distorted.
Anybody having any success under Vista 64? Any setup recommendation?

2. On the same computer under Vista 32 (Vista 32 SP1, all updates, Sonar 7.02, Tascam 1.60, firmware 1.83).

A. I can use it as an audio interface without click or pops

B. I can record with a dynamic microphone on port XLR 1.

C. I cannot record with a large diaphragm microphone on port 5 with 48V
Almost instantly sonar writes "dropout".
This is all the more strange as I can record directly on this port with Vista sound recorder without problem.
What can I do?

Thanks a mil!
Cedric

Hi. I have an FW-1884 running under WIndows XP, so I can't help with Vista questions.

You did not mention which SONAR Control Surface driver you have. The latest one on the Tascam website is 1.21, but you should have the 1.22 beta driver for SONAR versions 6 or 7. You can find it by searching this site.

Couple of other guesses:

If you have one of the older Tascam units, it suffered from a tendency to blow out the preamp channels if you attempted to connect a mic with phantom power on. Is there a possibility these other channels are blown? [It seems unlikely, because channel one would be the first to go, and you said channel one works and you had an overload on channel 5.]

In SONAR, which I don't have in front of me right now, you specify the input device in pairs, i.e. 1&2, or 3&4, or 5&6, or 7&8. I assume you know this if you were unsuccessful on channel 5, but just checking...

With Ableton Live the recording works perfectly so either I'm doing something wrong with Sonar, or something is not working.

Cedric

Very good; that's progress.

FYI, I always use Stereo FW-1884 Analog 1:2 (or 3:4 etc), not Left or Right, as the input.

Also, my system does not work with ASIO drivers; the MIDI and audio tracks do not sync. I like to use multiple music programs open at once, and ASIO will not allow this, but WDM does.