Tascam US-428
A USB box that promised a fader-and-knob studio for a laptop, and mostly delivered - as long as your operating system cooperated.
Overview
The US-428 showed up at the right moment and then spent years taking blame for things that weren't entirely its fault. Tascam built it as a multipurpose desktop box: four analog inputs, digital I/O over S/PDIF, a MIDI interface, and a control surface with real faders. All of it talks to a computer through a single USB connection, no audio card required. Mix (August 2002, p.144) described it as combining onboard 16/24-bit converters running at 44.1 or 48 kHz, audio-to-USB conversion, a MIDI interface, and a mix control surface that works with a number of common studio DAW programs. That's a lot of jobs for one box. Anyone who'd been hauling a desktop tower and a PCI card to gigs could see the appeal.
The control surface is the part people remember. Eight hardware faders can drive any number of software faders through a simple bank-shift switch. The front panel also carries recorder-style transport keys, a jog wheel, and dedicated controls for plug-ins and EQ. EQ (January 2004, p.52) noted the transport controls work across a variety of digital audio workstations and that preset control profiles ship for major DAWs and virtual instruments, with a PC Profile Editor included. The nine faders also do double duty. Mix (August 2002, p.144) pointed out that in Native Instruments' B4 organ simulator they become drawbars 1 through 9, with banks two and three reaching the lower manual and pedals.
The I/O is modest. Four analog inputs split into two balanced mic/line XLRs and two balanced mic/line quarter-inch jacks, according to Studio Sound (February 2000), with two S/PDIF digital inputs and outputs and clocking that can run internal or lock to an incoming digital source. EQ (January 2004, p.52) adds that the unit can record two channels of input and two channels of output simultaneously at 24-bit, and that it offers 32 channels of MIDI I/O, enough to drive MIDI instruments or lock MTC-capable tape tracks to the computer. The EQ section can control up to four bands of fully parametric EQ. There's a trim knob per input and a Hi-Z switch for plugging a guitar straight in. Buried in the software is a chromatic tuner on the main control panel's Tuner tab, defaulting to A440 but adjustable between 430 and 450 Hz. Mix (August 2002, p.144) called it the unit's least-known feature.
Pricing wandered depending on when you looked. Mix reported the US-428 at $599 in its January 2001 NAMM coverage. By the August 2002 review the figure quoted was $625, including a custom version of Steinberg's Cubasis VST, with an upgrade path to full Cubase at a discount. Bundled software varied by platform: Mix (September 2001, p.191) noted Cubasis VST for PC and BIAS Deck LE for Mac in the box. Compatibility was broad for the era, spanning Cubase VST, Pro Tools and Pro Tools Free, Digital Performer, Cakewalk/Sonar, Nuendo, Logic 4.7/5.0, DeckLE, the Native Instruments B4, Reason, and Max/MSP. Cakewalk even built US-428 presets into Sonar 2.0's global control surface support.
The US-428's reputation is tangled up with USB audio on late-90s and early-2000s operating systems, and not all of that noise belonged to Tascam. Mix (August 2002, p.144) warned that Windows users could hit USB-related glitches and stuttering, with fixes ranging from Windows 2000 Service Pack 2 to a Hotfix on Tascam's own CD to updated drivers plus a Microsoft Messenger update on XP. The install procedure had a trap: power the unit down before installing drivers, or Windows grabs it with a useless generic driver and the correct Tascam driver may never take. A separate Mix (February 2004) piece testing a then-new G5 found low-level noise bleeding from the Mac's optical output into a US-428. It also noted the US-428's wall-wart supply usually helps rather than hinders noise problems, and that the noise didn't travel out the FireWire port. That's a computer problem wearing the interface's name, but owners reading forum threads at the time rarely made the distinction.
Tascam shipped OS X drivers for the US-428 (noted in Mix, September 2002), and the company maintained a product page and an active user forum. The Pro Tools Free pairing is the one that still stings: Mix (August 2002, p.144) reported the US-428's transport lights don't work with PT Free because it follows JLCooper CS-10 emulation. Anyone buying one today should assume driver support is a scavenger hunt and that the bundled Cubasis authorization is long dead. The hardware itself - faders, jog wheel, converters - is the reason to bother, and only if a working driver setup already exists on the machine it's headed for.
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