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Old 02-05-2008, 01:04 AM   #35
Maestro
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Posts: 1
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Hi, folks. I'm entirely new here. Here's my experience with the US-1641, although my problems may be unrelated to what you're experiencing. This is actually a unit that an acquaintance of mine bought. He speaks little english and needed my help.

Here's how it went. We bought the unit online from a registered dealer, ScitScat. When it arrived, we right away noticed that the input levels were unusually low. Even with the trim pot almost all the way up, the decibels showing up in his Samplitude hardly approached -15 to -10dbs, which is considerably short of the desirable -6db for recording. And to get the -6, he had to turn the trim ALL the way up, and the singer had to pretty much touch the mic whilst singing. This was odd, as the little LED showed that the card itself was receiving strong signals, but the daw never received them. We reinstalled the drivers and tried again, but it was the same. Besides, with the trim jacked up, (LED showed reds) the sound was already distorted and unusable. I suggested we try a condenser, as their sensitivity is usually better. The improvement was negligible, as the trim still had to be nearly maxed out to get an average of -6.

So I call Tascam, and after about 10 minutes of wasting my life on listening to their crappy background music, I finally got to talk to a "tech rep", who sounded like he just quit his job at McDonalds and took this one. He took my name, address and the rest, and made a "profile" account in their system. Then he asked about my problem. I thoroughly explained our input level problem, and that we tried different types of mics, cables, and reinstalls. Well, guess what? His one and only advice was to try and reinstall the drivers. Again. And then if that doesn't work to call back. (What a way to rub someone off so you can go take your smoke break, huh?) Fine, said I. I went and reinstalled the drivers. No improvement. In fact I did them one better, and took the card to my own music PC, and istalled the drives fresh. Then tried it through my Sonar, and Samplitude. Still the same. I then tried a different USB cable. No improvement. Long by now I knew that the problem was in the card iteself, but I had to do every possible thing, just so I could prevent them from rubbing me off again next time I call. Which I did. With shipping and our experiments, 30 days have expired and no return could be made to the dealer, only and exchange/repair through manufacturer.

Again I called, sacrificing my lunch break for fifteen minutes of their 8-bit telephone symphony, then when I finally get to talk to someone, they tell me that the guys from the "tech support" are currently on lunch, and that I should call back later in 40 minutes or so. (My steam level rising...) OK, said i.

An hour later, interupting my work, I called again, for yet another 10 minutes of goofy music, and then some teen-age brat sounding kid finally took my call, sounding kinda like he was doing ME, THE CUSTOMER a favor!!! I patiently gave him my name and address again, and he pulled up my account, and by golly what joy - nothing from my previous call was there, as he started asking me the same elementary questions all over again! I explained to him EVERYTHING that I did try and remedy the situation, trying a variety of dynamic and phantom mics, different cables, different PC's, native hosts, etc. He goes on to ask things like "Well, did you have the phantom power button ON?" (They must be reading this crap off a list of "stuff to ask"). I said politely, "of course we had it on, how else would we use condenser mics at all"? To this he snapped at me and raised his voice, yelling "I don't know, I'm just asking you a question!!!"
I realized this was going nowhere, so I asked simply to tell me how to exchange the item. He said they don't do exchanges, but only repairs, either by sending in to them, or taking it to one of their approved repair contractors in town.

We sent it in to them, with a letter of thorough explanation of the problems. After two months, the card hadn't arrived. I call them, and imagine my shock when I find out that they already shipped it back out a month ago, but to the other side of United States - to Florida (we're in Washington). Yes, instead of using our return address, which was both on the package and the required copy of the receipt, they took the address of the store that originally sold to us, as it was on the receipt as well. This was a new low in records of customer support in my book. They truly must be the dejected lot of the fast food industry.

Anyways, I called ScitScat, and sure enough they had received an unanticipated package with refurbed goods - something they never sell anyways. We had to again pay 17$ of shipping at our own expense to get it back to us. Fine.

Now that it's here, we realize, that Tascam had actually replaced the entire unit, as this one was assembled in china, while the former was made in mexico. And the new one was more blueish, istead of black. Well, we go to try it, and guess what? STILL the same low levels!!! Except one difference is that it doesn't distort the sound anymore even with the trim all the way up. So I thought to myself, hmmm two brand new cards in a row can't be screwed up this way. Is it actually designed to be like this? So i opened the manual and looked up input impedance on the 8 xlr input channels - it's 2.2 kOhms. Compare that to Presonus 1.3k ohms. Yes, I know that every circuit design is different, and that there are other ones with even higher values out there, like Mackie's usb series with 2.4k ohms mic inputs. But whether they use more powerful preamps, or whatever, their products rock, and they leave you plenty of overhead on your trimpots. Plus I've never seen a software control hub so poor, small, featureless and useless as the one on us-1641. Ages behind the rock-solid, all-inclusive PatchMix of my e-mu1820m.

Basically we got a crappy product, giving us no input overhead (kinda like having to drive your car floored all the way, just to get your 60 miles per hour). And I get the lousiest service imaginable - here, in the states! I might as well be talking to someone in Mumbai about cancelling a credit card. At least they don't yell at you for paying them your hard earned money.

Personally, I swore to myself never again to buy anything from them, long as I live. They seem to be more concerned with their TEAC consumer junk anyways. At this point we gave up.
He's gonna finish his album (using it "pedal-to-the-metal" on inputs, or using another mixer to preamplify the sound further, before feeding to the tascam). And then we'll sell/trade this piece of crap for a firepod. A motu 8pre would be ideal, but price forbids. But then again, like mama always taught, you get what you pay for...

Sorry for rambling. Had to share... Comments?
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