Tascam Model 12

The Lounge Other Gear
373

It would be pretty weird for it to be defective in a way that both channels of the SUB OUT across all strips are 100% dead. I’d expect either the L or the R to go, or for it to be crackly, or just strip 3 or something.

If you’re still not finding what’s wrong, the best way to troubleshoot signal path:

  1. Make sure LOW CUT and INST are disengaged (up) and that the MAIN and SUB faders are all the way down.
  2. Plug a thing in the IN port of a strip.
  3. Play the thing and turn the GAIN (red pot) up slowly until the green LED next to it illuminates. Keep going until it starts flashing red, then bring it down a bit until it’s consistently green again.
    • If the green LED never lights, there’s a problem between your source and the Model 12. Bad cable? Balanced signal canceling? Level of instrument not turned up?
  4. Make sure MODE is switched to LIVE
  5. Go to the METR screen to see your meters.
  6. Play something. You should see the meter for your channel bump (if you’re using strip 9/10, it’s on the second page. Don’t forget to page over to it)
    • If you don’t see levels, there’s something weird between the back panel and the mixer. This is usually a routing thing (mode is set to PC instead of live. Mode is set to MTR and strip is not armed, etc)
  7. Disengage (up) MUTE, MAIN, and SOLO of your strip. Engage (down) SUB. Set the level fader to ~0db
  8. Disengage (up) MUTE and MAIN of the SUB section. Slowly bring up the SUB level fader until you hear signal over the SUB outs, or until you reach ~0db.
    • If you’re not hearing anything over the sub outs at this point, there’s probably something wrong between the sub outs and your monitors. Cables? Monitor levels and power?
  9. We’re not getting signal over the SUB OUTs, but we can still check to see if we’re getting signal on the SUB bus. Engage (down) the SUB’s MAIN.
  10. Disengage (up) the MUTE in the MAIN section. Play while slowly bringing up the MAIN level fader. Watch the MAIN meter to the right of the LCD screen. It should start to bump.
    • If the MAIN meter never illuminates, there’s a problem between the strip and the SUB bus. I’m honestly not sure what this could be, as this should be all DSP at this point, but maybe could be some uncommon routing option in some deep menu somewhere? It might be worth doing a factory reset to make sure everything is as normal as possible?

If you’ve gone through all this and no joy, then unplug from whatever strip you were testing, plug in a different one, and repeat these steps from the top to rule out it being a single broken port or dodgy switch on a specific strip.

If you’ve done this on multiple strips and still no joy, I’m out of ideas :upside_down_face:

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374

Thanks for all that advice. As I said, this was a new setup where I was using a Audient interface with the sub channel into that. I took it all apart and hooked the sub out directly into my heat and it did have output. So long story short, I had a setting in my laptop wrong.

TLDR user error

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375

Thank you for these links :pray:. My Model 12 has actually been behaving itself lately and the start up issue has been very rare, hoping it stays this way of course. But I have bookmarked your post incase I do need this in the future. Thanks again, appreciate you sharing this.

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376
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377

Boom!! PC to Main is very welcome!! It’s like getting an extra stereo channel on the mixer for free!

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378

Yeah that’s a really welcome addition. Was really surprised when I found I couldn’t do that.

The implementation looks a bit odd though, unless I’ve misunderstood the video. In 1.3 I could send over USB to channels 1-10. Now in 1.4, rather than having additional channels, I can tell the Model 12 to route USB 1&2 direct to main? Will update later and see if that’s right.

Also wondering if you get only the USB audio on main, or if it also mixes in channels 1-10 still.

379

I read it as PC 1&2, so in Ableton, if I tell it to send to 1&2 it’s the Model 12 that decides what that means now.
I suppose you do lose mono channels 1&2 as a USB (PC) in source now though… personally I always use those for live inputs so I don’t mind.

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380

its a very nice update tbh. I think this is how a lot of ppl expected this mixer to work out of the box and got disappointed when they found out that by default USB PC input comes through mono channels 1 and 2. you can re-route in your pc/Mac to another pair, e.g. 9/10 - but I found not all apps worked. i.e. google chrome was still playing audio on channels 1 and 2. not only that I was using channels 9/10 to toggle between external synth and my pc input. with this update, my pc input is on the master, and 9/10 is dedicated to my external synth. in fact all inputs 1-10 are now for external instruments but I can easily toggle to pc multi inputs as well, which is useful as I sample my Mac into my S2400. fecking love this mixer, great update. also the new digital gain is really nice value add.

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381

Finally decided to add one to the band:

IMG_0208
IMG_02084032×2268 2.24 MB

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382

Could someone recommend a software or little utility tool to merge the Left and Right tracks into a stereo track, quickly and easily, without having to resample in Ableton for example ?

It would be nice if the Tascam would implement a feature to allow to group pairs of audio tracks to be recorded as one stereo file instead of one separate file for each audio track.

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383

Been eyeing this for a while. Just found a barely used one for $300. I guess it’s safe to leap?

I’ll be sure to check the knobs, outs, ins and power switch on inspection. Any other common, known hardware related issue I should inspect before buying a used model12?

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384

Stereo Mix Export (page 47 of the manual) does this. It only works on the main mix, but you could just do a pass with everything muted except what you want to mix down, then mix export, and then you have a stereo interleaved file in your music folder.

Software-wise I’m unfamiliar with how Live does it, but audacity can definitely merge two files by loading them both up and panning them hard left and right before export. Logic automatically merges files if they have .L.wav and .R.wavextensions. Not sure if any of that is easier/better than what Live does.

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386

There’s an easier way to do this, with Track Swap:

  1. In “Track Edit,” use “Track Swap” to swap whatever 2 channels you’d like to merge to Tracks 11 & 12 (the MAIN mix)
  2. In the “Song” menu, change the name of the project to whatever you’d like your merged files to be called.
  3. Use “Stereo Mix Export” to create a stereo mixdown (.wav format), which gets saved to the “Music” folder.

4-5. Once you’re done, you can swap the channels back to where they were before, and (5) change the name of the project back to how it was (if you want).

(I really wish the M12 would automatically update file names so you can do multiple mixes/mixdowns without having to go into the “Song” menu and change the name of the whole project, but there ya go.)

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387

Has anyone used this (or another) mixer to record directly to the unit itself?

388

I’m not following your question. Do you mean using sends/returns on the mixer to make remixes/bounce down tracks?

389

It says “The Model 12’s intuitive internal 12-track recorder creates WAV files of up to 24-bit/48 kHz audio quality directly to an SD card”.

Just wondering what that would be like, without a DAW.

390

Oh, yeah that’s specifically what I (and a lot of people on here) use it for! It’s a great 12-track recorder with a ton of hands-on controls, though quite a few limitations.

Here’s my setup:

TRACKS 11 + 12:
These are the MAIN L&R out to your monitors or whatever. Whenever you’re recording anything, the Model 12 always also records anything you hear on the MAIN outs to these two channels.

TRACKS 9 & 10
This is the second of M12’s two stereo channels. I usually use it for mixdowns, parallel compression, or mastering/EQing, all using the SUB output as a send.

TRACKS 7 & 8
This is the first of the Model 12’s two stereo channels. Usually my Digitakt or whatever sampler/looper I’m using.

TRACK 6
Bass synth (clean)

TRACK 5
Bass synth effects (using FX SEND 1 to route TRACK 6 out to some pedals and back here to record).

TRACK 4
Bass or Guitar (clean)

TRACK 3
Bass or Guitar 2, or effects using FX 2 SEND

And then TRACKS 1 & 2 I usually leave free for overdubs, extra takes, etc. Or to record things like automation (again using FX SEND or SUB routing).

Once you have stuff recorded, you can swap tracks around, make mixdowns of anything on Tracks 11 & 12, lots of other stuff. It’s not so much a DAW in a box as it is like a live mixer with a 12-track tape machine connected to it.

For the “DAW in a box” experience, you may be more interested in a Portastudio, which is cheaper, has way more tracks for the $, and lots more after-the-fact editing. But not nearly as many hands-on controls, much shorter fader throws, and thus way more menu diving in general.

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392

Hi there - when you say you are using the Aux to implement the Analog Drive, what exactly are you doing?

Are you sending the return signal back into the mixer, and resampling it?

393

When you say you are multitracking to StudioOne and multitracking to the SD card, why are you doing both?

What is your workflow here?

Also, when you are multitracking in to StudioOne, are you noticing any latency?

394

Just trying to figure out why you would multitrack using BOTH the Model 12 and Overbridge?

Is there something I’m missing here?