Tascam FW-1082 with FCS2?

I'm thinking about buying a Tascam FW-1082 mixer-slash-control surface to use with Final Cut Pro 6 and Soundtrack Pro 2. I've heard good things about it, but I've also heard some iffy things about compatibility.

I'm running 6.0.4 and 2.0.2 on 10.5.4, and I'm planning to add a PCI Firewire card to give the 1082 its own bus if I decide to buy one.

Has anybody had any experience with this particular combo? Any good or bad things to say?

Good things. I have it and use it a lot. But when I have to plug in firewire drives I lose it's ability...shame. And lately I have had to plug in a LOT of firewire drives (transferring footage).

Love the ability to mix on the board...although I have gotten VERY quick in FCP with keyboard commands.


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Cool, Shane, good to hear it. Do you think the Firewire trouble you run into is a function of mixing devices on the same bus? I'm lucky enough to have a Mac Pro with some empty slots here, so I'd be happy to just drop in a Firewire card and give the mixer its own bus.

Yeah...the FW1082 needs a FW bus all to itself. And my slots are full. All of them. Apple Fibre Channel card, Caldigit HD One card, Kona 3, x1900 XT graphics card. FULL.


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Yeah, in a sense I'm a little lucky. I've just got my graphics card. No FC or I/O boards as yet. So putting in a Firewire card will be easy.

Thanks for the input.

Off Topic, but does anyone know if the Digi Design 003 works with Final Cut the same way as 1082,
I'm dreaming here.
C

I've had a 1084 for about 18 months or so. I never needed to
to use anything other than the built in firewire bus. No trouble with firewire drives. Works great with FCP, STP & Motion. I prefer using the Cubase drivers over the Mackie ones, as with the Cuebase ones you get full control over the pan pots on all channels which you don't using the Mackie drivers. They may have worked out some of the bugs that were in the earlier 1084 units.

Dave

Personally if I was to buy a control unit today, I would go with the Euphonix. But on ther other hand the 1084's are going at a sweet price at the moment.
Possibly something new about to emerge on the horizon.

Dave

Based in no small part on Shane's endorsement up there, I ordered a Tascam FW-1082 yesterday. It arrived this morning (along with a crapload of other upgrades for my room). I had everything up and running by just after lunch.

The 1082 is @#$%&-hot. I'm absolutely in love with it. As part of my how-does-this-thing-work routine I pulled up a Soundtrack project that I'd recently finished, deleted all the automation and set to mixing it from scratch. The 1082 is absolutely perfect for mixing in real time. Being limited to eight tracks at a time is theoretically annoying, but it's a pretty rare for me to have more tracks than that, and when I do, the 1082's bank-switching feature will get me by.

The 1082 also works as a control surface in Final Cut Pro, technically. It won't work at all unless the audio mixer is open ? even the transport controls are disabled. But with the mixer open, both the transport controls and the faders work.

The 1082 does feel a little plasticky, and it's so tall (from top of surface to desktop) that I wish I had a console with a recessed space for it. But overall, and especially for the price, it's a great addition to my room.

All 3 banks will work , so you can automate 24 tracks. just remember to install the Cuebase software so that you have pan control on all tracks. It's a lot of fun to use with Motion as well, automating the parameter behaviors.

So for a very reasonable price you get automation control of FCP6 STP2 & Motion 3. It can also be used as a stand alone mixer, but with only peak meters on the unit its usefulness in this fashion is somewhat limited. With the Mackie Universal you have to buy a separate Midi controller, but the 1082 has 2 midi in & 2 midi out ports. plus Tascam give a fair amount of support unlike Mackie.

Have fun.

Dave

hey Dave
so does FCP support the 1082 through the Cubase drivers, with all the same controls plus pan control from the pots then? i thought we were limited to the Mackie or Logic control only?
useful news, cheers
Andy

Hi Andy,

You only get pans on 1 & 2 with the Mackie drivers using the Cuebase drivers you get them all. Of course Apple doesn't bother to mention this.

Dave

How do you install Cuebase drivers?

So it doesn't matter which firewire bus you run off(front/back) it still will not work with external HDs?

I have the deck and it works fine if there are only FW 400 drives plugged in as soon as FW 800 drives are plugged along with the 400's it stops working and drives unmount I have the Tascam plugged in to the MacPro's main FW port and other drives in a PCIe card. So I mainly use SATA drives and FW 400 together or I unplug any FW 400 then plug in my FW 800 drives when needed.

------------------------
Dean

"When I see you floating down the gutter I'll give you a bottle of wine."
Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica.

You install the Cubase LE software that comes with the Tascam FW-1082. Actually the version of Cubase LE that ships with the 1082 does not work with Tiger or Leopard as Tascam states plainly on their site. You can get a replacement disk from Tascam that works by phoning or sending them an email. You will be asked to provide proof of purchase of the FW-1082. of course the full Cubace program will also install the drivers.

Dave

Got it going.

For whatever reason it works ok on my computer with both the HD(Firewire 800) plugged into the front port and the board in the back. I did have to set the port to "Control" in the the control surface setting in FCP. It's working beautifully. But maybe the two ports are on different busses in my 8 core Intel.

Don't think I have that CD anymore to try the cubase drivers but will try to locate it.

Cheers for the answers

Yes it has to be set to Control for both Input & Output. Having the Cubase drivers selected just give you control of all the pan pots. Otherwise it functions the same as the Mackie emulation.
Using Mackie emulation you only have control of the pan for channels 1 & 2.

Dave