Tascam US144 MKII USB 2.0 Audio Interface

Feature:
I like being able to turn down the level of the monitors separately, hence my choice, else I'd have bought the 122 Mk2. I don't use the digital inputs. The drivers present these as separate inputs and I can disable them completely in Cakewalk Sonar so they don't disturb me anymore. I also like the pot that pans between the computer and the direct signal. In this way I can always get a decent balance. The Edirol interfaces only have a level for the direct inputs, not for the computer level. This means I often cannot hear my voice/guitar above the backing tracks. The Tascam solves this problem nicely. I wish it had a -18db 80Hz filter for my Neumann TLM 103, but no interfaces I know of have that. So I connect my Mackie 402 VLZ3, which has these filters, in front of the interface. The Mackie has equally quiet preamps (I compared by turning both down to the same volume level) but they have more gain.

Quality:
The knobs all have a different "feel". Some turn easily, some less so. No big deal, just makes it feel like my home-made mixer(!) where the pots come from different companies. The knobs are also higher than the predecessor and have a chrome top which scratches easily. The guitar input has a problem. There is a LED to show that turns green to show your level is high enough (and red when distorting). When it turns green, there is a click. This click gets recorded; you can see it in the waveform. At first you don't notice because it gets lost in the attack of the guitar, but if you have a volume pedal or a Boss slow-gear pedal, you can hear it click as the green LED turns on and off. You can also hear it by turning the input volume on the Tascam up and down to make the LED go on and off.

Value:
It is inexpensive compared to other interfaces in its class, like the Edirol UA-25EX. It also has a well-built aluminium extruded case, unlike the plastic Tracker pre.

Desirability:
It is unfortunately a bit big and heavy compared to the competition, but for a desktop model, having the knobs on the top instead of in front, I find it more practical for a mobile laptop studio setup. But the clicking LED on the guitar input is really annoying. I can only accept it because I can turn my Mackie to Guitar and turn the Guitar off on the Tascam.

Sound:
The preamps are very quiet compared to other USB interfaces I own, namely Edirol UA-101, Edirol UA-25EX and very much quieter than my EMU Tracker Pre. On the other hand, the maximum gain is not great so I had to drop the levels of the above mentioned interfaces to do a comparison. But for an SM58 rock/pop vocalist, it's good.

Ease of Use:
Driver installation was a process of plugging in, unplugging, plugging in... but these are all guided by the install software so in fact it was no problem at all. Windows XP 32 bit.

Support:
I dealt with the retailer, not with Tascam directly, so I don't know. The Tascam website was quick to post 64bit drivers.

Overall:
I will keep it until something smaller, lighter, and with better gain on the preamps arrives at a similar price-point.

Feature:
Headphone amp is a bit too quiet.

Quality:
Installing the newest drivers from the Tascam Website actually made my system crash more often than the old drivers. The interface also takes 20% of CPU power to run on a Core 2 Quad Laptop, even when I'm doing nothing with it. The Interface actually crashed my PC once while I was writing this review. Appearantly, this is a problem that existed with the previous model of the US-144 as well. Google it; there are dozens of reports online of people having the same issues as me, and hundreds of reports regarding Tascam's worthless customer support. The instruction manual is also littered with typos. Even when it does output sound, you can't use it in a production environment due to very high latency. If you set the latency to anything other than the highest setting, you will get all kinds of crackling and skipping, even when just listening to music in Winamp or Windows Media Player. It often doesn't get properly recognized in Cubase 5. Recording is nearly impossible.

Value:
Value is not very good, as the interface is unusable.

Desirability:
It is decent looking, but nothing spectacular.

Sound:
The sound quality is very good.

Ease of Use:
The interface crashes at random intervals throughout the day. On a fresh install of Windows XP SP3, I frequently got the Blue-Screen-of-Death blaming tascusb2.sys. There was no warning. Computer could be on for hours before doing it, or not. I haven't been able to discern a pattern as to when it happens -- it happens most often when I listen to music, but sometimes it will crash when I'm doing nothing at all with it.

Support:
Support is unhelpful, telling me to disable my anti virus and firewall(not an option due to security concerns, but even when I did do it for an hour, my system crashed again), and outright lying to me, saying that Mac users don't have issues with the Tascam Audio Interface, when you can find tons of reports of people having issues on their mac.

Overall:
Bottom line: When the thing works, it outputs some nice, clear sound for the price. Unfortunately it's nearly unusable due to constant crashing, latency issues and worthless support. Stay away until they put out some new drivers, which they have been promising for nearly two years.