Tascam Util

This repository contains (a) tool(s) for controlling the software mixer and routing of the Tascam USB 4x4 audio interface, on Linux.

On Windows or Mac, you can just use Tascam's utilities.

Getting up and running

Dependencies

• Python 3
• virtualenv
• LibUSB
• PyUSB - we'll install this one slightly differently

On Ubuntu 20.04 you'd do the following to get these:

$> sudo apt install python3 python3-pip python3-virtualenv
$> sudo apt install libusb-1.0-0

Get the code

Then, clone this code, with something like:

$> git clone [email protected]:guysherman/tascam-util.git
$> cd tascam-util
$> ./setup.sh

Or download it as a zip file, whatever.

Note, your distribution might call python3 python and pip3 pip, in which case you'll need to tweak setup.sh to use the correct name. And do the same thing in your mind when reading further in this doc

Add a udev rule

If you want to mess with your device from user space, you need to add a udev rule to give you permissions.

Fortunately, I created an example file for you, so you should be able to just:

$> sudo cp ./99-tascam44.rules /lib/udev/rules.d/99-tascam44.rules

Note I assume you have a group called audio and that your user is in it.

You'll also need to re-run the udev rules if you don't want to reboot:

$> udevadm control --reload-rules && udevadm trigger

Set some settings

tascam-util uses a command structure, so you pass it a command name, and the command arguments

Here's the help text:

usage: tascam-util.py [-h] command ...

positional arguments:
  command     The command to execute
  args        the args to pass to the command

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit

Commands

route: set the signal routing options, takes the following arguments:

• -s, --source: the audio source (ie one of the stereo pairs from the PC, or the monitor mix); valid values: MIX, OUT12, OUT34
• -d, --dest: the audio outputs to route to; valid values: LINE12, LINE34

monitor: set the direct monitoring mode for a given input pair; arguments:

• -i, --input: the input pair; values IN12, IN34
• -m, --mode: the monitoring mode; values MONO, STEREO

input: enable or disable given device inputs; arguments:

• -i, --input: the input to enable/disable; values IN1, IN2, IN3, IN4
• -m, --mode: enable or disable; values: ON, OFF

powersave: enable or disable powersaving; arguments:

• -m, --mode: enabled or disabled; values: ON, OFF

Example

To set Line Outputs 3 and 4 to directly reflect outputs 3 and 4 from the computer:

$> python tascam-util.py route -s OUT34 -d LINE34