Review: Tascam FW1884

What initially struck me about the Tascam FW1884 was its personal validation of my ‘when to buy technology-based audio equipment’ theory. The theory goes thus: when a new and unique product appears on the market, don’t rush out and buy it. One should wait patiently, tag it if necessary, and then stealthily track its progress. When a second or possibly third evolution of the technology becomes available, it’s probably time to lash out. By that stage of the game the bugs have been ironed out, the guinea pig end users of the first generation product have voiced their dissatisfaction (and hopefully appreciation of the product) to the manufacturers, who then set about building what the users really wanted – inevitably at a far cheaper price. Bear in mind that this process only lasts a couple of years at most. It’s not a long time to wait if the gear you’re looking at just isn’t quite right. For me the theory rings true with the Tascam FW1884. The Mackie HUI is, after all, where this all started. Then there were those shenanigans between Mackie and Emagic – they couldn’t quite decide who could use the original Logic Control. With the FW1884 we see a blend of technologies and standards from a mixture of manufacturers, all combined into one inexpensive product. Three cheers for the march of progress!

The FW1884 is that kind of product. It combines three main pieces of DAW hardware into one simple box. A Midi interface, an audio interface and a control surface. It also reins in standards set by a number of manufacturers – namely Mackie/Logic Control, HUI and now Native control surface protocols. The unit will control most of the favoured flavours of DAW software available, including ProTools. The audio side of the unit also smells remarkably like mLan, but isn’t. This side of operations is courtesy of Tascam’s partner in this project, Frontier Design Group. Frontier is responsible for a number of PCI sound cards such as the Dakota and Wavecenter PCI. They also design and market knicknacks such as lightpipe patching systems and A/D, D/A converters. Then of course we shouldn’t forget the big boys in this arrangement, Tascam. If they don’t know how to design an ergonomic, studio- and musician-friendly console then I don’t know who does. They’ve made plenty of them over the years – not to mention the countless portastudios and multitracks emanating from the Tascam/TEAC stables. In fact, I’m particularly fond of Tascam’s penchant for transport buttons – big, square solid jobbies designed to take a pounding from engineers. But enough of my musings, let’s have a look around the FW1884.

TAKE CONTROL

To begin with, the FW1884 is large-ish. By that I mean it’s bigger than a Logic/Mackie Control or a Digidesign 002. While I loved my time with Logic Control and the Mackie Controls, I’m now of the opinion that their layout is a little too cramped – too many buttons and faders confined to too little space. Meanwhile, the FW1884’s 582mm width and 481mm front to rear measurement provide plenty of room on the field for the nine faders, transport (with big chunky Tascam buttons), and associated navigation keys and shuttle wheel. The surface of the controller is metal, implying you can lean into or onto the unit without fear of putting your fist through it. Ergonomically, the layout is quite standard. For example, the monitoring level pot sits directly above the LED output metering towards the rear of the surface – out of reach of that client who likes to turn things up, but within reach of the operator. To the right of the monitor pot is the headphone level pot and to the left is the solo/PFL level pot. The uncluttered layout is very similar to a Yamaha O2R digital console even down to the EQ section with Q, frequency and gain pots and four buttons for selecting frequency bands. If your EQ plug-in offers more than four bands, holding down the shift key on the console will select the extra band parameters. The other aspect to the size and general design is that it looks professional – and we all know how important the ‘impression’ factor is in any studio. Keep the lights flashing and some huge red LED SMPTE readouts running, and the client knows they’re getting their money’s worth – all sarcasm intended.

All the faders are touch-sensitive and move quite smoothly through their 110mm travel. To quote a rather well known reviewer, they feel like a ‘Vaseline-covered eel in a WD40 factory’… actually I wouldn’t go quite that far, as they’re the typical belt-driven style found in pretty much all low-cost controllers. In which case you’ll know how they feel. I would like to have seen the jog wheel able to control a fader for super-fine adjustment. Above each fader are backlit mute, solo and select buttons. Record arm LEDs appear next up the channel strip and apart from their most obvious purpose also act as scale representation for the rotary encoder pots. At first I thought this was a tawdry cost-cutting measure, but in practice I found it far nicer than the Mackie-introduced idea of the ‘V-Pot’ – mainly because you can see the entire scale without the knob obscuring your vision of the LEDs. You don’t have to peer over the top of the board to make sure the pot is at exactly 12 o’clock. Off to the left of the console are buttons for choosing the rotary encoders’ task assignment. The default setting is pan, or you can choose from eight send level controls. A Flip button switches the encoder’s task over to the faders if that’s how you prefer things. Jumping to the left of the fader section there are 14 buttons for tasks such as save, cut, copy, paste, delete, undo, marker setting and loop. There’s even a dedicated button to bring up the controller’s software panel on the host computer.

Back down in the transport area there are the classic N-S-E-W navigation buttons, smooth-as-an-eel shuttle wheel, bank select, locate and nudge buttons. Additional backlit buttons will toggle between automation modes, clock source or as function keys. Operating as function keys, these buttons will bring up plug-in windows within the host software. Four buttons to the top right of the controller force the unit into either computer mode – running as software controller, monitor mix mode – whereby the console acts as a stand-alone mixing console, or Midi control where the console becomes a standard Midi controller for anything with, you guessed it, a Midi interface. Obviously this mode will come in handy for tweaking up your arsenal of virtual and hardware instruments.