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TASCAM has announced the US-100, a new USB 2.0 Audio Interface positioned at a breakthrough price.
The high-quality interface features a microphone input as well as instrument level input for direct recording guitar or bass. Stereo line inputs are provided, and can be switched to phono-level to connect a favorite turntable to digitize a vinyl collection. All of this is housed in a solid aluminum chassis to withstand any abuse from the road to the dorm room.
The US-100 is a 48k/16-bit stereo audio interface that connects to a Mac or Windows computer using USB 2.0. A free copy of Audacity® software is included to start recording right away. Additional features like a 1/8″ stereo headphone output and zero-latency monitoring make the US-100 perfect for songwriters and musicians getting started with recording.
TASCAM US-100 features
- Bus-powered USB 2.0 audio interface.
- XLR or 1/4″ microphone input.
- 1/4″ guitar-level direct input.
- RCA line inputs, switchable to RIAA photo inputs with ground lug.
- 1/8″ stereo headphone output.
- 48kHz/16-bit audio resolution.
- Zero-latency hardware monitoring.
- Mac and Windows compatible.
- Audacity recording software included.
- Solid aluminum case construction.
The US-100 will be available from TASCAM retailers in September at a street price under $100 USD.
More information: TASCAM
USB 2 chipsets are relatively cheap these days, and as this is an entry level product it makes sense to use an established technology. Plus with A-D convertors fixed 48kHz 16-bit the US-100 has no need of the astronomical bit-rates provided by USB-3 or indeed PCIe; that extra bandwidth would just go to waste.
I’m sure a great variety of systems will make use of the USB3 standard in the next decade or so, perhaps to offload DSP processing via fibre optics etc, but it’ll be a long while before they’re available at entry level budgets, if indeed they do come into being at all.
J G Harding – SOS News
Until now, I didn’t know it existed! Thanks for that tidbit. Many computers have 2.0 which means most of these systems would have to be upgraded for 3.0 to be implemented on existing systems.
Blue-ray has yet to become a household standard while the common DVD format is still quite prevalent like USB-2.0 is. Perhaps when 64 bit computing becomes the industry standard, USB 3.0 will likely also.
I don’t get it… Why do these companies bother with releasing USB 2.0… or even Firewire interfaces still?
Max. bandwidths for those are:
USB 2.0 = 480 Mbit/s = 60 MB/s
FireWire 800 = 786.4 Mbit/s = 98.3MB/s
while
USB 3.0 = 4.80 Gbit/s = 600 MB/s
PCI Express 2.0 (x16 link) = 64 Gbit/s = 8 GB/s
Thanks, bye…
Looks like an excellent price. But I just coulden’t help notice that they wrote “A free copy of Audacity® software is included to start recording right away.”. It is freeware, so there is no commercial edition available. Hehe