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Last modification: November 4, 2012
Tascam US-122, US-122L and US-122-MkII are different, both from the hardware viewpoint and
from the protocol they used:
Tascam US-122L is supported under Linux using official releases since April 2009 You may find here some technical explanations for its use under Fedora 10 and greater.
For people nostalgic of Fedora 9, I kept some packages, but I can not recommend to use them.
Ubuntu or Debian users will find all necessary things at Federico Briata web site.
Using the driver for the Tascam US-144 requires to first disable a kernel module. Tobias wrotes instructions for using his patch (under Ubuntu 9.10) on this page; have to be used together with Federico's wiki.
For Fedora users, I wrote this page for giving some help to people interested in having the patch working with their present distribution. Care that this page remains experimental: I never used to own a Tascam US-144 so I was not able to test the modified patches.
Jan 11 2009
Last modified Sep 2 2009
The integration of the driver is complete, especially for Fedora users. Since the last releases of Fedora 10, stable Linux kernel with the relevant alsa and USB 2.0 drivers is included (the ones written by Karsten Wiese, thanks Karsten) allowing "hotplug" of the Tascam ! Care that it however requires some configuration, as explained here.
Let me recall what are the minimal releases you require to have Tascam US-122L working under Linux:
2009-01-29
Hi Joe,
unfortunately, the last "stable" release 2.6.27.12-78.2.8.fc9 of the kernel does not include the drivers
from alsa-1.0.18 (and so does not include the driver of the Tascam US-122L) as it was the case for the
"testing updates" kernel 2.6.27.9-73.fc9.
It seems that Fedora guys had some problems with alsa-1.0.18 and so "downgrade" their kernel: there are
some discussions about this in Fedora devel forum.
Let us keep 2.6.27.9-73.fc9 as long as a new kernel including alsa drivers will appear (either, one would probably
have to compile a full kernel - even I am looking forward a better solution).
Now, the good news is that Karsten submitted a refreshed version of his patch to kernel.org three days
ago (see http://mailman.alsa-project.org/pipermail/alsa-devel/2009-January/014298.html)
Regards Phil.
2009-01-27
Hi Phil,
Just a follow up regarding not being able to load jack with 2.6.27 versions of the kernel in case any other users have the same problem.
I have discovered that it is an incompatibility between CCRMA versions of jack and the 2.6.27 kernels (on my machine at least).
Jackd just gives a segmentation fault when trying to load. I have reverted to the fedora 0.116.1-3 version of jack which works.
I have been in touch with Fernando at CCRMA and he is unable to reproduce the fault on his equipment but I have sent
him an strace file of what is happening and await his comments.
Regards, Joe
2009-01-10
Hi Joe,
many thanks for replying so rapidly and of course I'm pleased that you are now able to work with the last release of Fedora kernel.
But you would have to alert me about the problems you had with prior 2.6.27 packages; since they worked fine for me
and without alerts from other peoples, I thought everything was OK.
And you are right: giving the full path (</home/joe/desktop/in your case) is probably the better way to avoid
problems (I assumed that peoples entered the command in the directory where they downloaded the rpm files);
I will add something in the page above.
I'm also pleased to learn that it works fine for midi input and output since I did not test this functionality (you
know, I'm playing guitar and look like an elephant in front of a keyboard).
Concerning your last remark, I always found, up to now, that most of Web sites about Linux suffer from a kind of
"geek syndrome" and are probably not user-friendly for many peoples who have not a minimal background about computers.
So I try to do my best to share my (not so extended) knowledge in a manner as didactic as I'm able to do.
Best regards Phil
2009-01-19
Hi Phil,
Thanks for your email.
Here are the details of my recent experience with the US-122L.
Firstly, prior to kernel 2.6.27.9-73 I was unable to get Jack to work with any of the 2.6.27 kernels, either yours or the standard ones, so I had reverted to your last 2.6.26 version which was ok.
I am now operating successfully on 2.6.27.9-73 with your USB2 modules. yum was unable to find them but I downloaded them to the desktop and
modified your yum instructions to;
su -c 'yum --nogpgcheck
install /home/joe/desktop/ehci-hcd-2.6.27.9-us122l.1.fc9.noarch.rpm/home/joe/desktop/kmod-ehci-hcd-2.6.27.9-us122l.1.fc9.i686.rpm /home/joe/desktop/kmod-ehci-hcd-2.6.27.9-73.fc9.i686-2.6.27.9-us122l.1.fc9.i686.rpm
To give you some idea of how I use my US-122L. I have it linking a midi keyboard to my Linux machine and at the same time the midi output is linked to
a windows (xp) machine on which I do a lot of music transcription using the Sibelius notation package.
Using vnc I can operate both machines using the same input and output devices without rewiring or changing my seat.
Many thanks for all your hard work on behalf of US-122L users.
It is especially useful to someone like myself who comes from a windows
background and has to work very slowly once one leaves the GUI parts of linux systems.
Joe Curtis
2009-01-18
Hi Paul,
Many thanks for replying so rapidly to report your test. I'm of course satisfied that the packages work with your i686.
And I hope you will enjoy working set to 96kHz (doesn't it lead to increased latency ?).
And of course I note that the final release of alsa-plugins-usbstream is available from Fedora.
Best regards Phil.
2009-01-17
Hi Phil,
Yes, your new packages work for me. This means on i686, tested on playback, and also with rakarrack*.
It works when set to 96000hz, as well as 48000hz (as far as I know, the USB1.1 route will not go above 48k and
in fact I never got the US-122L to work above 48k before, so this is cool).
For completeness I note that I am using alsa-plugins-usbstream-1.0.18-2.fc10.i386.rpm from FC10-updates.
Thanks again! Paul
*I assume this tests duplex properly (I am not recording anything, but it takes guitar in and gives processed guitar out.
Sounds good. ;-)
2009-01-10
Hi Paul,
well it's always a pleasure to know that some peoples have had used of the packages.
It's true that I always omitted to indicate that the Karsten's alsa driver (the snd-usb-us122l kernel module) works when connected through the
uhci-hcd port (that is by disabling the ehci-hcd one) without requiring additional patching; it's because I
always included the patch for ehci-hcd in the packages.
But now that kernel-2.6.27.9-73.fc9 includes the alsa driver, and that usb-stream is available from the repos,
this is effectively a very simple way to have Tascam works under Linux.
The only limitation is that, in that case, you use USB 1.1 which is much slower than USB 2.0: I have no idea if
this might be critical for standart use.
Right now, I'm working on providing only an altervative, patched ehci-hcd module (rather than compiling and/or downloading an entire kernel).
Whereas the module works in itself, I've still some small troubles with the kmod developing tool so I have to ask
for some help from rpmfusion guys.
Regards Phil.
2009-01-10
Many thanks for this page Phil.
I got some use out of my us-122l for the last few months thanks to you.
P.S. (Probably Phil and everyone knows this, but just in case anyone missed it:) If I now boot FC9 to kernel-2.6.27.9-73.fc9.i686 (the ordinary one), and overupdate to alsa-lib-1.0.18-6.rc3.fc10.i386 (+devel) and do
rmmod ehci_hcd, then my us-122l works with that default kernel (only tested on playback so far).
Paul Martin
2008-11-19
Hi Joe,
I effectively indicated on my website that there is an unresolved dependency when installing the last version of the packages.
Probably I would have to remove something in the dependency before compiling the package or possibly there is something wrong in the original source package from Fedora.
Whatever, it is not a real problem but the packages can not be installed with the fairly simple GUI of your desktop.
It requires to use the command line to indicate to ignore the corresponding dependency.
So:
- first you must have the official kernel-firmware-2.6.27.5-37.fc9 (noarch) installed from the official Fedora repository:
if you have yet installed the unpatched kernel-2.6.27.5-37.fc9.i686 (what I always recommend to do), it is yet present on your system.
This is the package which will be used by the us122l patched kernel (which does not differ from the official kernel from this viewpoint).
- with kernel-firmware-2.6.27.5-37.fc9 (noarch) installed, and with kernel-2.6.27.5-37.us122lv051.fc9.i686 in your
home directory, you will essentially have to open a terminal window and enter the command:
su -c 'rpm -iv --nodeps kernel-2.6.27.5-37.us122lv051.fc9.i686' and answer the root password prompt.
The only difference with the usual command (the one used by your GUI desktop) is the --nodeps option: the install program will not check for dependency.
This is of course not recommended in general, but in the present case it overcomes the (small) bug.
Whatever, of course, keep the official kernel-2.6.27.5-37.fc9.i686 installed, as well as the previous versions (official and us122l) for booting on these if some problems arise.
I will try to avoid this for the next version.
Let me known if you have remaining problems.
Regards Phil.
2008-11-19
Hi Phil,
I'm getting a dependency failure when trying to install your latest rpm,(kernel-firmware 2.6.27.5-37.us122lv051.fc9 is needed by package kernel-2.6.27.5-37.us122lv051.fc9.i686).
Is this missing from the rpm or do I need to install it separately.
Regards, Joe Curtis
2008-10-06
Hi Keith,
sorry for the delay, your mail was in my spam box. I saw that you was rather
speaking about US-144, wasn't you ? If this is the case, I had a look to the
patch file and saw that Karsten Wiese has probably thought about it but did not add something because he had no US-144 to test it.
So the patch is only valid, presently, for US-122L and not for US-144.
Possibly, if you have a US-144, we can test something with a modified patch: let me know if you are interested in.
Phil.
2008-09-29
i installed fedora 9 when i couldnt get it to work with ubuntu studio, the .rpms installed
and i booted into the new kernel, but the us122l is still not listed under /proc/asound/cards..
+please help+ keithacole(at)gmail(dot)(com)
2008-09-26
Thanks Joe.
It's indeed pleasant to know that this page was useful for at least one person.
I will include your suggestion in the present page.
Regards Phil.
2008-09-26
Many thanks for your excellent article which enabled me (a naive user) to get my US122l up and running under F9 straight away.
For other users like myself could I suggest they visit http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8354 for the next stage in the audio under linux process.
Kind regards,
Joe Curtis. joecurtis@f2s.com
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