Tascam Model 12

[brb3]

I've been wanting a nicer mixer for a while, and finally bit the bullet on a Tascam Model 12.
Getting it setup the way I want has been tricky, and I've learned a few things about the limitations in the process.

My Use Cases​

1. Use the mixer as an audio interface for everyday stuff. Send mic input to Discord/Google Meet/whatever, hear my PC audio in my headphones or speakers.
2. Mix in audio from external devices like my phone, CD player, or Record player. Control if that audio goes into my PC or just my headphones.
3. Disconnect from the PC and use the mixer as a mixing console and recorder for my MPC X.

Ultimately, I was able to accomplish all three but with a few caveats.

Headphones​

The first issue I had was that getting audio into my headphones was trickier than I thought. This is probably a symptom of me not being familiar with more professional level audio gear, but it is not intuitive how to route audio into the headphones.
There are 2 main audio busses, "Main" and "Sub". Normally, your headphones monitor the "Main" bus, but this isn't particularly useful in my case, because "Main" is also what is sent back to the PC as microphone input (in the normal 2 channel input mode). So if I mute my microphone so I don't hear myself, then no one can hear me. Also, everything from the PC feeds back into the input because I need to route the PC return audio into "Main" to be able to hear it in my headphones.
The solution to that is the oddly named "Solo" bus. Each channel can be soloed (multiple at one time), and if any are soloed, the headphones output switches from being a monitor of "Main" to being a monitor to what is on the Solo bus. It took me too long to figure this out.

PC Return​

By default, PC Return audio is sent to channels 1 and 2 (as Left and Right). If you send these to the Sub bus, you hear them on the speakers fine. They will be mixed together, however, which breaks stereo separation. This can be solved by just balancing channels 1 and 2 to the left and right respectively, but this doesn't work when you send them to the Solo bus. Because the Solo bus is actually a PFL (Pre-Fade Listen) and skips balancing and faders. As far as I can tell, there's no way to get stereo separation of PC return audio into your headphones without also sending that audio through the Main bus with this mixer out-of-the-box.
This is fixed in the latest firmware (I think in version 1.4? I'm on 1.41) because you can now configure it so that PC return audio is sent to channels 9/10 (they are on one strip). Soloing this combined channel gives proper stereo separation in your headphones.

Recording​

Recording works great. The interface is a little confusing at first (reading the manual is a must), but once you sort it out, you have a full multi-track recorder with 12 full tracks (1-10 are your inputs, 11 and 12 are the output from your Main bus). Once you have a completed recording, switching the mixer to USB Storage mode lets you grab all 10 tracks separately and slurp them into a DAW or Audacity or whatever for further tweaking or mixing-down to one track.
When connected to my MPC over USB, this is really nice, because I can assign different MPC Tracks to different Mixer tracks and record everything. I can mix down to the Main bus and get a rough draft recorded to tracks 11 and 12, but have my raw audio captured on the other tracks for later tweaks in a DAW.

Overall​

I'm really happy with the Model 12, but the information for it online tends to only discuss the pre-1.4 firmware. That makes it a bit tricky to configure. Don't mind the random pet hair in the picture, cat was climbing over my desk while I was trying to take this picture. Oh and also, all the FX kinda suck

 

[StrangeWill]

Recording works great. The interface is a little confusing at first

It's been a long while since I've done Audio/Video/Lighting (used to be the go-to guy at my high school), and I swear it never easy -- though younger me would be mad jelly over something this fancy for our audio mixers -- our stuff was pretty basic.