Wednesday 29 July 2020

TASCAM FireOne on MacOS High Sierra: finally dead

I suppose it had to happen, but today, my TASCAM FireOne Firewire audio interface just ceased to work properly - namely, the audio input has a constant clicking sound making it unusable.

I suppose I should feel fortunate that it has lasted this long; I mean, look at the MacOS compatibility chart:

- yep 10.4 and 10.5 only, yet here I am on High Sierra (10.13) and it's only just turned up its toes.

It's even less whelming on the Windows side:

... XP only (!)

So now I'm on the hunt for a good interface that will last as long as this one did. Firewire seems to have been effectively killed by Apple, and Thunderbolt interfaces are incredibly expensive, so it'll be back to good ol' USB I guess. I'm thinking that with the rise of podcasts etc, Apple will be obligated to ensure USB audio interfaces that use no additional drivers (aka "Class-Compliant devices") work really well for the foreseeable future...