Headphone Output: Tascam

Tascam 16x08

Quite some time ago, I had the opportunity to grab one of these “studio” audio interfaces for a reasonable (used) price. It mostly brags with the low noise recording of course. Despite its relatively small size, it has a total of 16 input and 8 output channels, plus a dedicated headphone jack (which will be tested here).

Data

12 kHz:

Null test:

Comment

Now this is interesting. Clearly, the diagrams don’t look good. However, subjectively, music sounds quite decent. But with the test tone, the 12 kHz creates so much side tones that you can immediately hear them with headphones - it sounds more like a chord than a single beep. I would have expected better from such a well-known brand. It even brings its own power adapter, so there is no excuse for all that noise. Something smells weird here. I genuinely don’t know. Maybe it does not like being driven without a load?