Hey, well, the problem was more USB-related than DIN-related, I learned later. And the clock worked fine on its own, it was as you say when you launched clips and loops externally, that it got real ugly, real fast.
If you sequence the Blackbox externally, triggering one shots and similar, it’ll work just fine. However, I wouldn’t say it’s a promised land, because the Blackbox sequencer is actually quite powerful, but very specific and slightly fiddly to use. But its architecture lends itself to some unusual and powerful ways to create complex sequences, so apart from the fact that I ran into technical issues, I also didn’t really find a sequencer that matched the Blackbox in features on what I wanted to do.
The Elektrons come close, but not close enough.