That’s really the sort of thing I was looking for. Just the usual sample work, with a bit of cutting, mangling, odd looping, short-cycle stuff. Kind of broken-80s computer type stuff on occasion. 
I think I’m sold on one of these now, not to mention its sketch-pad properties.
So I pulled the trigger and sold my Octatrack. It’s out, and the Blackbox is permanently in.
They don’t compare, of course, which in the end was what made the decision easy.
!!! I for one support this decision.
Thanks man 
I knew it!
I’ve had quite the opposite experience. Had an Octatrack for about 5 years and boy did I love it. It’s equally quirky, frustrating, fluid and inspiring. But, it was slowly falling out of favor. In fact it was packed away as I moved back to a DAW environment.
We parted ways. Forgotten each other.
Then the Blackbox came along and it did many of the things I wished the OT did; proper sample slicing with midi access, polyphony, fast interface, multiple outs and well priced.
The first few weeks were great, I’ve never sampled so much stuff, it is effortless. Also sampling and looping playback is fast and seamless. I love all these aspects to the Blackbox.
But, pulling those sample bits and pieces together into tracks feels really limited and frustrating. The note editor and sequencer UI is difficult to use; it’s quite the opposite of the sampling experience. And there’s not a lot that can be done beyond basic sound design and sequencing. I really hope 1010 add the ability to control parameters. I also find it a little buggy which leaves me with a feeling of it not being finished.
I pulled the OT out of storage and plugged it in. I wanted to give it another try. It was a revelation. I didn’t see it for all it’s quirks and limitations. Instead I just made crazy music and had fun.
I’ve thought about using the two together, maybe that’s the trick?
I’ll report back on my findings.
THXOX
I can totally see that. I’ve had that experience with the OT a few times, where I’ve learned more about it by spending some time with other samplers, putting the OT on hold. It’s always ended in favour of the OT.
This time, it went the other way. In the end, I stopped analysing it and just went with it. If I’d spent a minute thinking about what my gut told me, I guess it’s the fact that I’m a traditionalist. Just building something that’s fairly straight forward, is so much easier with the Blackbox and gets me there so fast. With the OT, I learned what it was and how to use it, but never quite what to use it for.
But the OT did help me realise that trad as I am, I do enjoy the dirt and filth that a modern sampler can easily provide. The Blackbox has a few tricks up its sleeve to pour grain into it, and it has just enough of it for me to not miss the out there-parts of the OT.
Well I just ordered one (Blackbox, that is). I will keep my Digitakt but some times I just want a sample to be in stereo, dammit!
The OT always looked like it would be perfect for me on paper, but realistically, I come back time and again to this one thing when it comes to harware: immediacy. If it isn’t immediate, I might as well use software, for all its flexibility and endless options. And again, for me, complexity just doesn’t work in a live situation.
Don’t get me wrong, I love to explore modular environments (in software, mind you - hardware modulars are too limited for me) and explore endless possibilities, but not when I’m improvising. I do miss my MPC of old, which I hardly ever used more than 16 tracks on, so I think the BB will be perfect for me. I’ll report back when I’ve used it for a session or two.
Here’s a little something, only about a minute or long, which uses the granular features of the Blackbox for texture around a pretty simple song:
If you’re interested, @J3RK
@circuitghost Any chance you could just do a quick solo track with say a chime sound and mess with the settings going from minimal to extreme granular stuff? Hasn’t got to be music, just something to be able to hear what it’s doing.
Thinking of picking one of these up tomorrow to pair with the digitakt.
Finally be able to use stereo samples with the DT.
Was thinking top 8 pads triggered from DT Midi tracks, bottom 8 can be clip loops sampled from my hardware synths and iPad, triggered from the touchscreen.
Resampling is a cool thing too, with the multi out and can have a different guitar pedal connected to each of the three outputs and just resample as needed.
Can you connect an iPad to this via its USB input for midi sequencing and sample transfers ?
Won’t be near the thing for a few days now, but once I get back, I can make this happen👍
3 stereo outs so you can also use as 6 outs… 
Nice! That’s precisely the sort of thing I was thinking. I’m a fan of pitched digital noise, linear feedback shift registers, etc. so this should do the job outside of the modular. I don’t always feel like patching.
I made a demo of the granular feature - it’s just a banjo/steel guitar sample (who knows), which I’m then tweaking. First the sample runs through a couple of times, and then I switch over to granular mode. After that it’s just tweaking the values, and at some point introducing the internal BlackBox reverb and delay, messing with their settings, too. Eventually I stop the sequence to stop the sample from retriggering, so that you can hear the cloud moving through the entire sample. Hope this gives you an idea of the sounds:
Another one – maybe a bit more forgiving sample for granular purposes. Here I also mess with the pitch of the sample.
thanks, the piano one is much better,
can you alter the shape of the grains, get them to be either sharp of smeared?
no, it’s just grain size, number of grains (2-8), spread and speed.
nice demonstrations of how this tiny box is also tinkerer’s tool.
Blackbox + Big Sky, Blackbox + OT/DT, Blackbox + eurorack, Blackbox + TE. … and it is very productive all by itself.
Sure it is a complex argument vs a Roland MC101 … but it’s a totally different paradigm.