Have no interest in it as I just purchased a MPC Live but I bet the DN would be a great sequencer for the BB. Does real well with a SP-404 so I could only imagine the capabilities with the BB.
Nice! Looks like youāre using a MIDI cable. Did you try direct USB by any chance? Curious to know if it causes any issues for you.
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I did. Works fine for input into the Box, but it doesnāt send any midi out through USB. So itās an extra Midi In, basically.
Soundcloud?
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Iām starting to feel the pressure now 
still really experimenting, all Iād share now would be loops and clips of ideas.
That would be worth it. Iād like to compare the Deluge with the Pyramid as a BB sequencer. Aside from greater portability, do you find the Pyramid much more capable than the Deluge? And the Deluge is pretty portable, with a built-in battery.
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For me, itās too early to say. I got the Pyramid on loan still, like I had with the Squid. But itās a pleasent early experience, at least.
As far as the Deluge goes, thereās a lot of great things to be said on both Synthstrom and the instrument itself. However, for me, one box to rule them all isnāt the promised land one might think. The Deluge, to me, suffered from wanting to be good at all things and as a consequence, failing in some critical areas. The once quite clever user interface eventually became burdened by just too many possibilities, and I found my muscle memory never quite learning the Deluge if Iād been away from it for awhile. Also, while one of its points originally was the lack of a proper screen - which I kind of like - this became clearly a problem when the Deluge added so many more features that just wouldāve done well with some good old fashioned visibility on what you were doing.
Iāve realised that I prefer instruments that do one thing really well. The Pyramid appeals to me in that respect. So does the Black Box. The Deluge is a synth - subtractive, FM and ring modulator - a drum machine, a sampler, a potential stems player, a midi and cv sequencer, and also quite unique in its grid-like interface combined with these abilities. Sounds great, right? But I donāt know. These super feature groove boxes from the late 90ās and early 20ās went away and Iām starting to remember why.
But youāll find plenty of people who swear by the Deluge and probably already try to track me down to deliver the appropriate sentence for my blasphemy 
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I mean just the sequencer part of the Deluge. With that big, physical piano roll, I find it quite immediate. I havenāt tried the Pyramid, but I see from its screen that itās more than just a 16-padder. Then again, the basic upgrades to the BBās piano roll discussed above might end up being enough for me. The other issue in my case is that everything I have thatās not modular already has its own sequencer built in, some with CV outs, and I have a few nice sequencing modules for the modular in any case. Iām trying to get a better sense of the Pyramid. I guess Iāll go through loopopās 1-hour tutorial.
Man you nailed my exact problem with the deluge. I was over the moon when I first got mine and played with it. But there were just too many things you could do and even with the overlay with directions, I couldnāt remember half of them, even basic ones. It stopped being fun to play after the honeymoon period wore off.
Iām definitely starting to appreciate and only want machines that can do one thing really well. But oddly enough thereās a used mc-909 near me that I want to pick up 
Iāve always been curious to try that machine. It definitely seems like it has WAY too much going on, but still, curiousity has the best of me!
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Curiosity fuels the gas and sometimes, it actually takes us to places and stuff that remain relevant for years or lifetimes.
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A day or so with heavy use of the Pyramid, itās clear it seems to think about tracks and sections the same way as Black Box. So while the interfaces are worlds apart, theyāre very similar in their setup of how they divide tracks into sections. The main basic difference is of course that the Pyramidās each track can have its own time division within a section, allowing for very detailed and complex mayhem.
However, it occurs to me as Iām moving back and forth between the Black Box and the Pyramid that even though the Black Box sequencer is what it is, itās quite possible to create very interesting tracks as far as polyrytms go, split divisions and stuff, without much effort. Youāll quickly run out of sections if you push it, but then again, Iāve yet to complete an entire song on this thing due to all experimentation, so until Iāve actually filled up all sections with a complete set of sample tracks, this limit is theoretical (although clearly visible before me).
Iām wondering if the Black Box isnāt capable enough on its own after all, to create complete foundations of interesting songs, and itās better served to bring them into another environment once you got something as finished as it can be within the box, instead of looking for ways to push it beyond its sequencing capabilities.
I donāt much like hip hop, but I really like that approach that a song, a track or part of something larger, isnāt all that long in itself. Many of Dillaās best tracks are like two minutes long, and then you move on, but thereās a lot going on within those two minutes.
If you look at the Black Box that way - take one idea to the max, consider the space of the Box designed for one really cool song, and then move that song somewhere else (into say, the Octatrack, as part of a larger set), and the need for an external sequencer becomes less relevant.
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Thatās exactly how I going to use Black Box, as sketch tool, sampling all kinds of stuff. Drums and Percussion (Sources; Rytm, 0-Coast, Norddrum,) for the Digitakt then the following sources will be used for feeding the OT ; NordleadA1, Digitone, 0-Coast, Norddrum, TT303, iphone, etc)
The big advantage for is, that it will not distract me to immediately use a recorded sample, which I find difficult while sampling directly into the DT/OT. Now I can record a bunch of stuff and then later rework it.
Itās this workflow which suits me better.
Also because it is so portable, I really can take it everywhere and sample whatever I want.
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I have ordered a Blackbox, hope to receive it next week. At this moment I own a OP-Z, a Octratrack MK2 and a iPad Pro. What lāve read so far in this topic, is that the BB should be a good companion especially for the longer tracks. Still thinking about how the routing between the four will be done.
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Hi circuitghost,
I was reading your back and forth with Blipson. Iām glad you got it and seem happy with it. It is not a perfect product and Iāve run into a bug several times that I hope will get resolved. But it does certain jobs really well and the size, usb power, usb host, and sd-card made it worth the purchase for me. I found the workflow with sampling with it to be excellent. It also functions well as a looper to my surprise. I just got a Nord Drum 3p recently and sampled kits very, very quickly and the samples sounded great! Then Iād either rename them on the Blackbox, or take the sd-card out and put in the PC for faster renaming and organizing. My friends who I jam with initially said āno wayā with the thing, but now see itās benefits of being rediculously convenient.
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Yeah, itās a surprisingly deep box. Iām using the Sections more now, but since the Black Box can also launch loops in sync and timed to start on the beat from the sample view as well, I mix and match single loops with more complex ones from both the sample and the structure views. Structure mainly for groups of one shots doing something together, and one take loops from the sample view itself.
Iām building my first song now with this approach and got something going that Iām starting to like.
The only thing I really miss, one thing that would open up this box more, is just more slots for sections and samples. Doesnāt have to expand on polyphone or anything, just give me more slots. Iām guessing itās streaming everything from the SD card in real time, so Iām curious as to why the limit is set so comparatively low for sections and sample slots.
On the other hand, it does forces you to focus. So thereās that. Clearly an underappreciated part of many modern gear today.
So, I ordered the Blackbox. After twisting my head around it and reading all the posts here I guess it will work pretty well with what I have in mind. I will keep you updatedā¦
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Looking forward to it.
I found a pretty cool way to sequence it from the Digitone - using the Digitoneās four midi tracks, I can run them all from the same channel and use the note trigger to launch one shots and loops directly from the Black Box. It all runs perfectly in sync, from single kicks drums to 32 bar loops, IF you -
Let the Black Box sync the Digitone AND launch the Toneās sequencer from the Black Box.
Use chords to trigger multiple trigs on one step - and if you want to tweak individual values on a step, such as velocity for example but still keep both on the same step, you can use microtiming to separate them as two on the Digitoneās grid, for editing. I couldnāt find a way to edit individual note values in a chord, so thatās a work-around. But it works.
With the Digitone update using individual time signatures, the basic structure is now the same as in the Black Box. So I can use the Digitoneās midi sequencer to trigger anything from the box and run the Digitoneās synth at the same time, all in perfect sync.
It sounds messy, but it really isnāt.
EDIT - to elaborate on why Iām even bothering to try this, is that I really like the idea behind the Black Box section view. But itās just too messy to edit, even if youāre just recording stuff into it live. There are many ways to use it, you can view them as complete and separate parts of a song, or pieces of a puzzle that make up the entire song itself which you turn on and off. Both are fully appropriate methods as far as the interface goes, but using an external sequencer that has the same basic structure but is a lot easier to work with, and allows for more than sixteen sections, and a way to structure these sections as the song grows, is just too appealing.
I realised that if I pushed the Digitone sequencer and found a few simple workarounds to get this to work, Iād essentially have a pretty damn complete environment right there. Digitoneās great for everything - drums, synths, bass, lead, whatnot. The Black Box is a great sampler and recorder. Source it into the box, sequence from the Digitone and build the song while youāre also recording loops and ideas right into the box.
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I fully agree!
Also - clever workaround. I think I get what youāre describing (not having used a black box). It sure seems like an amazing unit for how small it is.
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have you had sync issues with the Blackbox? How did they manifest?