For everyone, who needs a power switch: some cheap power banks have switches. Maybe it is already known. I discovered this today…
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Yeah…I never find manuals are written following the same learning process my brain likes so have to jump about a bit. I find that quite hard to track reading it on a pad or laptop so having a paper version that I can bookmark and scribble in works better for me. Also means I can escape the computer screen for a few minutes!
Now all I have to do is be disciplined enough to read it and start working through all the features!
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Have been considering buying one of these for some time, but not 100 % sure it fits my use case. Any thoughts gratefully received!
At the moment I have polyend tracker, mc 101, tr6s and spd30. I also loop some guitar via a rc-202. Trying to recalled specific songs via all these different boxes isn’t practical, so I’d like to record all the various loops of a song (bass, drums, guitar, synths) into audio.
Will the blackbox do this, and allow me to arrange the loops into a final song? Obviously I could do this via ableton, but it’s the usual story of not wanting to spend anymore time in front of a laptop!
Yes. Recording loops is what the BB is all about (IMO), though live looping is a bit cumbersome. When it comes to arranging a song, it depends. It does have a song mode, but it’s almost impossible to slowly fade in/out different tracks. If it’s just about track on/off, then definitely yes (the song mode really shines in this department).
Two things to keep in mind though … first, you have only one input (so you probably need a mixer in-between, unless you’re fine with switching cables). Second, you cannot send Midi CC.
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Thanks! I have a mixer so that’s straight forward enough. So presumably it would be easy to record a 4 bar drum pattern as one clip, and layer this with much longer guitar section as another clip, then add some percussion on top, etc? Is there a limit to how many audio clips which can play simultaneously?
Yes, you can absolutely do that. The limit is 16 pads/clips.
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Not true, with a time-synched LFO you can do fade in or outs. The only issue is that your can fade into a new song scene from a previous scene anymore.
Beyond the answer given, once you have a clip, you can slice it if you wish or when you put it into a sequence, you can non-destructively trim its playback length. Sequences allow for any kind of meter and can launch multiple clips at various time points as well. Anything can be resampled.
Depending on the pad type, polyphony can go up to a max of 24 AFAIR. You won’t be able to use 16 granular pads at the same time though. The Blackbox manual contains a section on these limits.
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Theoretically speaking, that’s correct. But first, you give up on the one and only LFO you’re having. Second, the LFO is not slow by any means. And finally, it’s practically impossible (at least from my experience) to fade-in to an exact volume … mapping the LFO percentages to a specific level is impossible IMO (please correct me if I’m mistaken, but I even discussed this with 1010).
On the song mode theme, both the attack and release on the samples cover most cases. They can be as long or short as is appropriate. With a sample looping in Toggle mode and polyphony set to at least 2, you can even have loops transition into each other, like a cross fade.
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Thanks for your responses. Sounds like it does what I want it to do. I had been looking at the sp404 mk2, but I think the blackbox is more suited to my needs.
I want to record linear tracks what is better the black or blue box?
Bluebox, in particular if you need punch-in when recording.
Depends.
What’re you gonna do with them when recorded?
A recorded sample into the blackbox can be stem, if you launch it from the sequencer. It comes with pros and cons, but can be considered like a super powered sixteen track recorder, depending on your lens.
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Yes that is exactly what I am wrangling with loop or linear based methods.
I think I am leaning towards linear that would be the heart over head choice.
It depends on whether your linear method is supposed to lead to a linear outcome or a circular one. If you only need to add or remove parts little by little, Blackbox will do this too, within its 16 pads limit and thanks to its sequencer and/or song mode. Using song mode, slicer or a sequence, there are even a couple of workarounds to punch in, alas not as convenient as on the Bluebox. I use Blackbox for everything because I don’t have space for the Bluebox.
You can also instead of using the Blackbox song mode use the sequencer as an arrangement timeline. It’s a bit fiddly but doable if you like to see an arrangement visually.
Recently received a Tangerine and my main problem is I may want a Blackbox now !
Blackbox can do everything Tangerine do, right ?
The most appealing for me is probably midi sequencing, and
I am really interested in USB Host ability. Does it goes both way ? Possible to sequence an USB device ? Also Nanoboxes ? I was also thinking about AKAI Mini Play…
Does USB Host provide USB power ?
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I think MIDI out is mini jack only, not over USB.
But yes to power.
As of the current beta firmware I think it does pretty much what Tangerine does, but there’s something on the forum about Tangerine having a “special launch mode” for multisamples.
No stable version with the higher mutlisample limit - current I think it’s 80 something samples per preset. The beta firmware makes it 500 and something.
Obviously that will probably become a release firmware soon though!
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(Sorry, I’ve been offline recently due to the horrendous weather where I live.)
On the blackbox, you can set MIDI out for either the TRS, USB, or both on the blackbox, and use it to thru from one port to the other. However, when thru-ing, it does not send MIDI from the sequencer to the ports its thru-ing to.
Here’s the page from the manual on MIDI options:
So essentially you can THRU or sequence, but not both.
On the tangerine, it’s MIDI in only; there’s no thru-ing out output of MIDI.
Both products support multisampling, and the code is essentially the same. Maybe that’s what you mean by “launch mode”? That doesn’t ring a bell, but I haven’t checked our forums in the last couple of days, so I’m not sure what thread that’s from.
You’re right, @the_duckchild about the sample counts.
It’s worth noting that we’re watching bug reports and feedback on the blackbox beta carefully, and hope to promote it to a stable build sooner rather than later. So far, there’s been little indication that we’ve had regressions. We’ve (fairly, IMHO) gotten some feedback over the years about putting out betas we never promote to stable releases, and have processes in place to do a better job at that. So stay tuned if you’re waiting for a stable release.
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