I hear you – I treat Blackbox as a sample player/quantized sampler, but not a sequencer. It’s not there yet.
Heading off topic but I once bagged one for £800. Didn’t take the time to learn it so parted with it quickly. Was at the tail end of my “buying everything/anything then realising I couldn’t handle it all so sold it all” phase.
Easily got my money back but on the odd occasion I’ve thought “damn, I should’ve stuck with that one a little longer” I can’t find one at a decent price!
It had its quirks but made a lovely 6 voice poly.
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I saw one listed few years ago, pre Brexit price hikes. Few months later all music technology seemed to shoot up by at least 20%.
The days of getting a bargain had gone 
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Yeah, it’s gonna hurt. But I don’t have funds or headspace for much gear. And try as I might, I know the Digitakt will most likely get me further. I’m gonna try it with the RK-002 cable and if that flies, I fear the Tempest must go.
It’s been with me almost as long as the Octatrack (slightly longer), but like with the OT, if I look at the net worth I got out of it in the shape of finished tracks or even loops or clips I’ve actually used, there’s not much action there.
The action that was, though, was quite lovely. So there’s those gems which I doubt I’d be able to recreate on any other instrument.
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Blackbox max no of grains = 8, GR-1 max no of grains = 128. That will make a huge difference.
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A question for those using the blackbox, and have used an Octatrack. Does the blackbox allow you to sync a loop by auto-timstretching it once you tell it how many beats/bars the sample is?
This is a feature of the OT that is so much easier to use than on an MPC, where if it can’t detect your bpm, you can’t auto-sync easily, but have to manually scroll through bpm’s until you get your loop sounding good.
You can take any material and tell the OT “this is 8 beats, two bars” and it will adjust it to fit the tempo bang on. How about the blackbox?
It’s an either or thing, as it seems.
If you run a sample in Sample mode, it plays without any time stretching. Pitching it up and down creates interesting results, but it’s not a good way to beat match the loop to your desired BPM.
However, provided that the loop is timed well, you can play it in Clip mode. If you do, the Blackbox time stretches it to match the current BPM within the box, and it aligns perfectly with start and stop points. So you don’t have to tell it beats and bars, it figures it out on its own depending on the length of the sample and the bpm of the box.
I’m thinking the micro freak might be great to pair with the Blackbox. It’s a great midi controller but also has some wild sounds that could be cool to sample into the box. Any thoughts?
Thanks, josker. This is really helpful.
Is the granular engine polyphonic?
So I received mine yesterday and I’ve had some time to mess around with it. Initial thoughts - it reminds me of my Akai S20 back in the day, because it’s as quick and immediate in usage. I love that you don’t have to save samples - they’re just on disk, ready for use. Saving presets (which contains up to 16 assigned samples and their settings, and sequences + songs) is super quick too. There’s not much to play with, but what’s there is enough for me.
Okay, I’d love an LFO or two, maybe that’ll appear in the future, but otherwise I’m happy with it. It looks nice too, and feels heavier than it looks. Solid build all over. Very happy.
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So I got one too.
Playing along nicely with OT and AR so far.
Streaming became much more stable when I replaced the included micro sd with a really fast one.
Using it feels like the Rytm‘s sample layer had a lovechild with some kind of nano-ableton. Reduced but powerful.
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Holy moly, we just got learnable midi CC control of 13 different parameters and multisampling in one update.
- MIDI CCs. Use the built in Learn Mode to connect your MIDI controller to these parameters:
- Level
- Pitch
- Filter Cutoff
- Start Position, Length, Loop Start, and Loop End
- Slice Selection (Slicer Mode)
- Playback Speed (Granular Mode)
- Delay Time and Feedback
- Reverb Decay and Damping
- Multisampling. Load multiple samples per pad. Navigate to a directory and choose File: Load All
- By default, the mapping is chromatic starting from C2
- When embedded smpl tags are present, blackbox will map the samples across the keyboard automatically. This tag is written by Sample Robot and blackbox when saving files in sample mode.
- We will supply 20 pre built sets shortly.
- Support for MIDI clock output to USB devices. Enables the arpeggiator on the Novation LaunchKey Mini MK3 to run in sync with the main sequencer
- New setting for the selection of MIDI clock source in TOOLS. The LaunchKey is always sending clock and you will generally want blackbox to ignore it.
- Improved knob value stability for some types including dB, percentage, and pitch
Trying this out ASAP!
Update: Can’t seem to get midi CC to work 
Update 2: It does work, and I just misunderstood it. Incoming CC changes won’t change the value set on the screen, only add or subtract to it. So if you wanted to control loop end marker, you’d have to either set the CC mapping to negative, or change the marker to an earlier position and then you can add to it with a positive CC value.
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Yes! Can’t wait to try this out! Especially because I bought a new launchkey mini mk3 and it wasn’t working straight plugged in.
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This is a great update. 64 samples per pad!
Yes finally ! Multisampling has been what I have been looking for in a companion to the OT MKII was hoping this would be done ordering one ASAP !
I’ve updated my manual to include all firmware updates up through today: If your PDF reader shows bookmarks, you’ll see the firmware updates at the end of the PDF:
1010Music-Blackbox.pdf (1.4 MB)
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How is the polyphony with multi sampling ?
4x poly according to a poster on 1010 forum
edit: testing…
I’d really like to use the BB as a drum and percussion sound module with my Zendrum controller. Currently, I use BFD, which is great at 128 layers, but that’s more sensitivity than I can reproduce, and BFD makes me depend on the laptop. I have a little module that’s custom designed for the Zendrum that’s super-convenient, but it’s only 16-layer multisampling, and I can feel the lack of resolution when I play. The BB, at 64 layers, might be the perfect solution because of its convenient size, but I need to be able to find a good variety of 64-layer drums and percussion. If the BB can give me the variety, then I can sell my Roland TD-50 drum brain, which sounds good, but is limited to 12 voices, is big and heavy, and also very expensive–and I don’t have an electronic kit to really use all its features.