I know, right?
And I agree, I generally donāt time stretch at all. I commit to a BPM and then take (suffer) the consequences.
I know, right?
And I agree, I generally donāt time stretch at all. I commit to a BPM and then take (suffer) the consequences.
Oh, actually @AdamJay one thing that really might matter to you - the Blackbox is quite fiddly as a live act instrument. You can play it on its own on stage, but you donāt wanna. It responds well to external midi control, but you canāt map everything. This is not an Elektron when it comes to jamming it out on stage.
Perhaps I get a little compulsive when thereās a question I think I should be able to answer, but canāt. This is what happens.
verdict is that the blackbox holds its own with the 'takt when it comes to looped sample playback.
Good to know. Iād mostly be inclined to assign the filters, levels, and fx sends to my MF Twister. Thatās basically how I have it set up to control the OT.
Itās so small that sometimes I canāt find it! Ha take that Blackbox, you little stinker!
Actually, my screen arrived not quite straight too! Double whammy!
Okay I think weāre even now Blackbox.
Yes, Iām talking to my Blackbox. Time for bed, gnight nauts.
Oh oh and one more thing, itās power hungry - portable power sources arenāt always reliable. BBox can shut down when shit gets intense.
Hah. Got one.
Now Iām out of steam, tho.
Something I donāt see the fellas mentioning here re: timestretch is the ability to adjust sample speed in granular mode.
This is different than pitch adjust.
I typically use it as a tweak effect, while playing.
Iāve never tried to use it as a means to re-timing a loop.
but it might be possible, if you donāt mind a few grainsā¦
It lacks an assignable envelope and an assignable LFO. This is the reason why I also got a bitbox micro, so I can use the sampler with external modulations from my eurorack. Also entering notes in the sequencer grid can be difficult for big fingers. I use a stylus for this.
And thatās about it. Great piece of gear, really.
Oh, another one which should be easy to implement but for some reason has not been done: I would like the file preview to go through the headphones out, not the output configured for the current pad.
And now Iām out of steam too.
Wellā¦ I do entire sets with just the bboxā¦ but itās more like clips lauching. I usually have a drum machine besides it for some live TR-style action: TR-8S, Digitakt, Model:Cyclesā¦
I dislike:
But there are workarounds and most of us have OT or Ableton in case we get stuckā¦
The DT and M:S easily beat the BB in terms of modulation/automation, but they are stuck in the 90s, in terms of sampling time. The separate outs make the BB more flexible, also in live settings.
I found playing live with the BB very easy and more intuitive than with an OT, although Iād recommend a MIDI controller if itās a sweaty night.
whatās the slice looping bug?
I was hoping to use it as a nice poly-sampler partner to my Digitakt - but for me it was too much of a hassle.
Could you elaborate on that? Letās say I load in a 4 minute long wav that goes beyond the 128 bars. How is it going to be synced differently than a 2 minute long (64-ish bars) long wav?
Clips longer than 128 bars (512 beats) will be auto-synced, you canāt set a higher beat count.
The autosync works with 2^n bars.
So the samples should be 256 bars, 512 bars, 1024 bars, etc. to be synced āstraightā.
Values in between are hard to get in sync, leading to workarounds like adding silence or filler loops to get the clip to the right length.
If you grid-slice a sample and loop any slice (triple press KEYS to get to the slice matrix), this loop will drift out of sync.
This is a bit of a shame, as it would be a really nice application of the slice mode in jam/live situations.
The workaround is to use SEQS for slice triggering, so the restart of the loop is given by the sequencer, not by the loop length.
Did you report this at 1010music? I experimented to the best of my understanding of your description but I donāt think I can reproduce it. do you have a video?
Thatās not a bug, is it? Slices just arenāt time stretched. The effect is as you describe it but for better or worse, itās by design, I believe.
I actually used it to effect on my all Blackbox EP. Polyphonic, random slice triggering with long releases make for some interesting overlapping effects.
There already is a video in the thread linked below.
I can replicate this.
What firmware version are you on now?
If you slice manually or by threshold: not a bug.
If you slice by grid: unnecessary bug due to rounding errors.