1010music Bluebox

New multitrack recorder / mixer.

Thoughts from Blackbox owners?

Looks like a great portable / jam recording option

15 Likes

Really cool. I have a Blackbox and itā€™s great. This could be a great mobile performance mixer. And Iā€™m in need of a submixer right now and this might be it.

2 Likes

Wow. I have the BB and this looks wicked cool. Interested in hearing more :upside_down_face:

1 Like

Not something I need but a very interesting development from 1010. If it was a full multi-track USB interface as well, itā€™d really shake up the affordable digital mixers market, but alas. This definitely fills a niche for compact 12 track recorders, since every other 12 track device out there is nowhere near as small. Nice that they included the USB host port so you can (presumably) hook up a mixing surface.

Definitely going to be watching the firmware updates on this thing :eyes:

5 Likes

Competes with something like the MixPre series for me, with far more flexible routing and usable UI. Obviously more ins here than the BB. Looks like theyā€™d make a great pair. Brilliant option for capturing a live set

1 Like

Actuallyā€¦Iā€™m all in. This is friggin rad as hell.

4 Likes

Looks cool but I wish they had 1/4 inches jacks instead of 3.5.

9 Likes

If I didnā€™t have a model 16 Iā€™d be really into this. I just upgraded my blackbox to an octatrack but ima big fan of the 1010 stuff had the bitbox and blackbox.

Touch interfaces do kinda suck but they worked well with midi :slight_smile:

I like using my Novation lcxl with my BB, but only has the sweeping lp/hp EQ. Would be great with 3 bands.

Actually, the sound quality the BB get over rides the need for 1/4, given the size and that you can use a controller. No real need for using the touch screen once you set everything up.

I was just about to buy a small mixer with SD recording.
So glad this dropped today and I saw it as I nearly bought a mixer last nightā€¦ had one in cart and all.
This ticks all the boxes for me, and I love the build quality on my BB.
Really like the 4band parametric EQ.
Only one question is can it record tracks to SD post fader and FX? I hope so. None of the others I have been looking at can do thatā€¦

5 Likes

Regardless even if it doesnā€™t Iā€™m still getting one. None of the others on the market do that either

1 Like

Price point is spot on as well. I mean, if Elektron did something like this, Iā€™m sure it would be in the Digi price rangeā€¦or a lot more. What a great idea. No more fiddling with DAWā€™s until you load the SD card into your puter and load the tracks in to put the final touches on. Exciting times for sure.

4 Likes

Blackbox is the all-in-one machine Iā€™ve ever wanted. The audio is way better than I expected, can hardly tell difference between the OB~6 and the samples. If the BLUEbox matches the Blackbox spec, then itā€™ll get a big thumbs up. Alas, happy with my SSLsix.

Itā€™s an arse having to buy a few dual mono 1/4 to 3.5 stereo cables, but itā€™d be a bit silly if the box was twice the size just to accommodate larger jacks. And being TRS stereo, youā€™d have large adapters plugged into it for all your mono 1/4" cables; again making it occupying more space. 3.5 also being less cumbersome than 1/4" cables on the go. Iā€™m actually very happy the Blackbox has 3.5 jacks for all these reasons.

And their main target usually being modular users

2 Likes

Mmm itā€™s a great idea but Iā€™m in the ā€˜3.5 suxā€™ camp. So flimsy. They break at the slightest jiggle.
Edited to add: Looking again, I see it is tiny.
I guess if thatā€™s important to you the small jacks make sense.
Making each track 1 stereo/2 mono is cool.

1 Like

Yeah the small footprint definitely a big allure for me. I was looking at the tascam 12 or 16. Most of my gear has 3.5 jacks anyway so works for me.
Iā€™ll be using it for:
Digitakt
Polyend Tracker
Blackbox
0coast
M8 trackerā€¦

The submix for the outputs is great too for adding in my guitar pedals.

2 Likes

Personally I like a mixer to have physical volume controls, faders for each channel preferably or it feels a bit like an ipad and aum is already great for that.

Still though cool bit of kit and there should definitely be more portable mixers and performance mixers.

1 Like

Actually looking further at their setup images this is a great option for many setups

2 Likes

Do we think that the usb device port is just for midi controllers?
If it could take class compliant audio in, then I would be very interested.

Oh, myā€¦At closer inspection I realized they omitted one the most important things a performance mixer has- a ā€œcueā€. TF?
Edit: Oops, jumped the gun on that one

2 Likes

It has a headphone out in addition to the main out. Presumably the routing is flexible?