Introducing: Bluebox Compact Digital Mixer/Recorder

[jayneural]

Receiving mine on Monday.

I would say if I take the track record from what happened with the Blackbox, there should be quite some features and improvements added to the product via firmware.

The CPU is supposed to be a newer generation and hence more powerful than the one in the Blackbox so I suppose there is headroom for some interesting things.

Of course if I decided to buy it it’s because I already find good use of the current feature set.

But what I’m thinking personally for the improvements are :

- ability to have 16 tracks in the project (even if we can only record 12 at the same time)

- a bit of editing abilities for the recorded arrangement

- compressor/limiter per channel would have been good for some sidechaining effect

- more mixer type fx would help too : denoiser, deesser, widener, distortion, cabinet, exciter...

- some mastering tools in addition to the existing master compression.

All that would make this the box that finishes and polishes your track without even going on the DAW.

I already have these in mind before even receiving it, imagine what it will be when I get it ! get ready 1010music

[Solipsvs]

what a charming piece of gear! nice color, nice layout, awesome size! this is perfect for what i need in a small space.

is the idea to grow capability from here? will we see more dsp processes? would the cpu support dynamics per channel? maybe class compliant audio?

man i look at this thing and i feel like im in the future.

[Steve]

Thanks. These are good feature requests. I want to be sure we can find them when we are looking.

[idylmind]

Done and done. CHEERS

[Steve]

please report bugs to the support thread - feature requests to the wish list thread.

[idylmind]

Great! As a temp fix, I've edited each .xml project file, setting every globcomp="0"

[idylmind]

Having spent over 20 hours on my Blue Box setting up a Stem playback/live mix show, I've found a couple bugs and have a few feature requests.

Blue Box Bugs

Tracks sometimes remember audio file even after being removed (temp fix for this is creating a short blank audio full to ensure it replaces the previous file and then removing the "null" file)

Extreme EQ LPF default state 80Hz (see below)...maybe not a bug per se

Feature Requests / Changes

Delay and Reverb FX returns send to CUE (aka send FX to custom mix) / Delay and Reverb don't show up in CUE mix

EQ start in bypass / ability to bypass (perhaps button B) would allow for performance type moves, like a preset LPF you can engage with the push of a button.
Selecting eq band type shouldn’t be active, as you scroll through eq band types, it's active causing filtering to happen, making "live eq" a problem.
An easy fix might be to tweak the default LPF and HPF frequencies. Right now "H Cut" starts at 80Hz, which is pretty extreme when you're cycling through to select your preferred band type.
Perhaps change the default state of the LPF to 10K and HPF could maybe start at 20Hz?

Add playback jog position, maybe using a knob to increase or decrease playback position on the quarter note. Or one knob for quarter and the other for one bar.

Dual mono sends on output 2. Right now I have a ZOIA in an FX loop but I only need a mono send into it. I would like to use Left to send to ZOIA and Right to send to an OP-1 input. If output 2 could be split into mono with 2 different send levels, it would allow for 2 FX loops without having to lose your CUE output.

Add ability to copy / delete projects

Add ability to copy and paste track level/sends settings

[Steve]

I sent you an email....this will be fixed in the upcoming update. thanks!

[idylmind]

Found a bug that has not yet been addressed in firmware updates.

I was having an issue with the compressor on firmware 1.0.2, so I just dropped 1.0.6 and am still seeing a bug with the compressor. For my purposes I have the Compressor set to off, yet it loads in an on state, even though the display still says "off". I’ve currently got numerous projects with the wet/dry mix set to 0% and compressor off but when I load a project, the gain-staging sounds wrong compared to where I left it. If I head down to the dry/wet knob and turn it up a little and then go back to 0% it resets to no compression. But this is with the Compressor in off mode, so the wet/dry shouldn’t matter regardless but it seems to be active no matter what.

[Steve]

This exists in 1.0

[jayneural]

Would definitely make sense indeed and would avoid recabling in some workflows / setups.

[lowspotsound]

Yes, exactly!

[jayneural]

lowspotsound If I reformulate, you mean you'd like to assign a physical input routing virtually in the settings rather than physically on the cabling ?

[JohnPark]

destroy-with-science I just tested it and, yes, the multitrack recordings include the volume changes and pretty much anything else you do (EQ filter sweeps for example). You need to arm each track you want to record and then hit play + record. After that, everything in your jam is captured, which is great.

[lowspotsound]

Hi all, I've had my eye on the bluebox since it came on my radar, but there's one bit of info that I'd like to confirm. I know it's a 6 stereo/12 mono mixer, but given that it's a digital system, once recordings are made, are the tracks locked to the input? Basically I'm thinking of recording gear that has multiple parts e.g. the Digitone, if I have a bass and chords programmed on the digitone, could I record the bass by itself and the chords as separate takes, in a separate track, without having to change the input the Digitone is going into?