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No. 127 Autumn 2010
JoCo BlackBox – A Users’ Report
Stewart Smith & Geoffrey Smallwood
Location recording engineers of a certain age long ago learned
from experience that, faced with the larger repertoire pieces
favoured by ambitious amateur choral societies, such as
Mendelssohn’s Elijah, a single stereo pair of microphones is
never really going to do the business.
The immediate, indeed only, solution was more microphones
mixed down live to stereo, just like the BBC Radio 3
transmissions from The Proms.
But if this solved one
problem, i.e. achieving a better balance between choir,
orchestra and soloists, it created another: the ever-present
risk of miscalculating the balance. But you were stuck with it
until ‘affordable’ digital multi-track recorders came on the
market. At first these were tape-based, such as the pioneering
Alesis ADAT, introduced in 1991. That their ‘affordability’ was
relative only to the price of the analogue multi-track machines
that preceded them meant ‘affordable’ was a relative term.
However, a few years into the new decade the relentless march
of computer-based recording brought in its train absolutely
affordable location multi-tracking in the shape of hard-disc
machines, such as those produced by Alesis themselves and
Fostex, amongst others.
These are easy to use, reliable and provide decent 24bit audio
quality (so useful with live recording of music with a wide
dynamic range) at sampling frequencies of up to (in some
cases) 96kHz on up to 24 tracks. And they enable the direct
transfer of files to a PC for re-mixing and editing. So why look
for an alternative? The main answer is that their weight and
bulk, when flight-cased, become with the engineer’s advancing
age increasingly difficult to handle. Another is that the file
transfer process via FTP over a network cable can seem
frustratingly slow compared with that available with ‘drag and
drop’ via USB within M/S Windows.
Thus the search for a lightweight recorder capable of recording
16 tracks at 24 bits/44.1 kHz, with the possibility of higher
sampling frequencies. The obvious solution was a laptop
based solution using an external sound card, such as those
made by RME and Focusrite.
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Recording News
However, though one of us (Geoffrey) initially went down that
route he came to regret it; and the other (Stewart) regarded
from the outset laptops and their software as insufficiently
reliable in a ‘live' situation and, anyway, incompatible with his
existing kit. The answer proved to be one man’s solution to a
problem that, on the face of it, is light years away from
location recording of live classical music. That is firstly,
performing sound checks at live popular music gigs (think
‘Procul Harum’ and the like) without keeping the band hanging
around and, secondly, how to record the direct outs from the
FoH mixer in a fool-proof fashion with a minimum of kit.
The man was Joe Bull and the answer was the ‘BlackBox’:
At its simplest the BlackBox (‘BB’) is a lightweight (but not
insubstantial) 1-U high box that plugs into the unbalanced
analogue send/return sockets of a mixer. The signals (up to
24) are converted to WAV files and recorded at up to 24/96
onto an ordinary external USB hardrive.
There are no
switches, knobs or sockets on the front. The unit is controlled
by stroking the data wheel in the centre and the set of touchsensitive panels to its right. These enable the user to make
selections from menus, such as which tracks to arm,
displayed on the screen at the right-hand end.
Once the unit has been plugged up and switched on recording
can be started in less than 30 seconds by brushing a finger
over the Record panel. The user is kept in touch with which
tracks are armed and their levels by the array of LEDs to the
left of the fascia. Recordings can either be played back via the
mixer, or the hardrive can be plugged into a USB port on a
computer and the files worked on in-situ, or copied to another
hardrive.
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No. 127 Autumn 2010
As this is a user report and not a technical review we won’t go
into more details as interested readers can find more
information on the BlackBox website at www.joeco.co.uk (for
contact details see page 27). But to satisfy the curious the
back looks like this:
Briefly, the signals to/from the mixer are handled by the 3
D-Sub 25 sockets; the 8 jack sockets are send/returns to
enable the user to plug in external processing units which
would otherwise occupy the sockets on the mixer taken up by
the BB. Also visible are the USB socket for the hardrive, a
headphone socket and a socket for a standard keyboard. We’ll
have more to say about the latter two features in the context of
the digital BB. The unit is powered by a ‘wall-wart’.
We said ‘at its simplest’ because the BB is now available in
various configurations, including one with an AES/EBU digital
interface, a report on which will appear in the next edition.
But we’ll begin with Geoffrey’s impressions.
Analogue
My BB is the basic analogue version and Joe Bull (who lives
just up the road) had made up for me two special multicore
cables terminated with D-sub connectors for tracks 1 - 8 and
9 - 16. (I do not expect to have to use more than 16 tracks.)
These cables connect two Focusrite Octopre Platinum
microphone/line interfaces to the Black Box. Each cable also
had an 8 channel feed taken from it to a separate Behringer
line mixer for on-site monitoring and mixdown for a second
safety copy. The BB headphone output is reasonably strong
using Sennheiser HD25 phones. In addition, I set the BB to
receive the signal from the Octopre's at +4, not –10 dB, to
avoid any risk of overload.
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Recording News
Geoffrey recording ‘Elijah’ at Snape Maltings (photo : David Holland)
For recording a concert the BB is pretty straightforward to
use, even for me. This is helped by a well written and clear
manual, clearly aimed for use under pressure when you
cannot remember what you should be doing next!
I have not yet tried the BB in a controlled recording session
with lots of individual takes. It may not be quite as quick as
the Alesis HD24 for instant playback, but I think it could be
manageable, especially with practice.
My main concern is that of adequate metering. I am used to
bar graph type meters, as on the Alesis HD 24, and I would
definitely prefer to have the same on the BB, even if physically
smaller, so that the case remains at 1U high. However, the
LEDs vary in intensity as the music volume varies; they get
brighter as it becomes louder, so in effect you get a crude form
of bar graph. Also if recording at 24 bits and never (well,
hardly ever) allowing the red LEDs to come on, as for Elijah
(which I recorded in March with David Holland at Snape
Maltings), you can get away with it. For real confidence, it still
needs better metering, either built in, or available via a
separate 1U meter bridge. Sadly, I have yet to come across an
analogue one at an affordable price. Perhaps an idea for a BB
add-on?
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No. 127 Autumn 2010
The controls: BB at the top, Focusrite Preamplifiers below (photo DH).
Subsequently I copied the Elijah files and set up the 12 mono
tracks in WaveLab 5 to see what the results were like.
After some necessary panning and track level adjustments, I
listened to some short sections and was glad to find that all
seems to have worked OK. The overall combined volume for
two track is coming out at about -2 to -3 dB (for the Baal
section), after setting the original recording so that I never
caused a red track light level indicator to come on. This
approach ensures that this way there is sufficient headroom
not to be really concerned about overload.
In summary, I feel confident that when it comes to location
recording the BB will reliably deliver the goods. I like the low
weight, small size and the way in which it avoids superfluous
functions, such as editing, which make it easy to use. The
fact that it puts the recorded signal onto an external hard
drive makes it simple to connect the latter to my PC via drag
and drop transfers.
In the next edition we’ll look at the AES/EBU digital version.
Contact Details:
JoeCo Limited
135 Histon Road, Cottenham, Cambridge, CB24 8UQ
Email: [email protected]
Telephone: 01223 911 000
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