AudioMedia - March 2009 - (Page 64) 03|09 AM STRESS FREE LIVE CAPTURE JoeCo & The BlackBox Recorder ince his time as Managing Director of Studio Audio (SADiE) Joe Bull has been busy hatching a new product that has already attracted much interest and praise from the market. Indeed, a surprise appearance at this year’s Winter NAMM show in January proved the concept in an outpouring of approval from all who visited the booth. Not far from shipping, this U, -track recorder, which boasts simplicity of operation, low cost media, no moving parts (bar the drive), and the ‘virtual sound check’ amongst its greatest features, looks set to find plenty of rack space in the live performance, broadcast, and multi-track recording markets. Audio Media spoke with Joe about the BlackBox, and hassle-free recording… AM: Please could you tell us a bit about the BlackBox Recorder? JB: When I started JoeCo, I wanted to develop a product that would simplify the acquisition process, particularly for bands. Rather than having to lug a laptop or a complete workstation to a gig, you’d be able to have a device that would plug directly into the mic insert points, or a suitable part of your mixing console, and effectively record everything down onto an easily transportable medium. The easiest transportable medium at the moment is a standard USB hard drive that you can buy from somewhere like Amazon at around £50. Recording on FAT32 in Broadcast WAV format means that both Macs and PCs, and virtually every other bespoke workstation that’s around, can read it and work with the recorded material without having any transfer, or any file conversion. AM: You’ve tried to make this product as simple as possible. Can you describe the basic operation? JB: You turn the power on, then normally within 5-10 seconds it’s gone through all of its boot-up routines – it’s logged the drive, and it’s ready to record. Then you press the ‘Record’ button, and you’ve started to record 24 channels of 24-bit/96K audio, directly onto the USB drive. Obviously, there are more detailed set-up things if you want to go into the menu structure. S AM: Can you stack units for more tracks? JB: We’ve designed the system so it should be able to do up to 96 channels. We may find when we actually do the tests in due course that we can do more. AM: One particular aspect is the option to use console insert points as your record/ playback path. JB: This gives the ability to do virtual soundchecking. Having recorded a section, you can then listen back to that last take again and again while you perfect the monitor mix for the band, or perfect the front of house sound – without the band having to completely exhaust themselves. Typically, you’ll plug it directly into the insert points on the console and set your mic amps up on the console so that they don’t overload – as you normally would do in a live situation. That will give you a perfect record level directly into the box. We supply a loom that plugs directly into typical insert points on most analogue consoles, and into the BlackBox Recorder. The return signal is driven back into the insert returns on the console. Because we’ve stolen those insert points, we echo eight of them on the back of our box – if you still want to plug a compressor or an effects unit, or whatever, into the lead vocal, you’ve still got some of those insert points available. AM: And what about interfacing with digital consoles? JB: We’re in the process of developing digital interfaces, which initially will work with AES/EBU, and ADAT Lightpipe. You’ll be able to take those digital inserts directly from a digital console. AM: And remote locations, such as stage boxes? JB: You could just press ‘Record’ and leave it. A £50, 500GB drive would give you over 20 hours of 24-track, 24-bit, 96kHz recording. If you’re having to press ‘Record’ half an hour before the gig starts, and don’t press ‘Stop’ until half an hour after the gig ends, you’ve probably wasted about £3 worth of your disc space. It’s not really a killer problem. In terms of control protocols, we’ve got Sony 9-pin control, and MIDI Machine Control, so there’s no reason why you can’t control it remotely, if that’s what you want to do. AM: It’s an easy fit into the live sound market, and into the broadcast or archive environments. JB: We are also getting some enquiries for the straight 24-track playback market – people who want to just press ‘Play’ on the front of the box – for theatres, for example. We’re not pretending it’s a cart machine – it isn’t – but if that’s what people need, that’s fine. AM: Where do you draw the line on features and development? JB: I’m keen that it shouldn’t develop into a pseudo workstation. The whole point is that you want something that’s simple to operate, and does what it says on the tin well, rather than trying to grow into all things for all men. If you want a workstation, there are dozens on the market that do exactly what workstations do. Then you get into the bickering about how much spare processor power you’ve got, whether you can have this plug in or that plug in – I’ve been there, done that. I don’t want to muddy the water by trying to complicate this product. If you’re a live sound engineer, you’ve got more than enough on your plate, worrying about front of house sound. You want to be able to concentrate on that aspect of your job, because it’s the audience who are there on the night, who have paid their money, and you need to do a good job for them. There are an awful lot of big bands that end up having to take a separate Pro Tools operator on the road with them, with all the costs of extra hotel rooms, extra subsistence bills, and so on – purely because the systems are so big and so complicated that the live sound engineer doesn’t want to deal with it. If all he’s got to do is press ‘Record’, it’s a significant cost saving. AM: What kind of feedback have you had on it so far? JB: It’s been incredibly positive. We previewed the product at NAMM in January and we’ve had many more enquiries off the back of that than we’d expected. I’m really looking forward to Frankfur t MusikMesse. It’s looking ver y encouraging, partly because there isn’t anything else out there at the moment that does this particular job. It doesn’t try and emulate what other standalone recorders do – it’s designed specifically to capture the performance of a live event. ∫ I N F O R MAT I O N JoeCo Ltd. W www.joeco.co.uk E infoamart@joeco.co.uk T +44 (0)1223 911000 64 AUDIO MEDIA MARCH 2009 http://www.joeco.co.uk
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