M-Audio Black Box - Has Anyone Tried It?

[Anderton]

Has anyone here used this or tried it out, and if so, what do you think?

[Alndln2]

No,I didn't try it personally but my brother has a video CD that came with one of the Guitar Player mags with what I think was Roger Linn himself demoing the thing.The Marshall EMU was quite nice and very close and I'd say a cut above what's out there modeling-wise,but the clean and mid distortion stuff pretty much sounded like everything else out there.I didn't watch the entire presentation so I can't comment on effects or any other possibilities.As nice as it is,it suffers from the same thing they all suffer from which I can't quite put my finger on,the closest I can decribe it is they all sound like their playing through speakers with the polarity reversed,instead of pushing air out it sounds like they all suck it in.It could have something to do with actually not pushing any air from a magnetic source,but I really don't know,but I can hear the problem with all modeling.

[Phil O'Keefe]

Only briefly at the last NAMM show Craig... so take this for what it's worth (not much) - I thought some of the tones were cool, but IMO, many of them were just too "over the top" for my tastes. But that's not uncommon for me with stock presets... a little editing to get rid of the "gee whiz" over the top tones (designed to impress people on a guitar store showroom floor) goes a long way towards making things more to my liking, so making a final judgement about it would have to wait until I was able to spend considerably more time auditioning one. And with speakers instead of headphones.

 

Like I said, my opinion on this isn't worth much at the moment, because it's based off of that one short audition... so it's just a "first impression" - nothing more.

[felix]

I saw it demoed by an M-Audio guy at NAMM, and I've seen it demoed by Roger Linn. The two demos were like night and day. When Roger does the demo, the coolness of the synced effects really comes through. That is by far the coolest and most unique feature of Black Box IMO.

[Gus Lozada]

... well... I have one at home!

 

Just the manufacturer's facts:

 

- it's an USB 2 x 4 Audio interface, 24/44.14

- Amp modeling

- Beat synced FX

- Drum machine with preset only patterns

- Includes free recording software and a CD of loops

 

I have demoed the unit in several countries and people normally have a good opinion of it. One of the best ones came from the Guitar Player for Miguel Bos

[gtrwiz]

Can it be used with amps, or just going direct into a computer? Also, it doesn't seem like it would be usefull live, since there aren't any footswitches, unless you had all the program changes running from a computer...

 

Edit:

 

Can it even be used as a stand alone unit or only hooked up to a computer?

[Gus Lozada]

 

Originally posted by gtrwiz Can it be used with amps, or just going direct into a computer? Also, it doesn't seem like it would be usefull live, since there aren't any footswitches, unless you had all the program changes running from a computer... Edit: Can it even be used as a stand alone unit or only hooked up to a computer?

 

 

Without a computer, it is a "normal" FX processor for guitars. Completely stand-alone.

 

The USB connections makes it an Audio interface for your computer so you can record the processed audio -or dry- straight to the computer with no processing latency and run audio from your computer through its outputs -just like a normal audio interface-.

 

You can connect its audio outputs to whatever amp or mixer you want it, just like a normal FX processor.

 

It has three pedal inputs: 2 on/off switches for program changes, turn FX on/off, etc and 1 continuous, for volume, wha, etc.

[felix]

So how come the Line 6 banner at the top of the page claims that TonePort are "The Worlds First Recording & Modeling Interfaces" - seems incorrect.