BLACKBOX RECORDER BBR64MADI & BBR64Dante User Manual V 3.0 rev 1 Date: Nov 2013 Congratulations on your purchase of the JoeCo BlackBox Recorder. This document will lead you through the basics of how to set up and use the product. The BlackBox Recorder (BBR) has been designed to be as simple as possible to set up and operate. Consequently you will find that this user manual is not a long document and can be read from cover to cover in a short while.
Contents BLACKBOX RECORDER .................................................................................................. 1 BBR64MADI & BBR64Dante ......................................................................................... 1 Important Safety Information .................................................................................. 3 WARNING - Read the following before proceeding : ........................................... 3 Copyright Warning ..........................................
Important Safety Information WARNING - Read the following before proceeding : N: Read instructions: Retain these safety and operating instructions for future reference. Adhere to all warnings printed here and on the equipment. Follow the operating instructions printed in this User Guide. Do not remove covers: Operate the equipment with its covers correctly fitted. Refer any service work on the equipment to competent authorised technical personnel only.
Damage: To prevent damage to the equipment cosmetics, avoid placing heavy objects on the unit, scratching the surface with sharp objects, or subjecting the unit to rough handling and vibration. Transporting: The equipment should be transported in the original packing or purpose built flight case to protect it from damage during transit. Cables: Plan the location of the equipment so that the connecting cables are not fully extended.
Opening the Box Box Contents Inside the box you will find the following: BlackBox Recorder Power Supply User Manual Quick Start Guide The BlackBox Recorder is not a standard multitrack recorder nor is it a digital audio workstation (DAW). It has been designed specifically for Live applications and acquisition and will not necessarily be appropriate for use in a studio situation. It will typically be used to record audio material onto a USB2 drive for subsequent editing and processing in a DAW.
Controls and Interfaces Front Panel The front panel of the BlackBox Recorder contains all the user controls for the unit. The buttons are all touch sensitive which prevents them wearing out through constant use – just place the flat of your finger on the button to operate. Control buttons Channel Status and Metering Data Wheel Transport Controls Display The left hand side of the unit contains the metering and channel status section.
Rear Panel Balanced Analogue inputs Headphones BBR Link USB2 Disk Timecode and Control MADI i/o Keyboard Power BBR64MADI Word Clock The rear panels of the BBR64MADI and BBR64DANTE BlackBox Recorders are as follows: The areas indicated in the diagram below are explained in more detail later in this manual.
On both types of BBR64 unit, the rightmost of the lower 3 D-type cut outs provides for an additional 8 channels of balanced analogue input. These can be used to insert 8 channels of, for example, audience mics using a separate mic pre amp and will use 8 of the available 64 channels. The cable loom conforms to the TASCAM standard for analogue i/o (pin out is available in the Visitor section of the Login area of the JoeCo website www.joeco.co.uk ).
Installation Deciding where to install In a live situation, it depends on whether the live engineer wants to be able to see the BBR interface or not and whether you intend to utilise the Virtual Sound Check facilities. If possible, it’s best to install it at eye level for ease of operating the menus. Wiring the BBR into your console When recording MADI, your choice of coaxial or optical SC cables will most likely be dictated by the console. The BBR64MADI provides for both types so it’s easy to plug in.
In certain circumstances, you may want to supplement the digital inputs with up to 8 analogue inputs. This is primarily aimed at capturing the ambience of the venue or the audience itself. These additional 8 analogue inputs are balanced line level inputs and will normally be fed from separate microphone pre amps or spare channels on the console. On a BBR64MADI, these additional 8 analogue inputs are primarily intended to supplement the recording when receiving 56-channel (legacy) MADI signals.
USB2 can carry up to 480Mbits/s of data and for recording 64 tracks of 48kHz/24bit the maximum data rate we need is around 80MBits/s so there’s normally plenty of headroom. JoeCo has already tested numerous USB2 drives from Western Digital, Glyph, Seagate, Verbatim, Samsung, Buffalo, Hitachi, Toshiba, G-tech and others and found them to work well.
Checking that everything works Once you have powered the unit up, configured the input and output, connected and powered up the disk drive you should be ready to record. Press the RECORD button and away you go! The basic screen should look something like this when first powered up with a drive attached. Normal operation Whenever you power up the BBR it first checks the date against its internal real-time clock. The first time the BBR enters RECORD each day, it creates a folder on the drive named \YYYY-MM-D
Recording On power up, the BBR is ready to record within seconds of logging the drive – just press the RECORD button. The button flashes to show that it’s creating the files and then turns solid once in record. Once the unit is recording, the STOP button must be held down for a couple of seconds to end the recording. This is to prevent someone brushing against the controls and accidentally dropping out of record. The STOP button flashes until the BBR has finished closing the files properly.
Playback Normally, the last recording made will be immediately available for playback. Just press the PLAY button and it will flash while it loads the files into its memory buffers before entering play. However the BBR may be set to “PLAYBACK LOCKOUT”, indicated by the LED in the Metering area of the front panel, in which case the play button will have no effect.
Recent Songs As Songs are played or recorded, they will automatically be placed into the Recent Songs list which is located in the Song Select menu. This allows you to quickly access the Songs that you regularly play for sound checks etc. The Recent Songs list is stored on the disk itself so the list will change if you use a different disk. File Names By default, the BBR will name the audio files it creates as follows: nnn-tt.
would expect. Finish by pressing “Enter” on the keyboard. (Escape will cancel any changes). The resulting tracks will be called nnn-tt.Song Name.WAV where “Song Name” is the new name that you typed. This will rename all the tracks of this song in this folder with this new Song Name. [Note: It is important for the BlackBox to keep the nnn-tt prefix so that it knows which audio files belong together as a Song and which track is to be played on each output channel.
Enter the Track Arm MENU or the Name Manager MENU and then select the Track Name Template MENU. Select “Copy names from song” and this will populate all the Track names for you automatically. All Songs that you record subsequently will use these Track names. The Track names will be stored in the Flash memory so you can use them time after time.
If the LOOP button is pressed between Markers, the BlackBox will continue in Playback until it reaches the next Marker, Loop back to the previous Marker and then recommence Playback. There will be a short break in Playback while the BlackBox loops back to the earlier Marker (i.e. it does not create a continuous loop). If, however, there are no later Markers, pressing the LOOP button will create a Loop between the last Marker and the current playback position.
being the summing mix mentioned above and the individual track pairs being a prefade listen of each pair of tracks (panned hard left and right). The Monitor... section of the menu controls the level and pan settings in the MIX mode. The Monitor Menu allows you to set the BACK button to toggle the data wheel function between selecting the PFL / solo channel and controlling the headphone volume.
Using the Menu The following section discusses the menu in more detail. Throughout the menu operations the MENU button moves forward through the structure and also acts as a CONFIRM button; the BACK button moves backwards through the menu structure and can act as an ESCAPE button. The data wheel acts as a selector and data entry wheel whilst in the menu structure. The MARK and LOOP buttons also replicate the wheel to advance down or retreat up the menus, selecting the next or previous menu item.
this will give you a good idea of the basics and you can always get the most up to date information from the website. The currently selected Menu item is highlighted in Yellow. When a Menu item to be adjusted is selected, the display changes to yellow text on a red background. You can then use the control wheel to change the setting before confirming with the MENU button or rejecting your changes with the BACK button. Some real-time functions cannot be rejected with the BACK button.
Recent Songs... Provides a list of the most recently played Songs – useful if you’re on tour and want to use the same songs in each venue for sound checking Select Song Folder... Allows you to navigate to a particular folder. This automatically loads... Select Song... Allows you to choose a Song from within the selected Folder. Input/Output... This menu item allows you to set up the audio input and output and determine how the BlackBox should clock the incoming data stream.
Setup... This section contains the most frequently adjusted parameters. Reference Clock This very important item determines where the digital sample clock is derived from. The options include extracting the clock from the MADI or DANTE input; using the external word clock BNC connector; less often, the S/PDIF external clock from the RCA (Phono) socket on the rear panel or clocking the whole system from the internal reference oscillator when the BBR is the clock master for everything.
Wordsize: 24bit or 16bit. Choose 24bit unless you’re really short on disk space or have been instructed that post production must have 16bit files. Control... The BlackBox Recorder can accept commands from an external control device such as a console, hardware controller or the JoeCoRemote iPad app. Remote Mode: The BBR can respond to open loop MIDI Machine Control (MIDI MMC) protocol commands for transport controls and track arming/disarming.
TC format follows input. This setting sets the internal timecode frame rate to match the incoming timecode. Please note that this can cause problems later in post production if your source of timecode is intermittent and happens to start at the same time as a recording. It’s always better to set the timecode frame rate explicitly. TC Rejam after record “jam-syncs” the timecode reader a second or so after a recording starts and then calculates and timestamps the files accordingly.
not pleasant to listen to and will probably render your recording useless. You may not notice it live but you will hear it on the recording. Please leave yourself enough headroom when you’re recording a concert. If you’ve set the level correctly, the red meters should flash infrequently if at all. Playback Lockout You can set playback lockout to be automatically asserted after you’ve made a recording, or to be controlled manually. See Playback Lockout section on page 21.
Peak Hold duplicates the same adjustment in the setup menu. Monitor Mix… and Monitor Pan… allow the settings of the internal levels and pan positions on the internal mixer. It is also possible to control the internal mixer using MIDI commands – see the Visitor section of the JoeCo website for more information. BACK: This affects how you use the PFL bus.
Track Names in Song… this allows you to modify the track names for the current song without affecting the template edit also updates template … When ticked, using ^t on a QWERTY keyboard will update both the current song and the template Disk Manage... This allows you to set up certain parameters regarding how you use the disk. It also allows you to format a USB2 disk drive for use with the BlackBox Recorder and with any Mac or PC based workstation.
Write Protect Disk: This allows you to stop the BlackBox MADI or DANTE Recorder writing any data to the disk at all. It will not prevent other computers overwriting the disk if you plug the drive into them. It is mainly used for Playback applications. Software updates It should be noted that JoeCo may release software upgrades from time to time, either to add features or to cure bugs that have been found in the software – though we have endeavoured to remove all that we’ve found.
Note some web browsers append numbers after the file name if you download the same file more than once and these will not work until renamed as above. In the Update menu, set the BBR to Permit: Upgrade Only and then plug the drive (or memory stick) into the USB2 socket. The BBR will notice the presence of the update file when it logs the drive and ask you whether you want to upload it. Select “Yes” by pressing the MENU button or “No” by pressing the BACK button.
Linking multiple BlackBox Recorders together It is possible to link multiple BlackBox MADI or DANTE Recorders together to make recordings with more than 64 channels, or to make redundant copies by duplicating the signal path completely. Each BlackBox Recorder will still require its own USB2 disk drive as only 64 channels of data will be recorded to each drive.
slave mode. The track numbers for each slave unit can be set using the Slave Tracks: menu item. The slave units automatically take their transport control signals from the link connection and will lock out the transport controls on all but the master unit. Slave units also dim their screen displays to make it obvious that they are being controlled remotely.
Using a PS2 keyboard The BlackBox Recorder can accept a standard 102 key PS2 style keyboard. Most mini keyboards are not currently supported, especially those that require some setup drivers to be installed on the PC. The most consistently reliable keyboards we have found are the Microsoft 500 style PS2 keyboards which can be obtained in most countries for around US$10 (£6). Some USB keyboards will work with USB to PS2 converters but not all.
Keyboard transport controls These are the numeric keypad keys (not the character keys) Enter Del/.
properly, Safe’n’Sound repairs them automatically, leaving all the files accessible by normal workstations. A note on Spotlight: It is worth noting that some indexing programs on standard computers, particularly Spotlight on Mac OS, rewrite the File Allocation Table to make the disk easier for a Mac to index. If you think that there might be a problem with the disk, give the BlackBox a chance to repair the files BEFORE Spotlight destroys them.
Problem BBR boots ok but does not log / find disk BBR will not enter RECORD BBR will not enter PLAY BBR sounds ok but no movement on meters Some channels not audible Sound through BBR distorted BBR sounds ok during record but is distorted in playback Cannot locate previous night’s recording Things to try Check that the USB connector is plugged in correctly to both the BBR and the disk drive Check disk drive power supply as above Try a different USB2 lead Try powering up the BBR without a drive at
Summary Of Alert Messages "Hold STOP button to stop" "PLAYBACK LOCKED OUT" "CONNECT VALID DISK" "DISK BUSY" "DISK TOO SLOW" "NEW SONG" "NO SONG SELECTED" "SELECT VALID DISK" "DISK FULL" "CHECK/SELECT DISK" "GENERAL ERROR" "BAD SONG FILE" "CAN'T FIND SONG" "CAN'T FIND FOLDER" "LOOP TOO SHORT" "CHECK MASTER SIGNAL" "REMOTE CONTROLLED" displayed when STOP is pressed can be displayed if PLAY is pressed and PLAYBACK LOCKOUT is on displayed if PLAY or RECORD is pressed but disk is not connected displayed if PLAY
"PLAY OUT OF RANGE" “DIGITAL INPUT MISSING” “DIGITAL SLIP” “REF CLOCK MISSING” “PRE ROLL MISSED” Page | 38 when in remote control or slave mode, PLAYBACK is attempted outside the timecode limits of the selected Song A source of digital audio is not correctly plugged in or has vanished A source of digital audio is not properly synchronised with the BlackBox and is slipping with respect to the chosen clock source The external reference clock is not providing a valid clock signal The Pre Roll setting in Se
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