1010music bluebox

Almost perfect for a particular workflow style

Its small, well built, lots of inputs and perfect handling for the most basic set of features (naming tracks and flexible input assignment are huge) On the other hand, the menus and the placement of the knobs are not very self-explanatory, and it's missing a small but critical feature: the ability to replay in loops the captured wav files. They might think that this will undermine the Blackbox sales, but what's surprising is that the latest Blackbox firmware lacks this feature in reality as well! If that was present I would give it a shining 5-star review. Otherwise a solid small powerful mixer, with fair (but not top of the notch) recording capabilities

Good products

The mix is awesome. There are few improvements needed thou. Operation as midi slave is not usually behaving as it should, sometimes reacts to midi msgs sometimes not. It would be great to set the range of faders directly on bluebox as not all midi controllers allow it. But this is fixable by firmware update. And yes it get’s a bit hot. Also, it sometimes tends to freeze & reboot required. This might be tricky when using live.

great digital mixer and recorder for mobile setup

Had just one pretty bad issue with it, when using another power supply - the device froze after ~1h of being on and super loud noise was going from the main output. Make sure to use native power supply.

Using it for my live synth setup. Works great for mixing and recording. Love the cue pre-listen functionality. Also, good that it has compressor on master and delay/reverb sends per channel. Very compact form size.

Amazing box, UX is not straghtforward

I was dreaming of a little stereo-mixer for ages, even thought of creating something of my own. Now the problem's solved. Plenty of inputs and routing capabilities. Reverbs are cool. And they've added kind of a DAW/sequencer view — crazy!

Wish it could work at 96khz though.

What's weird is that to download a new firmware you have to create an account on their forum, hope they'll change that.

Versatile mixer, build like a tank

Such a flexible piece of gear. So many routing possibilities. Like the blackbox, it's build like a tank. Very nice effects. Keep in mind: you need cables with small tips/ends (the ins and outs are very close to each other).

Great value for real-state, but a bit of noise issues

It's really hard to give a one-word evaluation of the sound because the internal sound quality is quite superb, it has great dynamic range without distortion, the effects are difficult to dial, but pretty great quality, and overall it behaves quite nicely. But

But it's really really sensitive to bad power. It may turn off on you if you use a lesser cable, and there's ground noise if your setup is kinda finicky. Right now I have a base noise that's quite noticeable if gain or volume are to high in some tracks or master, but it's quite manageable since you can get good quality sound with lower levels. I'm sure if I took the time to find what's the source of the noise issues I'd be able to clean it up.

One more issue is that the inputs are too close together, so you need good quality cables with small tips.

All things considered, it packs a lot in a very small package, and can handle from instrument to eurorack levels, so if desktop real state is an issue and you want flexibility, it's a good choice.

Superb piece of gear

What you need to manage Eurorack-type signal levels and provide an excellent mixing and recording platform.

I'd have loved to have the splitting jack adaptors to be included.

You need to watch out for the type of cables you use as the jacks are very close to each other.

Amazing little box

Amazing functionality in such a small box. Sound quality instantly impressed, and while there's a fair bit of menu navigation it's quite easy to use.

The jack sockets are very close together; you won't be able to fit normal cables in but plenty of slim cables or extenders area around.