Black Box BBR64-MADI, BBRDante User Manual

BLACKBOX BBR64MADI & BBR DANTE RECORDER - User Manual v2.2 Page | 1

BLACKBOX RECORDER

BBR64-MADI &

BBRDante

User Manual

V 2.2 rev 0

Date: July 2011

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. However, we strongly recommend that you do read it just in case there are some aspects of the product that are not immediately obvious.

This manual covers the following variants of the BlackBox Recorder: BBR64-MADI and BBR-DANTE and should be read in conjunction with the Quick Start guide.

More information is available in the LOGIN area of the JoeCo Website

www.joeco.co.uk . Visitors can gain immediate access to more detailed information

whilst EndUsers once approved are eligible for software upgrades and other downloads.

If you need information in a hurry register as a Visitor and upgrade to an EndUser later on.

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Contents

BLACKBOX RECORDER .................................................................................................. 1

BBR64-MADI & BBRDante ........................................................................................... 1

Important Safety Information .................................................................................. 3

WARNING - Read the following before proceeding : ........................................... 3

Opening the box ....................................................................................................... 5

Box Contents ........................................................................................................ 5

Controls and interfaces ............................................................................................ 6

Front Panel .......................................................................................................... 6

Rear Panel ........................................................................................................... 7

Installation................................................................................................................ 9

Deciding where to install ..................................................................................... 9

Wiring the BBR into your console ........................................................................ 9

Deciding on a disk drive ..................................................................................... 10

Connecting a disk drive ...................................................................................... 11

Power connection .............................................................................................. 12

Checking that everything works ........................................................................ 12

Normal operation ................................................................................................... 13

Recording ........................................................................................................... 13

Playback ............................................................................................................. 14

File Names ......................................................................................................... 15

Virtual Sound Checking ...................................................................................... 18

Monitoring ......................................................................................................... 19

Summary of Combined Controls in MAIN Screen .............................................. 20

Using the Menu ...................................................................................................... 20

Menu Structure and operation .......................................................................... 21

Setting up adjustable parameters ...................................................................... 21

Software updates ............................................................................................... 30

Linking multiple BlackBox Recorders together ....................................................... 32

Safe’n’Sound Record Recovery .......................................................................... 34

Using a PS2 keyboard ............................................................................................. 35

Troubleshooting ..................................................................................................... 36

Summary Of Alert Messages .............................................................................. 38

JoeCo Conditions of Use ......................................................................................... 40

Software Licence Agreement ................................................................................. 42

Warranty Information ............................................................................................ 45

Product Returns ..................................................................................................... 47

Product and End User Registration ........................................................................ 48

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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.

Power sources: Connect the equipment using the mains power adapter supplied. Power cord routing: Route power cords so that they are not likely to be walked on,

stretched or pinched by items placed upon or against them.

Grounding: Do not defeat the grounding and polarisation means of the power cord

adapter or plug. Do not remove or tamper with any ground connection in the power cord.

Water and moisture: To reduce the risk of fire or electric shock do not expose the

equipment to rain or moisture or use it in damp or wet conditions. Do not place containers of liquid on it which might spill into any openings.

Ventilation: Do not obstruct any ventilation. If the equipment is to be operated in a

flight-case ensure that it is constructed to allow adequate ventilation.

Heat and vibration: Do not locate the equipment in a place subject to excessive

heat or direct sunlight as this could be a fire hazard. Locate the equipment away from any devices which produce heat or cause excessive vibration.

Servicing: Unplug the power immediately if the unit is exposed to moisture, spilled

liquid, the power adapter becomes damaged, during lightening storms, or if smoke, odour or noise is noticed. Refer servicing to qualified technical personnel only.

Installation: Install the equipment in accordance with the instructions printed in

this User Guide. Use the equipment connections for their intended purpose only.

Precautions

Environment: Protect from excessive dirt, dust, heat and vibration both when

operating and storing. Avoid drinks spillage, tobacco ash, smoke, and exposure to rain and moisture. If the equipment becomes wet, remove power immediately. Allow to dry out thoroughly before using again.

Cleaning: Avoid the use of chemicals, abrasives or solvents. The equipment is best

cleaned with a dry lint-free cloth. Do not remove the cover to clean the unit.

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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. Full extension of the cables can stress the equipment and cables and may result in undesired performance. Ensure that all cables are located such that they cannot be stood on or tripped over.

JoeCo’s recorder products are designed to enable you to record and

reproduce material to which you own the copyright, or material which the copyright owner has granted you permission to record and/or reproduce.

It is illegal to record, reproduce, distribute, sell, hire, lend, perform or broadcast all or part of a work (written or musical composition, broadcast, performance or similar) whose copyright is held by a third party without permission of that third party.

Do not use this Product for purposes that could infringe a copyright held by a third party. JoeCo and its authorised distributors and resellers assume no responsibility whatsoever with regard to any infringements of third-party copyrights arising through your use of this Product.

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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 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.

A number of specific features have been added to make it suitable and safe in a Live environment; playback lockout, protection against accidentally ending a recording, virtual sound checking, no general purpose operating system, etc.

Some features often found in other multitrack machines are not present in the BlackBox Recorder such as overdubbing and punch in facilities.

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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.

BBR64-MADI

BBR-DANTE

The left hand side of the unit contains the metering and channel status section. Each channel or Track [1 through 64on the MADI system] [1 through 32 on the Dante system] has a bicolour LED to indicate the track status (armed for recording; recording; rough level meter; ready for playback; Pre Fade Listen, etc.). To the right of this are two columns of metering LEDs comprised of Green, Yellow and Red LEDs. These metering LEDs show the levels on the Pre Fade Listen (PFL) bus inside the BlackBox Recorder. The monitoring section of this manual described the PFL function in more detail.

There are also indicators for Disk activity and Playback Lockout which can prevent you from accidentally entering playback during the performance.

Channel Status and

Metering

Transport

Controls

Control buttons

Display

Data

Wheel

Channel Status and

Metering

Transport

Controls

Control buttons

Display

Data

Wheel

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To the right of the JoeCo logo is the control wheel which has a number of functions explained later in this manual.

Then we have the main Transport controls [PLAY, STOP, RECORD] with the four other control buttons above [L-R: BACK, MARK, LOOP, MENU].

Finally, at the right hand side of the front panel is the colour LCD display.

Rear Panel

The rear panels of the BBR64-MADI and BBR-DANTE BlackBox Recorders are as follows: The areas indicated in the diagram below are explained in more detail later in this manual.

BBR64-MADI

Audio i/o on the BBR64-MADI utilises either optical or coaxial (BNC) connections and both variants are provided for, selectable in software (see above).

Audio Clocks may be extracted from the incoming MADI data stream, from the separate word clock input or from the BBR link RCA input (ext clk in).

The rightmost of the lower 3 D-type cut outs provides for an additional 8 channels of balanced analogue input .The cable loom should conform 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 ).

A stereo TRS ¼” headphone socket provides the output of the Pre Fade

Listen bus.

MADI i/o

Balanced

Analogue

inputs

BBR Link USB2 Disk

Keyboard

Headphones

Timecode

and Control

Power

Word Clock

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The power connector is a 4pin mini XLR connector. Linear Timecode (LTC) and MIDI Timecode (MTC) can be used to time stamp recordings. Remote Control can be via Sony PII protocol (9-pin), MIDI Machine Control (MMC), Qwerty Keyboard or a simple contact closure.

BBR-DANTE

Audio i/o on the BBR-DANTE utilises the Ethernet RJ45 connector and should be connected using high quality CAT5E Ethernet cable (see above).

Audio Clocks may be extracted from the incoming DANTE data stream, from the separate word clock input or from the BBR link RCA input (ext clk in).

The rightmost of the lower 3 D-type cut outs provide for an additional 8 channels of balanced analogue input .The cable loom should conform 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 ).

A stereo TRS ¼” headphone socket provides the output of the Pre Fade Listen bus.

The rest of the rear panel is fairly self explanatory we hope and is explained in greater detail later in this manual. There are more technical details on the JoeCo website (www.joeco.co.uk) should you require them.

DANTE

Ethernet

Balanced

Analogue

inputs

BBR Link USB2 Disk

Keyboard

Headphones

Timecode

and Control

Power

Word Clock

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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 BBR64-MADI provides for both types

so it’s easy to plug in. Make sure you wire the console’s output to the BBR’s

input and vice versa.

You will need to configure the sample rate to be the same as the rest of your system. Use the MENU button and then use the wheel to select SETUP; Press MENU again to enter the Setup menu and then use the wheel again to select SAMPLE RATE. Pressing MENU again will now allow you to use the wheel to select which sample rate to use and MENU again confirms your choice. The BACK button takes you back a MENU level.

To configure the input to the BlackBox, you will need to use MENU; INPUT/OUTPUT… to select the input source: [Electrical (Coax) or Optical]; select the Reference Clock: [MADI, Wordclock, SPDIF or Internal].

At the bottom of the INPUT MENU the Input Status bar turns green when the BBR is locking to a good, valid input signal; a yellow bar indicates that the BBR cannot lock to the incoming signal or that it has been instructed to lock to a clock signal that is not synchronous with the incoming data; a red bar shows that no input signal is being received.

The Output Setup screen similarly configures the output of the BlackBox.

If you’re using a DANTE system then you’ll have an appropriate CAT5 Ethernet cable to plug into the BlackBox Recorder. The CAT5 cable is

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bidirectional and you’ll need to use the Dante Controller software to

configure the network connections.

In certain circumstances, you can 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 BBR64-MADI, these additional 8 analogue inputs are only available when the MADI input is set to receive 56-channel (legacy) MADI signals.

On a BBR-DANTE system these additional 8 analogue channels will always be available and you can decide whether to insert them into the outgoing Dante data stream or not. If you do want to access these channels elsewhere on the Dante network, insert them as channels 1-8, bumping all the other channels up.

The additional analogue inputs can be monitored on the internal PFL bus, two channels at a time

These balanced analogue inputs can be switched between Low and Pro levels in the Setup Menu (page 26).

Setting

LOW

PRO

Nominal level

-10dBu

+4dBu

Headroom above nominal level

14dB

18dB

0dBFS (when digital clipping will occur)

+4dBu

+22dBu

Pay special attention to the clocking signals to ensure that the BlackBox Recorder is being clocked correctly. There is more on this subject later, in the clocking section (page 23).

Deciding on a disk drive

Both the BlackBox MADI Recorder and the Dante Recorder require modern fast USB2 drives. We cannot guarantee that every drive in the world will

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work but all the ones we’ve tried so far have done. The only criteria that you need to follow are:

Up to 2TB with USB2 interface 7200rpm or 10,000rpm recommended Formatted with FAT32 Filing System

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 and others and found them to work well. We chose the FAT32 filing system because it is compatible with all major Operating Systems and it’s also the format chosen for the AES31 digital interchange standard.

However, USB powered drives (such as the Western Digital Passport series) typically draw more current than the USB2 specification allows (limited to 500mA) and can therefore not be used without providing a separate power supply. Most standard Flash RAM drives (aka Pen Drives) are not fast enough to take the full USB2 data rates that the BBR requires and even the 200X flash drives are too slow for recording 64 channels of 48k MADI data. If you are not sure, ask the supplier if you can try the drive with the BBR before you buy it. You must make sure that the drive you are using is fast enough and not too fragmented before you use it with the BlackBox Recorder. If in doubt, reformat the drive and make a test recording of an hour or so to be sure. Then reformat the drive again before recording the performance. Drives are very cheap nowadays so we advise keeping a few spares around just in case.

Connecting a disk drive

Plug the disk drive into the USB2 socket on the back of the BlackBox unit and then power up the drive. The drive will be scanned, logged and ready to use in a matter of seconds. If it takes more than 20 seconds to log the drive or the BlackBox reports “WRONG DISK FORMAT”, check that the disk is

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formatted correctly. The BlackBox can be used to reformat the drive to FAT32 (see page 29)

Power connection

The BlackBox Recorder is supplied with its own power supply which plugs into the dc inlet at the rear right of the unit (or left if you’re looking at the rear as you read this). Although the unit can accept a suitable dc input between 7.5V and 16V it should always be used with the power supply provided.

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.

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Normal operation

Whenever you power up the BBR it first checks the date against its internal real-time clock. If it’s the first time the BBR has been powered up today, it will create a folder on the drive named \YYYY-MM-DD.bbr and make this the current folder where YYYY is the year, MM is the month and DD is the date. [The real-time clock will have been set up at the factory but you will need to adjust it to your local time – see page 27]. It does this so that all today’s recordings will be kept together in one folder. If you happen to be recording a late concert which goes on past midnight, the BBR will not create a new folder until the next time it’s powered up so all the song recorded during a typical concert will still be kept together.

The controls are all touch sensitive. Just place the flat part of your finger firmly on the panel over the control – the area your finger covers is more important than the pressure you apply.

Recording

On power up, the BBR is ready to record within seconds of logging the drive – just press the RECORD button, which will flash while the BBR prepares its files, and it will usually begin recording within a few seconds.

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.

However, if you want to mark the end of one Song and the start of another you can just press the RECORD button again.

You can also set MARKS within a Song by pressing the MARK button which will enable you to create loops easily for Virtual Sound Checking.

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At the end of a recording the BBR will have to do some housekeeping such as writing file headers to the disk to keep it in prime condition. The DISK LED and STOP button will flash until the BBR has finished writing to the disk. Please wait until it has finished before starting the next operation. It’s

particularly important that the files have been closed before you unplug the USB disk drive.

However, there are a few things that might need your attention. The BBR normally remembers its settings in Flash RAM internally so you should only have to set these things up once.

You might want to record at a different sample rate or bit depth to that

which the BBR is currently set at (page 24)

The unit may be set up to only record certain tracks and you may want

to record on more (or less) tracks (page 21)

You may want to timestamp the recording against timecode (page 24)

or to set up the unit to use an external audio clock (page 23) All these items can be controlled from the menu which is described later in this manual.

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. “PLAYBACK LOCKOUT” is a safety feature that prevents the engineer from accidentally starting to playback recorded material during the middle of the concert! This can cause severe embarrassment and could be a career limiting move for the sound engineer.

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If the BBR is set to “PLAYBACK LOCKOUT” and you want to disable it temporarily to perform a Virtual Sound Check, press the MENU button to enter the MENU and PLAYBACK LOCKOUT is the first item on the list. Press MENU again and it will remove the tick () mark against PLAYBACK LOCKOUT. Press BACK to exit the MENU and you can now use Playback normally. PLAYBACK LOCKOUT can be set to manual in the SETUP menu

Fast Wind

FAST FORWARD and REWIND functions within a SONG are achieved by holding the STOP button down whilst moving the data wheel.

Next / Previous Song

When the BBR is in STOP, the MARK and LOOP buttons will move you to the previous and next song respectively in the current folder.

Selecting Songs

To select other songs for playback you will need to press the MENU button. Move the data wheel until Song Select is highlighted; press MENU again; move the data wheel to select the song you want to playback; press MENU to confirm. You can also navigate to different folders on the disk using this feature.

Recent Songs

As Songs are played, 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.WAV

Where nnn is the song number (between 001 and 999) and tt is the track number (between 01 and 64).

+ 33 hidden pages

Black Box BBR64-MADI, BBRDante User Manual

Specifications and Main Features

Frequently Asked Questions

User Manual