M-Audio Black Box Guitar Processor & USB Audio Interface + Power

The Black Box is more than a simple modelling unit. It provides a Pro Tools M-Powered-compatible USB audio interface for Mac and PC that includes a mic input and an S/PDIF output, enabling it to function as a recording system as well as a performance front-end for guitars. The bundled copy of Ableton’s Live Lite 4 GTR will get you off to a good start if you don’t already own a sequencer. M-Audio have also released an optional floor controller (available separately) with two switches and a pedal, to make operation more practical in live situations.

The latest units ship with the v2 firmware (for anyone who buys one without it, the firmware is a free download), and with this the Black Box offers 40 amp models, 121 effects, 100 drum patterns and a guitar tuner, as well as 100 factory presets to help you hit the ground running. As with the Adrenalinn, the drum patterns are there mainly to jam along to but they do include some great drum sounds and grooves that would work well as part of a serious composition. You can’t chain these patterns to create songs, but I guess that’s not really the idea.

Sensible tempo-sync’ing options mean that rhythmic effects, such as stepped filters, choppers and panners, can automatically (via the USB MIDI connection) beat-sync to your song tempo, as well as to the internal drum patterns.While it’s not unusual to offer such a tempo-sync’ing facility, the Black Box differs from most of the modelling competition in the scope of its tempo-related filtering and arpeggiation effects. The majority of these aren’t offered by any competing guitar processor — in fact, the nearest thing to some of the tuned, resonant effects is the ‘Resonant Chords’ preset from Lexicon’s upmarket PCM81 effects processor.

The Adrenalinn was criticised for being too complicated for the average guitar player, but M-Audio have done a great job in making the Black Box as friendly as any other guitar-modelling preamp. This has a lot to do with the unit’s large LCD window, and the four knobs beneath it that always relate to the parameters that are currently shown on the LCD.