Sound engineer Jamie Mckivitt is not only a studio engineer, but also a road recording warrior of repute – most recently touring as a tech with Bring Me the Horizon (BMTH), the Sheffield quintet who have underscored 13 years and five albums with a fiery live act.

Based in Oxfordshire, Mckivitt (known simply as Mck) began using JoeCo BlackBox BBP1B players two years ago, and has increasingly relied upon them since. The BBP1B delivers replay of 24 channels (64 when using Madi or Dante versions) of high-quality broadcast WAV audio at up to 96kHz, 24 bits from a 1U rackmount package. Initially, says Mck, the players were intended ‘as a reliable and redundant playback system for basic track reinforcement: click tracks, intros, interludes and so on’.

But as the band continued around the globe on tours taking in Europe, North and South America, Russia, Asia and Australia, the BBP1B began to provide a vital function in supporting BMTH’s use of video walls. Specifically, the BlackBox Player’s ability to be triggered in multiple ways – using time code, footswitch, Qwerty keyboard or Midi commands – started to come into its own.

‘We began to sync the video walls to the JoeCo unit by using analogue LTC time code, which was aligned with each song and sent to FOH, where the ‘super video and sound man combined’, Oliver Hutchinson, would plug into Resolume Arena Media Server for video playback,’ Mckivitt recalls. ‘It worked so well and reliably that the lighting designer, Ben Inskip, decided he would begin using his show to tim ecode so he could pay more attention each night without having to fire off every queue and deliver a better, more exciting look and add to it each day.’

The stability of the JoeCo BlackBox Player has allowed the team to run the show with a complete absence of fuss. ‘And I’m happy to report that it has never ever stopped,’ says Mckivitt, who has also used the JoeCo to provide some vocal cues and pitches.

The support of Simon Lowther from JoeCo’s UK distributor, MSL Professional, and SSE Audio (which devised a bespoke multi-pin to enable rapid patching and unpatching at festivals) is also acknowledged as Mckivitt praises the robustness and reliability of the BlackBox Player. ‘It really is a very well-built product,’ he says. ‘On the road they have gone in and out of a truck, been carried onto aeroplanes, generally freighted about, and always turned on with no complaints whatsoever.’

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