Indispensable Products – Go Box
A few years back, I posted the first of what I planned on being an ongoing series called “Indispensable – Great Products We Can’t Live Without.” Fast forward in time and I still haven’t added a second installation to this series (if you can call one item a series)… Well, I’ve got good excuses for how long it has taken me (dozens of shows, a new family member, a new book) but I won’t bore you with the details. The bottom line is, I recently had the pleasure of working with a new toy that made me think, “everyone needs to know about this!”
Team Sound has recently released the Go Box, a wonderful MIDI/OSC interface to work with QLab and your other MIDI-capable programs. For those of you who use programs like QLab or SFX, this is a wonderful solution to automating control of your system at the touch of a button. Instead of pressing the space bar hundreds of times for every show, you can simply plug in one of these interfaces and save the stress on your keyboard.
There are currently two different boxes, the Go Box 4 and Go Box 6. Each one is a designed using the highest quality parts to make the Go Box a road-worthy addition to any rig. The buttons are made from arcade-style switches rated for half a million cycles. The boxes are made from powder-coated aluminum, so they are light weight and durable. The USB jacks are Neutrik locking connectors, that really stay put so there are no worries of accidentally pulling the cable out. This week, Team Sound released a second edition of the Go Box 6 featuring a new die cast enclosure with fewer seams, two Neutrik USB connectors, and a low-light LED connection / power power indicator on the back of the unit. These addition make an already strong tool even more appealing. A few more details about each unit is included below:
The Go Box 4 features four buttons, and the Go Box 6 has six. Each model works in a similar fashion, with the buttons serving as MIDI remote triggers. There is no driver software required, either, so it is a remarkably simple setup. Each button sends a MIDI signal through the USB on channel 16. The signal is a Note On message with a velocity of 127 (notes 1-4 on the Go Box 4, and notes 1-6 on the Go Box 6).
If you are using QLab, you can even download pre-configured QLab 3 workspaces from the Team Sound website here. In the basic workspace for the Go Box 4, Note 1 is “Go,” Note 2 is “Panic All” which stops all cues over a 5 second duration, Note 3 is “Select previous cue,” and Note 4 is “Select next cue.”
The Go Box 6 is ideally suited for a redundancy rig. A redundancy rig is a collection of two show control computers running their workspaces simultaneously. Both are connected to output to your system, typically including a manual switch to change output from one unit to another should the need arise. The Go Box 6 features two USB connectors, meaning that each button sends MIDI signals to both computers simultaneously. By using this unit, there is no need for a separate go button for each show control computer.
In addition to MIDI, both Go Boxes work via OSC, as well. I find this to be one of the greatest strength of the tool. This summer, I got to help my wife Kate Hopgood set up a new QLab rig for The Michigan Shakespeare Festival, where we are both Artistic Associates. Kate’s preferred setup is to have a tech table in the auditorium networked to the show sound computer running QLab. By using screen sharing, she can sit with the Stage Manager at the remote computer. This gives her the opportunity to make changes as necessary while the SM gets used to calling the show and running QLab, but from the relative comfort of the auditorium. This year, we integrated a Go Box 4 into the system and the Stage Manager loved it. No more accidental bumping of the space bar or worrying about the double click. The best part was the setup, though. The only aspect that had to be changed was making sure the remote computer was running a QLab workspace (pro version) with OSC commands pre-programmed into it. The Go Box was plugged into the USB port of this computer, which then sent control signals through the Ethernet cable to trigger the show computer. Once tech was done, striking the tech table was basically coiling up the network cable and plugging the Go Box into the show computer in the booth!
For those of you looking to simplify your sound or show control setup, I would highly recommend the Go Box.
Full disclaimer – having written a book on QLab 3 show control, I have gotten to know a lot of the Figure 53 gang pretty well. Team Sound is the work of Brooklyn, NY based sound and projections designer Sam Kusnetz, who also happens to work for Figure 53. Neither I, nor Team Sound, are affiliated with Figure 53, LLC. As Sam puts it on the Team Sound website, we’re awfully big fans, though.
PHOTOS COURTESY OF TEAM SOUND NYC
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Product Review, QLab, Show Control, Sound, Team Sound NYC, technical theatre
