![]() There's no provision to connect a conventional external mic but, conveniently, the app allows you to use your smartphone's mic instead. The talkback section has a volume control, built-in electret mic, and a button to activate talkback. Dangerous tell me that, depending on the impedance, each amp can drive as many as eight sets of headphones, for a total of 16 (note that they should all have the same impedance to ensure equal volume). ![]() The two powerful (3W) headphone amps can drive loads down to 4Ω, so passive splitting to feed multiple headphones is possible, even with 32Ω models. The phones output is intended for artists, while the control–room output is notionally for the engineer. ![]() Starting on the left, the phones and control–room quarter-inch headphone outputs each have a rotary volume control. ![]() Most front-panel operations are obvious and straightforward but, as with many Dangerous products, some buttons have secondary modes. Finally, there's a rotatable Bluetooth antenna. A USB 2.0 Type B socket accepts audio (again, up to 192kHz) from a computer it's class-compliant with Mac OS and there's an ASIO driver for Windows. A pair of 'combi' XLRs accepts the main analogue stereo monitoring input, while a set of male/female XLRs takes in an AES3 or S/PDIF digital audio signal (up to 192kHz) and provides a link (thru) output. One stereo balanced line output, again quarter-inch TRS, can be switched between the control room or headphone source selectors, and a second is a dedicated output from the internal summing bus, whose eight balanced inputs enter via an AES59 (Tascam) standard 25-pin D-sub. Three pairs of balanced speaker line outputs on quarter-inch TRS sockets cater for three sets of stereo monitors, or two sets plus one or two subwoofers. Next to the universal IEC mains inlet and power switch is a pair of quarter-inch headphone outputs, which are parallel-wired duplicates of the artist and control-room headphone sockets on the front. The rear panel is crammed with connectivity. The rear panel is packed with even more connectivity than the original D‑Box, with new additions including a USB input and a Bluetooth receiver for audio streaming and remote control. It's still recognisably a D‑Box, but one that has very obviously been extensively enhanced and updated. A substantial 1U rackmount powder-coated steel chassis contains a large main PCB populated with surface-mount components, plus a daughter–board carrying the USB and Bluetooth interfaces. ![]() Other new features include an assignable line out, duplicated rear-panel headphone sockets, individual speaker trims, summing-bus output trim, automatic mono, and subwoofer associations with one of the speaker outs. There's also a new summing mixer design, new D-A converters, new digital connectivity, and a new Bluetooth remote control app (iOS, Android, Mac OS and Windows). The D‑Box+ adds USB and Bluetooth to the original's three input sources, and offers separate source selection for the control room and artist headphones, and switching for three speaker sets rather than two. The result is called the D‑Box+ - but that modest plus sign doesn't really do this redesign justice. But technology moves on, so Dangerous decided it was time to reinvent the D‑Box to raise the quality, increase its flexibility, and take advantage of the smartphones and tablets we now all take for granted. It has since won several well-deserved awards and proved enduringly popular. I reviewed Dangerous Music's D‑Box, which combined the roles of active monitor controller and analogue summing mixer, in SOS March 2009 ( ). Technology has moved on in the 10 years since the original D‑Box was released - but the concept seems stronger than ever. ![]()
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