Boss RC505 MkII

Introduction

It's the turn of a fairly new bit of kit today, the https://www.boss.info/global/products/rc-505mk2/

This behemoth is at the heart of our live-looping escapades, as seen in Hive Open Mic (@hiveopenmic).
I have a bit of a love-hate realtionship with this. It is a truly powerful and well-featured piece of equipment. Looking at the back of it, you can see the connectivity options:

Two mic inputs, with individually selectable phantom power, and four line inputs which can be Hi-Z or line level. It has MIDI in and out on full-size DIN (thank you Boss), a headphone output, two assignable control inputs, and six line level outputs, all on 1/4" jacks. It also has a USB port, which we have not used.
All-in-all then, a veritable smorgasbord of options! Within the software, you can route any input to any output, including sending a single source to multiple outputs, which is very useful if you need a seperate monitor-only mix, or you want a "clean" feed from one of your inputs.
In terms of looping it works superbly; there are five Tracks, each of which can be sourced from whichever inputs you want, and can likewise be outputted however you wish. Each Track can have it's own record mode (overdub, single-shot, or erase), FX can be applied whilst recording, and everything can be MIDI-synced as part of a larger set-up. Once set-up, it all works brilliantly.
However, and it is a big However, the UI of this thing is, frankly, dreadful. It is very easy to get lost in the menu options, and there are a number of basic things, such as entering names for presets, that are not easy to do. There are just so many things that the Boss can do, it all feels a bit Everything Everywhere All At Once.
As someone once said, with great power comes great responsibility; sure you may need to battle the odd super-villain, but not to the detriment of helping Aunt May with the washing up.

If you have a great piece of music equipment you think we should have a look at then leave a link in the comments.

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