...and with the Joe Co boxes, you'll need to spend a significant amount of money on multipin breakout cables for all of your I/O.
Depends on which JoeCo box you get. If you get the BBR1U with Unbalanced analogue i/o it comes with the wiring looms. Its probably the most universal box they make as far as being able to plug into the most boards. Since its only 1u you don't need much of a rack, just enough to hold the recorder, an external hard drive and maybe to stash the cables when toting it around. Look for used ones, there are plenty out there. I had hoped to have one of there by the end of the year but it doesn't look like that is going to happen.
The BBR1B with Balanced analogue i/o would be nicer but you would have to buy all the cables. The lightpipe, MADI and Dante models would limit you on what you could plug into.
Technically though, would I even need a rack? I'd literally be taking this thing inbetween venues and tapping into the soundboard (with musician permission of course). I don't see any reason why this thing needs to be in a rack casing.
As for the Balanced cables, while nicer for AC interference, I don't really see the point since I'd be running less than 5 foot lines to the board. Usually balanced cables are only needed for long cable runs.
In the end, I just want something that can record all the channels of a band, so I can take the thing home and mix it with the room mics in my DAW (because I really hate SBD-only live pulls... even when post-processed on a multitrack, it just always sounds off to me without room mics to fill in the crowd). With this all being said, where could I look for used JoeCo's, and would that still be the best option? I do REALLY like the concept of literally "record and walk away" in such a small unit. Since, as I said, I'll not be doing any live mixing).
Question though: Does the JoeCo tap in before it runs through the soundboard's mixer/preamps? The only reason I ask is because incase the sound tech lowers the guitars to an almost inaudible level via the fader in a small venue. Would I need to also run 2-3 preamps such as PreSonus DigiMax D8? This would run me about another $800-1200. It's a small price to pay though, considering I'd also be granted a way more professional (and fully hardware controlled) podcasting interface. However, if I do need preamps, it does make the system a little bulky.
This is my main concern now. Something that's portable and very universal in terms of being able to set it up at different venues. I don't own the venues, so I'm sure they wouldn't let me switch out their soundboard
I just need a way to tap into their board and to be able to gaurantee an pretty even dB across all channels (to give me room for mixing later)
As for the remote control, JoeCo is releasing an app for the Black Box for remote monitoring and control ->
http://www.joeco.co.uk/main/news.html#blackboxapp . Definitely sounds promising... Im just worried about if I'd need preamps to counter-act a sound technician in smaller venues, since they tend to almost turn off the guitars. Granted, the room mics would bring back most of the instrumental dynamics that wern't mic'd in smaller venues (such as cymbals).