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Hi all, the other Stephen speaking here,
as for Behringer stuff, I must point one thing out before I comment on
their
products. I used to do some freelance translation work for Behringer a
couple of years ago, and I wasnīt treated very kindly after all. I have the
impression this company is good at borrowing other peoplesī ideas rather
than come up with something totally their own design but this is not to be
discussed here.
I donīt like most of their products as they tend to work rather poorly. I
once had their two-channel denoiser which was based on the RSP Hush 2000
design, and while the Hush is almost unnoticeable when properly adjusted,
the Behringer was pumping the shit out of hell. Their Virtualizer reverb
had
the drawback of being impossible to program, and telling from the reverbs I
got out of it, it wasnīt worth the effort anyway (my Hammond spring reverb
in my modded ARP 2600 sounded more impressive).
Yet, there is one product I can only recommend to buy. Itīs their now
discontinued MX 2642A mixing desk. Basically a 16 channel (8 mono, 8
stereo)
mixer with six aux paths, four groups, four stereo returns and additional
two track input. I have never ever seen such a neat design packed into 19"
(8U). As I use a lot of looping units and a lot of treatments live and in
the studio, the many routing options of the 2642 are just wonderful to have
and beautifully laid out. The sound of it can be a hassle, though. Stay
away
from the early designs which usually come in a dark grey livery (some
revisions didnīt even have proper EQs and input level controls for the
stereo sections). These units have poor input preamps and they sound as if
there were pillows right in front of your speakers (thereīs a clear loss in
treble response above seven or eight kHz). If you get one of the latest
revisions (which come in bright silver livery), they sound fantastic (I did
a lot of recordings with mine, and I impressed some sound engineers who are
using really big consoles by really big names... and I mean big).
Crystal-clear response, decent preamps, good-sounding EQs, very low noise
floor, at a very decent price (they were blown out at 300 Euros a piece
when
the production ceased). I have mine mounted in an L-rack (10U/10U) which I
use for both studio and live work I have never toured execessively with it,
though, thus I canīt say anything about roadworthiness but it has stood up
all major hassles well so far.
Mind you, I am not a Behringer endorser, by any means.
Stephen.
BTW (for the record): I was fired because I did the translation for the
ownerīs manual of one of their smaller mixers from German into Dutch, in
close collaboration with a colleague from Holland who did all he
proof-reading and stuff... one of their Dutch employees was of the opinion
that this job was obviously done by a Mof and therefore not as properly as
one of his countrymates would have done it... no further comments. Now go
figure why their English manuals are so bad... they do all translation
themselves.
"Human beings are a disease, the cancer of this planet, youīre a plague.
And
we are the cure." (Agent Smith / Matrix)
Visit the official [īramp] website at www.doombient.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill" <rs@moinlabs.de>
To: <Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com>
Sent: Sunday, October 03, 2004 11:03 PM
Subject: Behringer Stuff
> Stephen,
>
> before I go into the details of your message, let me clarify my personal
> position in this discussion, to avoid any misunderstandings:
>
> I am not a professional musician. In this context: most of the time, my
gear
> resides at home. When it travels to a concert, it does inside a comfy
>car,
> and most of the gigs (of which there have never been more than six in one
> year) happen in the immediate sorroundings of my home (up to 1/2h
driving).
> My gear (including the Behringer gear) has never been subjected to
airplane
> baggage handling, lenghty road trips in the back of a pickup trucks or
other
> means of professional endurance/reliability/stability test. That said:
>
> > (and FCB1010 manuals). A local pro audio repair shop near me
> > does a lot of Behringer warranty
> > work, a lot of it comes straight from Behringer themselves.
> > The amount of gear that goes straight
> > into the dumpster is absolutely overwhelming. We're talking
>
> In my close to 10 years of owning Behringer gear, I once had a device
break
> down: it was their DX3216 console, which completely failed (i.e. wouldn't
> boot up) about two days after I got it. The store replaced it. Apart from
> that, no problems.
>
>
> > I feel that the best thing that we can do as a group of
> > people is to steer our friends away
> > from low quality and towards high quality. [...]
>
> ...or towards products with a well-designed feature set. Again, apart
>from
> the price point, the forementioned MX2642A offers a large feature set in
>a
> comparably small package. I can install it on top of my rack, but the
> connector plate to the bottom of it, have inserts AND direct outs for 8
> channels,... Perhaps it's just that I've been damn lucky with my
>Behringer
> gear, and my experiences are not representative for the majority of the
> manufactured devices, but then again, with all the other people
complaining
> about their stuff, this makes that fact well represented here.
>
> The manuals, btw, aren't as bad in German as they are in the
>translations.
> Never had any problems with them - although their attempt to copy the
Mackie
> lingo with some of their newer low-end products sucks. They should've
stayed
> with their native prussian style...
>
> Perhaps I have to add that I do not have experience with their
>super-cheap
> mixers. A guy from my Eclectic Blah ensemble has one which seems to suck
> ass. Apart from that, my personal ratings (for the devices on which I
>have
a
> detailed opinion):
>
> DX3216 + ADAT Interface: outstanding product! the dynamic and EQ sections
> really sound great (my personal opinion).
> MX2642(A): the A variant has been a huge improvement over its
>predecessor.
> There are some flaws which make it cumbersome for some applications (like
> the lack of XLR outputs), but for the application for which I use it it
>is
> nearly perfect.
> FCB1010: well, as if there were any serious competition...
> Composer: this is basically the product which established Behringer. And
> still a good product if you do not want to spend astronomical amounts of
> money on an analogue dynamics processor.
> 2024P Virtualizer: some of the algorithms are fine (some of the
>artificial
> reverb spaces, the crap vocal algorithms (don't know what they are
called),
> some are unusable (the Leslie, the amp simulators). A pity it has only a
> two-space LED as a display, otherwise, the UI is well designed
> hardware-wise, although with some flaws in the implementation in the
> software.
> Ultramizer: crap. But then again, you get what you pay for (which was
> something like ?100 new a decade ago).
> Patchbays: don't seem that reliable. I have been using them in a "patch
very
> often" kind of setup, and I expect some of the sockets to fail in the
> future. But then again, I don't use patchbays anymore.
>
> > [my Fostex]
> >
> > This is where your argument gets absurd. Which Fostex
> > multitrack? Are you sure it's
> > superior to *all* portastudio products at that time? Did you
> > really try them all? I appreciated
>
> The device was called Fostex 280, and I got it 'round '90. At that time,
>I
> checked the various available products (I think it was Tascam, Yamaha and
> Fostex which made integrated multitrackers with mixer and multitrack
> cassette recorder) by their specification and then tested the few in the
> "upper middle class". I didn't do a proper technical analysis (meaning
> carrying a specrum analyzer or noise figure meter into the store), but I
> A/Bd them and the Fostex came out best. Some years after that ('95?), I
got
> my MX2642 and found out that, yes, it was a vast improvement. Hence my
> conclusion that it is in fact superior to the portastudios of the '90
time.
> Note that the Tascam 6xx series hadn't been released back then.
>
> Rainer
>
> ps: yes, I also do have a Mackie...
>
> Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill
> Moinlabs GFX and Soundworks - www.moinlabs.de
> The Straschill Family Group - www.straschill.de
> digital penis expert group - www.dpeg.de
> Eclectic Blah - www.eblah.de
>
>
>