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The people that bash Behringer and are Mackie's is people who do not have much engineering experience and many just relaying heresay. I started my engineering career 42 years ago. Along the way I have owned and operated many consoles and preamps. Worked a lot on the big MCI's, some API's and some Neve's.
This year I sold my 48 channel API Legacy and 48 channel Trident TSM. Both good consoles but they had their share of problems too only they cost more than Behringers to fix usually. I have recorded some worldwide Hall of Fame artist on the most expensive, middle line consoles like Soundtracs and budget consoles like the two Behringer MX9000 boards I presently own. I sold the big boards because the days of the commercial studios are about over at least in the non-metropolis regions. Let's talk about sound quality first.. Despite what the bashers say and I speak only of the Behringer MX9000 because that is the only Behringer product I have owned and bought it to record at my house I will say after running extensive recorded 24bit 48000hz A-B preamp test on a variety of studio monitors like DyneAudio and JBL and my soffit mounted JBL 4430's that the differences between the Behringer MX9000, Mackie 8 bus, Yamaha olv96, API Legacy and Neve 1081 preamps is minute. We used a variety of signals including acoustic guitar, acoustic piano, voice and most importantly kick and snare drums. I also involved another 72 year old friend who had been engineering professionally all his life just so I wouldn't fool myself. We both stood in agreement with our findings. The subtle differences are MX9000 was by far the cleanest and purest signal of the bunch. Some call it neutral. Neutral sonics plays an important part in modern day recordings. I remember a time when nobody could get neutral no matter how much they spent on a board. I must say that the differences are almost inaudible until the gain is pushed to the breaking point but not where you perceive it breaking up. So for clean sounds your Behringer will be just as good as the API and Neve products. As a matter of fact my tech told me many of those low price boards have the same 5534, 5532 IC chips that the SSL console has. They are cheap, they work and they are used in everything from the cheapest to the most expensive consoles. The older Mackie 8 bus console did better than all of the preamps for getting a fat kick, snare and tom sound when pushed. It could really make the drums sound huge. The MX9000, Neve and API could not do that trick as well as the older Mackie. The new Mackies have cleaner sounding chips so that does not apply to all Mackies.
The Trident TSM preamps harmonic distortion made everything recorded on it just sound at least 6db louder even though the meters were reading the same 0 level as the other consoles. One of the unique mysteries of the good kind of harmonic distortion. The Yamaha 01v96 preamp really had a sheen and quality similar to the API's preamp. We had to really concentrate to tell the difference. If someone tells you high dollar preamps is waaay better tell them Bull****. I would say that Neve was the worst preamp of the bunch for handling quick transients like kick and snare and was rather boring until you engaged the eq then little magical qualities started happening. Build Quality? The most frequent and costly repairs were always the big expensive modular consoles. I've owned 2 MX9000's for 8 years now that I bought new and not one single problem, not even a dirty pot! Their is absolutely nothing wrong with the Behringer MX9000 console sonic wise or even feature wise if you do not need automation. It produces a clean clear sound but it will not do any harmonic distortion tricks like API, Trident and Neve. When a Behringer reaches it's maximum headroom it's done. It goes from beautiful clean to ugly distortion in a split second.
A fat sound everyone talks about is simply a dirty distorted signal but our ears don't perceive it as that our rars hear only a bigger sound. It actually has some hair on it on the oscilloscope.
The reason and only reason I would not use a Behringer or Mackie mixer on a major recording session is because most of those kind of sessions have players flying in all over the world and most only have a small window of time to get the job done and go to the next gig. You may not get them back for a year or more. Sometimes it takes months to get a session organized although that is slowing changing with the internet and cutting one track at a time. If my Behringer breaks down during a session it's a huge hassle to take it apart and fix it especially with all the surface mount parts. You can really screw the pc board up if your not skilled with a soldering iron. The expensive boards are built modular so you can either pull a channel out and fix it quickly during the heat of a session or just replace it with a spare module and your quickly back in business. Do home recordist need this feature? Heavens no! 2 other teasons why they sell cheaper than the big boards (1) They can be massed produced with machines and the big Neves and API's have 4 to 6 people total building it with their own bare hands. (2) They don't have automation and total recal like the SSL.
All the problems with the Behringers are Mackies are due to the machines sometimes leave cold solder joints that can work loose especially if you move it around a lot. A leave mine planted and have no problems. So if someone tells you an expensive piece of gear is way better just say bull**** and tell them the real facts. I've recorded the hottest punchiest, cleanest recordings in the world with a Behringer MX9000 and have the tracks to prove it upon request.
Most people don't understand gain structure so they are not gonna get a good sound out of any console regardless of price. A mixer is like a guitar. It will only sound as good as the operator.