Seriously... Is this stuff any good? They have some good looking
products, and the list prices are so low! so my question is, is it
crap? I'm an amateur recordist- i've figured out a number of things
since my first casette portastudio, but recording is jus for my own
uses. I'm a jazz guitarist who plays primarily nylon string acoustic
guitar fingerstyle. I have a band with drums, upright bass, vibraphone
and tenor saxophone. I have self recorded a few albums and they've
been released, done well on radio and decent sales. Every time I
record an album it sounds better than the last, so I'm moving in the
right direction. I've used a tascam digital mixer/da38 for the past
number of years and I just recently moved into a pro tools mp setup
with a mackie mixer and some other preamps, etc.... I have some oktava
mics, a 414, a c3000 and a few at's and shure.

ok, so should I care about the behringer gear? They have a
multipattern condenser for cheap that might make a decent drum oh or
rom mic (or bass mic or just about anything else I might be recording).
They have what look like nice tube mic preamps. or would I be wasting
my money? Life seemed easier when all I had was a pair of 57's and a
casette 4 track.

Nate

In article .com,
Nate Najar wrote:


Seriously... Is this stuff any good? They have some good looking
products, and the list prices are so low!

Some is, some isn't. The mixers are pretty good, for an amateur rig.
For a lot of people Behringer means the difference between doing it and
not doing it. On the mixers, the value for the money is actually there,
and while the preamps are a bit noisy, they are no worse than some more
expensive ones.

I suspect their mics are nothing but rebranded versions of the
equivalent Marshall MXL's. At any rate they don't appear to be any
worse than those. Whether they will get the job done depends on the
job.

There are some people who will not consider Behringer because of the
belief that they violated patents of a certain other company. I leave
that kind of reasoning to the lawyers who actually get paid to make such
arguments. That's how it will stand until some company pays me to be
its spokesperson or legal counsel or whatever.

Other people, especially on a pro forum, will correctly identify
Behringer as a consumer line, or possibly pro-sumer line, and
consequently the products won't even be on their radar.

In the world where you can afford Telefunken mics and where something
like the Waves Diamond software is just a small part of your total
overhead, well, SURE.

For musicians it's often a whole nother world. It's nice to be able to
have a halfway decent PA or recording system, and what passes for
halfway decent these days can actually be very damned good.

Behringer does a good job of living in that particular niche. But you
still have to be careful. Some of their products are complete dogs.
I'll give you an example: the patchbays. They have an unbalanced,
48-point patchbay that is *excellent*. An *outstanding* value for the
$60 price. Then they've got a balanced 48-patchbay which is such a
total piece of crap as to be useless. (I suspect both of these have
been replaced with a new model by now.)

If you're on a budget, and I don't mean a budget funded by the Sports
division of Fox broadcasting, like a lot of the posters here seem to
be, you can probably afford to buy a Behringer, Edirol, EMU, etc.
product and enjoy it for a long time while you save up for something
better... which might be a *Really* long time because the jump between
here and "better" is pretty long in some cases.

james wrote:

I suspect their mics are nothing but rebranded versions of the
equivalent Marshall MXL's. At any rate they don't appear to be any
worse than those. Whether they will get the job done depends on the
job.

The Marshalls are based on the design from the Feilo factory in Shanghai,
while most of the Behringer condenser mikes I have seen were made at the 797
factory in Beijing. It's true that there are a _lot_ of other mikes made
at the same factory, though. Behringer also has a line of dynamic mikes
of very doubtful quality which are made up North in China somewhere, but
which are identical to some other house-branded dynamics.

There are some people who will not consider Behringer because of the
belief that they violated patents of a certain other company. I leave
that kind of reasoning to the lawyers who actually get paid to make such
arguments. That's how it will stand until some company pays me to be
its spokesperson or legal counsel or whatever.

This stuff went on a _long_ time ago, and people are still very upset over
it more than a decade after the fact. I also will avoid getting into the
fray, but suffice it to say that you'll hear all kinds of things about
the debate.

Other people, especially on a pro forum, will correctly identify
Behringer as a consumer line, or possibly pro-sumer line, and
consequently the products won't even be on their radar.

Which is fine. There are a lot of folks who are very upset at the pro
audio world and the consumer world getting merged together these days,
and I count myself among them. But the question is whether you want to
judge the equipment on consumer or pro-audio standards and that's something
only you can judge.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

On Sun, 19 Jun 2005 21:38:39 GMT, james wrote:
In article .com,
Nate Najar wrote:


Seriously... Is this stuff any good? They have some good looking
products, and the list prices are so low!

Some is, some isn't. The mixers are pretty good, for an amateur rig.
For a lot of people Behringer means the difference between doing it and
not doing it. On the mixers, the value for the money is actually there,
and while the preamps are a bit noisy, they are no worse than some more
expensive ones.


Seconded on the mixers.

In the seventies, I paid $300 for six channels used. There was nothing
else.

In the eighties, we paid $1200 (iirc) for sixteen channels.

Now I can get it for $300 deflated dollars? Sign me up. It's more than
Good Enough, all things considered.

Lemme give you my take on Behringer:

First, I am not part of the Behringer-bashing community. I would love
to have had stuff like this at this price when I was struggling years
ago. In general, they sell decent gear at rock-bottom prices, and if it
does what you want, great.

Some of my Behringer stuff is great. I have the 4-banger compressor
unit. I like it, it is easy to use, and it sounds good.

I have their EFX unit. Not the crispest sound, but more than adequate.
As good as the Midiverb.

At a recnt job, I purchased 12 XM85 mics. A knockoff of the SM58, they
actually have a better high end, ann MUCH cheaper! I bought their big
condenser mic for the school radio station. Great mic. And we bought a
dozen of the little 6-in mixers (initially as headphone amps) and were
very happy with them.

But I bought their UB2442 16-in efx mixer: Two channels stopped
working, and it has some weird thing where one stereo channel cancels
out the other.

So it's a mixed bag.

One writer asked for a recent example of Behringer copying another's
designs. I recently read a thread where B's stomp boxes were so
cosmetically similar to others, that they had to be pulled and
redesigned.

wrote in message
oups.com...

As good as the Midiverb.

Talk about damning with faint praise. :-)

Hal Laurent
Baltimore

Hal Laurent wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...

As good as the Midiverb.

The Midiverb has 18-bit converters, so it is a bit limited by today's
standards. My Virtualizer was one of the early ones, and the sounds are
similar. It doesn't have the depth of some of the Lexicons or TCs. But
I note that Behringer has some updated models with 24/96, so the
comparison may not be accurate today.

Don't get me wrong: I like what Behringer is doing, and I have a lot of
their stuff.

wrote in message
oups.com...

Hal Laurent wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...

As good as the Midiverb.

Careful with your quoting, please. I did not say that. I merely responded
to it.

Hal Laurent
Baltimore

You could just stay away from behringer's audio products altogether.
The only piece of audio equipment I own of their's is a tiny 8-channel
mixer that is sittin in a cabinet and only comes out for movie shoots
when I'm just seeking guide tracks for re-recording later because it's
easy to transport.
However I do own one of their bcf2000 motorized-fader control
surfaces, and for $200 at the time i got it ($220 now i believe) it was
an awesome value-the next cheapest motorized-fader surface was the
mackie baby hui at $600, not a negligable difference. The faders are a
little noisy sure, but what's to be expected, and it gets the job done
fine, never had any problems yet. The range of audio quality is much
larger than the range of midi quality. You could also look at other,
non-audio-related items such as their lighting boards, tuners,
racklight, etc. all of which are still offered much cheaper then their
equivalents.--Matt

Hal Laurent wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...

Hal Laurent wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...

As good as the Midiverb.

Careful with your quoting, please. I did not say that. I merely responded
to it.

Hal Laurent
Baltimore

My apologies. I inadvertently snipped your observation that I was
damning with faint praise.

Matt wrote:

You could just stay away from behringer's audio products altogether.

Sure, but I can't think of something from another mfg'er that matches
the DEQ2496.

--
ha