To all the Behringer lovers I've wronged before...

Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 7:26 pm

I don't live in Brasnson. I have and on ocassion work there. I live in LAs Vegas. I do not as I have said in many threads record as a profession and I only cater to the guys who want to sell CDs at gigs and record a CD for less than $1200.

It is not me who is all in a bundle about what is professional and what's not. Thats your bag. Its all professional to me if people buy the product.

I do not have any records to my knowlege in national record stores. It is not now nor has ever been a goal of mine'. I also amd not impressed nor do I know any of your "famous" clients (goog le counts and all) except through your stated associations. None of their direct work.

I do know this though. One can make a saleable product on gear that does not cost an arm and a leg. Thers is no such thing as rack crap for someone who wants to put there music on CD and sell it at gigs or where ever.

As I have said before you do remind me of someone who spent $5000 on a Rolex only to see a guy across the room with seeminly the same watch getting the same "bang" from the general public , only his watch is a $200 disposable knockof.

The Behringer argument. If Their gear was so bad..I would not think there would be such a big market of satified users and they would have been out of business long ago. They would have gone the way of the Yugo. The market rules in the end.

We will not agree on this point and as long as I can post here my point of focus will be on those who cannot or choose not to buy gear they don't feel they need......You can have the last word and lock the thread.

Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 7:27 pm

kingfrog wrote:

IIt is not me who is all in a bundle about what is professional and what's not. Thats your bag. Its all professional to me if people buy the product.
.

so what's the problem? if you make it and they buy it and they are happy there is no problem. I don't know what your stuff sounds like so I can't have an opinion, I can only speak for myself.

Speaking for myself I tell you that ever since I started upgrading my studio my sound has greatly improved, my art is happy, my soul is happy. I am a writer and I also record and produce other people and the better it sounds, the better it is and the happier everyone is. I don't regret any quality mic, pre, AD, outboard gear I ever bought. I do regret that i spent 2K on a roland vs880 when they first came out in '97 or '98 and that I ended up selling for like $500 a couple of years later- that's a waste! If I had bought a u87 or a couple of C414's for that money, I still have them and would still use them, instead of selling it for pennies on the dollar.
Cool

you can record with whatever gear you got and if it sounds good to you and yours, more power to you. but if you are trying to tell me that great gear does not matter that much you are only fooling yourself. If that was so, why would pro studio spend so much money on gear? hey, they would buy nothing but behringer and put the money in the bank. But good sound cost money. there is no way to get around that. If you have the chops you can get close but sorry, no cigar IMHO

Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 7:30 pm

Hey Kingfrog...you think I should go for the wine then....?

And Kurt...dude..... you recorded Brownie McGhee, all kidding aside what an honor that must have been, I use to catch him all the time with Sonny in the Village (Greenwich) and even had some 78s of Sticks McGhee, who was his younger brother...yes/no ?
So what's the deal, I'm just a 'home' recorder kinda guy, with a very humble $800 multitrack, and a cheap bottle of wine.....I hear some budget pres like the ART Pro Channel will give me some improvements in my 'home' recordings, while some of the others ain't even worth getting. true ? false ?

Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 7:34 pm

Quote:

I do know this though. One can make a saleable product on gear that does not cost an arm and a leg.

I agree with that. But I know people who can sell a rats a%%hole as a wedding ring. I have sold thousands of bandstand tapes recorded on 1/2" 8 and a Carvin Board or even less at gigs in the past. At least one of the records I made for Jeff Larson was done with a DAT recorder, a 1/4" 4 track and a Phonic rack mount mixer and a load of rack crap outboard ... That doesn't make them very good (quality wise) though. The performances were good however.

Quote:

Thers is no such thing as rack crap for someone who wants to put there music on CD and sell it at gigs or where ever.

That still sounds more like marketing hype to me than anything else. Of course there's such thing as rack crap and Behringer gear is the epitomy of it.

I'm not alone in this perception, in fact I am not even the person who coined the term "Rack Crap" ... that was Rick Hamming (RealDynamics) that came up with that turn of phrase.

Quote:

We will not agree on this point and as long as I can post here that will be my point of focus

I agree that we don't agree on this issue. We probably never will. To say that some people "don't get it" would be applicable both ways. You don't get what I am saying and I absolutley do not get what you are trying to say.

No need to lock the thread IMO. Again, that's only a last resort. I'm sure other may want to comment or have someting to offer.

Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 8:18 pm

Quote:

Speaking for myself I tell you that ever since I started upgrading my studio my sound has greatly improved, my art is happy, my soul is happy. I am a writer and I also record and produce other people and the better it sounds, the better it is and the happier everyone is. I don't regret any quality mic, pre, AD, outboard gear I ever bought. I do regret that i spent 2K on a roland vs880 when they first came out in '97 or '98 and that I ended up selling for like $500 a couple of years later- that's a waste! If I had bought a u87 or a couple of C414's for that money, I still have them and would still use them, instead of selling it for pennies on the dollar.

Im not saying great gear does not matter. I am saying the returns are greatly dimished as the price escalates. I went kickin and screaming from an ART MP the the VCQ1. I do not feel the aural need to go any higher in quality or price. I have heard other in studios and A/B mine with an Avalon. The diffence to me just was not worth another thousand dollars.

Dollr for dollar you will lose more money on the more expensive things one buys on all fronts. I sold my ART MP for $25 less than I paid for it. I'll bet I will lose $300 on the VCQ1......and more on more expensive gear.

If I pay $150 for the Rode Nt1and can get $100 on Ebay for it I only lost $50. If you resell your AKG 414 no one is going to buy a used one for $50 less than a new one in that market. That goes for ANYTHING expensive Cars and audio gear. The more expensive the more of a hit you have to take to sell it vs the price new. Becasue people who are in that market will need to save alot to buy someones used gear Unless its considered "vintage" and in demand.

Finances are relative and we all place our money where it suits us the best. For me it has not been my Home Studio. For 30 years I have enjoyed what I have done for myself and others and have appreciated the HUGE leap in quality vs price in that market.

I would not have enjoyed or enjoy it any more now if I bought a U87 tomorrow to replace my Rode NT2. If that were the case I'd have one even if I had to take a second mortgage lol.

Somehow I feel your moderator Kurt is not "semi" retired by choice. I sense some bitterness towards the increasing quality of Home Studio gear. I am beginning to belive the sucess of the rack crap has something to do with his bitterness.

If you feel you cannot make a relavant product you can be proud of without a certain piece of gear, by all means you are going to have to make that leap. I just don't feel that way and do not think others should be MADE or convinced to feel that way.

Posted: Wed Mar 16, 2005 8:57 pm

Quote:

Hey Kingfrog...you think I should go for the wine then....?

............ I'm just a 'home' recorder kinda guy, with a very humble $800 multitrack, and a cheap bottle of wine.....I hear some budget pres like the ART Pro Channel will give me some improvements in my 'home' recordings, while some of the others ain't even worth getting. true ? false ?

You already know how Kurt is going to answer that...lol Drink some wine..throw your dreams away and maybe the big studio will come back and Kurt can once again be king of his domain.....

Seriously I would ask you how much you can afford before you leap. Ebay has a lot of used gear at good prices all along the spectrum. I think even an ART Tube Pack would be better than the pre amps in your multi track....but thats considered rack crap aound here. Our sax player in Las Vegas uses the lowly ART MP for his pre amp in the show there. He loves it in that application. ( ok so I sold it to him) but he had many choices.

Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 12:47 am

Quote:

I went kickin and screaming from an ART MP the the VCQ1. I do not feel the aural need to go any higher in quality or price. I have heard other in studios and A/B mine with an Avalon. The diffence to me just was not worth another thousand dollars.

If you can't hear enough difference to warrent the expense of an Avalon pre over the ART or the Meek pres, then perhaps that is is problem. You cannot hear the difference. But there is one believe me. Are you really saying there's no difference? If someone gave you an Avalon, would you refuse it?

Quote:

Dollr for dollar you will lose more money on the more expensive things one buys on all fronts. I sold my ART MP for $25 less than I paid for it. I'll bet I will lose $300 on the VCQ1......and more on more expensive gear.

That is simply not true. As was stated and as I said before, most the vintage and high end pieces I have I can sell for more than I paid for them. I am beginning to wonder if perhaps you don't know where to shop for good deals on pro gear.

Quote:

Somehow I feel your moderator Kurt is not "semi" retired by choice. I sense some bitterness towards the increasing quality of Home Studio gear. I am beginning to belive the sucess of the rack crap has something to do with his bitterness.

Again with the personal comments about subjects you know nothing about. I will warn you about this one more time, keep to the facts, keep your mouth off me and everyone else. Next time I'll just delete it instead of responding.

I will tell you since your flapped your mouth. I don't know if you have ever been to the SF Bay Area. Things are going crazy there. It is so overcrowded and congested, there's gridlock on the freeways at 11 pm. It is not safe to drive your car without carrying a baseball bat to fight the road rage stains. You can't fart in the Safeway because there's someone right up your arse. The schools suck and there's so many rats in the cage, they are beginning to devour themselves. I sold my console and 2" tape machine in late 99 / early 2000, before the bottom of the market dropped out and all my friends down there have told me that I got out at exactly the right time. Their only question to me is "How did you know when to sell?"

My wife wants some kids and Calif. is no place to raise them nowdays, so I cashed out the studio and sold the house, sold off the investments and retired to the country. I live on two acres I own free and clear, near one of the best fresh water fishing rivers in the whole world, and everything I have is paid for. I have deer coming down to eat the apples on the property and I sleep until I wake up on my own, ride around on my ATV and go play blues with my buddies in town and to boot, I haven't had to pay for the cable for 3 years running. Yeah, I'm a fat bitter old fart ...

Again I will comment that I never said don't record yourself with cheap gear. That all comes from the "Mouth O' Frog". Just don't take yourself too seriously.

Yes, almost any pre amp is going to be an improvment over those found in most porta studios. I agree to that. Just as with all this home studio stuff, there is vast room for improvment.

Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 2:09 am

I could hear the difference yes between the VCQ1 and the Avalon..Was it enough to command another $1000? The answer then and now is no. From an esoteric standpoint yes.If someone gave one to me I would put it on Ebay for someone who has a better appresiation for that unit and spend the money somewhere else.

There is no guarentee all the expensive gear will become higher priced vintage gear. Most does NOT and you know it.
Here is the proof http://www.prepal.com/data/Avalon.htm[/quote]

As you can see the Avalon sales on Ebay are as follows

MODEL MSRP Price NUMBER SOLD
VT-737SP $2,300 $1,534 157 trending down
VT-747SP $2,500 $1,458 40 trending down
AD-2044 $3,000 $1,777 23 trending down
AD-2022 $3,000 $1,863 20 trending up
Only the AD 2022 is shown as trending up in price. Look at the losses from $800 to $1300 used. Now compare that with Alesis gear

You are wrong again. I will not buy gear Im going to lose that much money on.

Now lets have a look at my Joe Meek

VC1Q Studio Channel $800 $477 126

I paid $650..126 sold at market decided price of $477. I can reasonably expect $450 for a huge $200 loss

Heres a $2400 dual mono Manley pre amp

Dual Mono Mic PreAmp $1,315 23 trending down

23 sold for an average price of nearly HALF retail............

The "vintage" valuable stuff is the exception NOT the rule..

So much for the value of resale for the top end gear...

Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 2:20 am

Regarding the idyllic paradise you call heaven........Very beautiful postcard Kurt...the deer are a nice visual and the creek a nice touch.

With all that beautiful paradise thing going on I don't understand the bitteness and contempt for those who "perhaps should not be recording if they cannot afford preper gear" and I think further people in general.

The only thing that matches your thinly veiled contempt is your ego and desperate need to still be revered as the supreme book of recording knowledge. This is the last place to achieve that and judging from some of the threads its not very convincing.

You have the power of censorship and feel free to use it at will.....You know who you really are and I do. the Home Studio revolution hurt you and I know it...I could tell the way you called us "scabs" and said I would be "squealing like a pig" in some back alley by some musicians union thugs.....back in your glory days.

No No No Kurt You are not telling the whole story behind the pretty paradise backdrop.......... Your $300 demo package with all those expensive antiques says alot about your reputation to command top dollar. How many of those deer are taking you up on that generous offer?

So enjoy the deer and crystal clear water...besides this forum thats all you seem to have left..from the "glory" days and at such a young age. That is a bit sad.

As for me Im not quite ready to "go fishing yet" But I will do the same in Branson as you when I am much older with the rest of the has beens and never will bes.

Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 2:52 am

Kingfrog, hey I'm like Kurt, loaded (enough for me), retired and fishing some of the best trout rivers in the country (sorry can't tell you where, we don't want all the Cali-fornians movin' in), unlike him I saw the hand writting on the wall 40 years ago and left the madness.
I suppose I could buy a $2000 pre and a $200 dollar bottle of wine, but if I were taken to doing things like that I'd still be a broke working slop, with not time to pick or fish.
It's just a home studio, so a couple three hundred bucks is my budget for a pre single or dual channel, maybe that 'brick' but that might even be over-kill for me.
Hey Kurt, what kinda' fishing rod you got ? Do you fly fish? I'm what you'd call one of those avid purist, you put on a wet fly and my nose goes up. Say I got this old $30 fly rod, it's beat to shit, suppose I could buy on of those foo-foo ones for $600, my friends all got 'em, but that little piece of poop I got manages to catch more fish than them.........go figure. Funny, I take a certain pride in making old junk out perform the good stuff........go figure. Granted a good rod will allow you to cast farther to a spooky trout, But a patient fisherman will be able to get closer. Now don't get me wrong I still will drop the big bucks on good fly tying hackle. Sometimes you just gotta have the best......go figure.

Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 9:39 am

I know I'm going out on a limb when I say this but....

kingfrog, you're an a$$#*13! Laughing

Shut the hell up and get out of my topic. Enough Kurt bashing already. People think they're so tough on the internet... I bet you wouldn't say a tenth of the stuff you write on here if you were face to face.

Bottom line, and no one can refute this. If you ask for a professional opinion on budget gear that is crap, you're going to get a crap answer! Surprise suprise! So stop thinking that there is a free lunch, that you can buy 30$ pre-amps that are just as good as 1500$ ones, and go record on your fricking portastudio... i don't really care!

For anyone else out there that wants to buy half decent gear at half decent prices (which doesnt involved Behringer sh1t3), keep asking or searching the forum for info on buys like the Yamaha MSP5 monitors, the Groove Tubes Brick pre-amp, the Studio Projects C1 LDC, and the FMR RNC. THAT my friends, is where the real value is.

This topic has become a mudslinging match and has far gone past what it was intended to be - an apology for cutting up Behringer gear when everyone knows, deep down in their hearts, that you can't buy the Ford Pinto of audio gear and expect a Ferrari F40 in return. I have now come to realize that there are people on this board that can't take the truth for one reason or another, and in order to "make peace" I apologized and said if i don't have anything nice to say, I won't say anything at all.

Since this was my topic and I have said what I came here to say, I ask that this be locked. I KNOW kingfrog will have something to say about this til he takes his last breath, and there isn't a gentlemans bone in the man's body, so unfortunately I see this as one of the 2 solutions.

The other, which I like even more... is to let kingfrog post here all he wants, and just for everyone else to ignore him. Really though people, do we need what he is contributing to this board? Personal attacks on people's opinions, choices, professional career, demeanor and overall character? I say screw him. We don't need that. We are here for one thing only, to learn from the people with experience about MUSIC.

Personally, I'm never reading another one of his posts again. He has lost any credibility whatsoever that he used to have in my opinion. Have some respect.

Tom

Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 10:29 am

there is certainly no reason for personal slander and the frog is been doing a lotta of that lately- makes you wonder what his motivation is-

personally i think that if you want to record for fun we have tools now that are much better than the old portastudio at about the same price- aren't we lucky! i think I paid more than 1k, 80's dollars for my first portastudio and it was fun but definitely not pro- but who cares about pro sound when you are having fun anyway!

But if you have a business or if you want to record more than for fun and are serious about your art- you need better tools. If you can't hear the difference, then sorry you have no ears. Maybe you can't hear the difference but there are people who can. When you do hear the difference it becomes important- until then, who cares!

Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 11:06 am

Yeehaw, this is some good stuff. But I don't see why there is anger and insults being thrown around. I think you guys are failing to see that you are basically in agreement: there are diminishing returns as you go up the ladder towards the high-end audio products. If you don't want a 10% improvement in sound or quality, then don't worry about it. Some people want the best of the best, which will cost more than you believe it is worth. That is where your opinion on "what is good enough" comes into play; it is only your opinion.

Sorry, I try to avoid Bass Pro, but I have some friends that are really into fly fishing around here. Smile

Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 12:53 pm

Quote:

I don't understand the bitteness and contempt for those who "perhaps should not be recording if they cannot afford preper gear" and I think further people in general.

Once again ... I never said that and your repeating the mantra endlessly in quotation marks will not make it so. If you're going to make comments on things I said, it would be better if they were actually things I said. Otherwise, you only make yourself look like a schmuck, especially when you don't even spell the words correctly.

As far as your list of "preper gear" that is depreciating, if you know anything about business, you will understand you can write the depreciation off the tax's. Of course, you have to make money with your music, in order to be able to write off depreciation. Maybe that's an expierence you haven't had as of yet.

It's interesting to me, that you know how to put that information together. My hats off to you. I wouldn't have thought of it. In fact, I don't think anyone else would either unless they were deeply entrenched in audio retail sales or marketing research. It makes me wonder where you are coming from?

Second, the things you listed are not the stuff I have and I have never paid those prices for anything, even the stuff I have bought new. Actually, I am not a big Avalon user. I prefer the old UREI designs of Bill Putnam and things like the LA2a and Neve type stuff. As I said I don't have one mic pre or compressor that I couldn't sell for more than I paid for it. So perhaps my business acumen is better than yours, I don't know. To be truthful, I'm tired of trying to figure what your problem is.

What I do know is you are a coward that doesn't reveal who you really are, or what you do for a living that makes slanderous remarks behind a bullsh*t screen name. I looked at your profile ... no occupation listed, no location listed and the email goes to "kingfrog"@fullocrap.com or something like that. I think you are an industry schill. It wouldn't be the first time one came on to RO undercover to spread bullsh*t.

johnyguitar,
I don't fish. My buddy is a river guide and I float down the river with him a few times a year and I shuttle him back up the river when he floats in to the boat landing a mile up the river from my house. I'm not a hunter or a fisherman though. I actually lived here first before my wife and I moved to CA in the early 80's. So we don't get that "Don't Californicate our State" stuff from the locals. But I did change the plates on the cars pretty fast, when we came back home.

If you are ever in the area, let me know and I'll set you up with my buddy for a river float. He knows where the Salmon, Steelhead and Trout all hide.

Sproll,
I would lock the thread but the problem won't go away ... it has already spread to other threads. Perhaps if enough people complain to Bigtree, he will close out kingfrogs profile and block him from the site. But at this point, it needs to come from somewhere else other than myself or the other mods. It should come from the members.

frog wants me to lock the thread. He knows he has made a major ass of himself and he would like this all to fade away. The best way for that to happen is to force a mod to lock the thread. That way it can never be brought back to life months or years down the line. I have seen 3 year old threads resurface from time to time. One like this will surely haunt the site for quite a while. There's nothing that frog would like than to see better than for this thread locked and to disappear.

The best thing to do is what you suggested, ignore him. I have suspicions that this guy is an industry schill / hack that has come to RO with an agenda to support the dealers and manufacturers of the low end. "Me-thinks the lady doth protesth too much." as Fletcher so aptly put it one time. My suggestion is for everyone to copy the link address of this thread and from now on when ever frog makes a bullsh*t post on RO, reply by posting the link and mentioning that this is what this guy is like. Let the whole world see what a jerk he is.

One thing I know for sure. RO is the most read site of its kind on the net. YThis is one thing kingfrog cannot take away from us. A look at our stats shows that most the time we now have over 100 people at any given moment reading ROs pages with over 8 million page views in the past year. The manufacturers are sitting up and taking a hard look at RO. To think they weren't would be naive. Do a Google search on just about any type of gear and see what comes up on the first ten results. Chances are you will find a link to an RO topic. This does not escape the attention of marketers, manufacturers and retail dealers.

The industry hacks all want access to the base of consumers RO has assembled for them. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. My and others efforts are to keep RO reasonably free of these guys who come here to push crap gear, claming it's performance approaches that of the high end (which my opinion is, it doesn't) on the unsuspecting consumer. By registering under bogus screen names and newly created e mail accounts, they pose as a board members and making positive remarks on crap gear (I mean really, to come on the forum and to push Behringer? haaa haaa haaa haaa!) attempting to counteract any negative remarks reported by users (not just me but all of you as well). Its a way to diffuse bad reports by diluting the pool of negative remarks with bogus positive reports of "plenty good enough" and "how good does it need to be" bullsh*t. I'll tell you how good it needs to be .... As good as you can make it! Sometimes, you only get one chance at the brass ring. Do you want to wonder what might have happened if you had gone that extra mile?

kingfrog hides behind a bullsh*t screen name and won't post a real picture of himself. He has been very ambiguous about what he really does for a living. In one post / thread he says he's from Branson MO ... and in another post / thread he says Las Vegas. hmmmm... both places that have a high concentration of large sound companies and equipment dealers. In another post frog says he sold his buddy an Art pre. These are all little clues he is letting slip through without realizing it. As I said, the more he posts, the deeper the hole he has dug, gets. I am going to see what I can suss out on this guy. The more he posts, the deeper the hole he digs for himself gets. Every time he posts he leaves a clue on the trail. All is cool! K.

Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 2:50 pm

Wow......I didn't realize there were industry shills on these things pushing their brand stuff/junk. Hummm...learn something new everyday.
Must say I have wondered from time to time, some people do sound like commercia