I dono, for 45 bucks I like my Behringer Xenyx 502. But for that money there might be something even better. Needless to say, after seeing how expensive 'good' gear is, I really think it is a great tool for learning! No idea about their other products though, but that's what I hear a lot too.

Hey Slice -

Great question. First - if you do a short search on the forums here, you'll find a LOT of reasons why people hate Beh***ger.

Here's my reasons -

1 - For that price, it's plainly obvious that they are using literally the cheapest possible parts for their gear. I couldn't build a mixer that cheap with a DigiKey catalog and a year's worth of time. Much less pay some poor Chinese woman $.05 an hour to sit in my sweat shop and put the stuff together. In other words, the parts are of poor quality.

Let me explain even further. Let's take a resistor for example. A resistor is labeled with different colored bands around its body to indicate its value. In addition to that, it's got one last little band that shows its tolerance. A 1% resistor will have a gold band, a 5% resistor will have a silver band and it goes down from there. (Some of you EE's on the board, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong - it's been a LONG time since that class and I may be a little off on my values).

In any case, let's assume that a resistor has a value of 75 ohms. With a 1% tolerance, it could be as high as 75.8 ohms or as low as 74.2 ohms, but in general, it's pretty darned close and will not cause any major issues if it's that little bit off.

Take a 5% tolerance resistor at 75ohms. It could be as high as 79 ohms or as low as 71 ohms. This is a gigantic swing!

Now imagine a 10% or even worse!!!20% tolerance!!! If you're not sure how this would affect your sound, here's a simple test - put a simple 110 ohm resistor on your word clock termination(AES - or 75 ohm for SPDIF) and change it from 1 to 5 to 10 percent tolerance. Now listen to the sound get brittle and choppy (and maybe even pops and clicks)

A 1% (or better) resistor can set you back from $.50 a piece to as much as $5 a piece! A 10% tolerance can be bought in bags of 100 for only a couple dollars.

2 - Behr***er is famous for ripping off others' designs. For example, they ripped off Mackie on both their "Truth Monitors" and some of their mixers. So, Mackie patents or trademarks (or both) their circuit design and then B comes along and steals the desing but makes it with lower tolerance/cheaper parts and sells it. This is a very bad business practice. Despite the fact that Mackie sued B, it didn't matter since the laws aren't the same in every country and are very tough to enforce across borders and oceans.

3 - This is going to come off all wrong and I don't mean it to.

Audio Engineering is an art and a science and it's being destroyed. Why I say this is because everyone who plays a guitar or drums nowadays thinks that they can go to guitar center, drop $50 on a mixer and $50 on a cheap ass mic and become an audio engineer. Then, the market gets flooded with music (not altogether a bad thing, but too much *poorly recorded music* is a bad thing.)

I honestly believe that there needs to be a higher price of admission into the audio world than $100.

Sorry - I know it doesn't sound very nice, but I hold it to be true.

Cheers -

J.

Thanks for the answer!

Any advice on good brands that still come in at a low price, but not cheap?

(I'm actually looking for a mixer with 5 to 12 ins and 2 or 4 bus, any ideas?)

couldn't build a mixer that cheap with a DigiKey catalog and a year's worth of time.

Minor quibble here, Digikey is actually really pricy, you pay for the excellent service.

A 1% resistor will have a gold band, a 5% resistor will have a silver band and it goes down from there.

Actually 5% is gold, and silver is 10%, however through hole resistors are harder to find in modern gear. (No… please no one start the whole SMT is bad thing again.)

Audio Engineering is an art and a science and it's being destroyed.

True.

Personally I agree with all mentioned, the bad tolerances make for noisy problematic units. Being an electronics designer and professional engineer, I have to admit circuit copies upset me. It’s simply not professional, for that reason alone I would have a hard time supporting Behringer.

However the market has shown once again, that integrity is not important to most consumers. Pro audio is a very interesting market, historical Audio Engineers were quite versed in at least the basic physics of their profession. As the price of gear drops the perceived value of audio gear drops.

Ask yourself if someone gave you a $50 mixing desk would you spend the time to learn its inner workings? What if someone gave you $50,000 dollar desk? Which would treat with more respect? Which would you feel more compelled to study?

Bottom line, and I apologize for the rant, Behringer is not providing the world with gear to enable the masses, its actually reducing the value of music production.

removed

Jeremy did such a good job that I'll just riff off of his answers.

1. Quality. Not only does Behringer put price ahead of all other attributes, you can't even get a fix on anything that they do consistently well. In contrast, a company like Peavey makes a lot of inexpensive stuff, but it is clear that they at least try to make it durable. I'm a reformed Behringer owner. It's all gone. I would have been better off saving my money to get better equipment in every case. Didn't always know it at the time, but it is clear in hindsight.

2. The trail of lawsuits speaks for itself. However, it does not bother me that much. We are talking mixers and speakers here. Everyone uses some degree of reverse engineering. I know several engineers who have been sued for similar reasons, so I've seen the other side. I'm willing to leave this to the lawyers.

3. Here I completely disagree with Jeremy. If he has led a bad life he will probably have to spend eternity listening to a bunch of people with multimillion dollar studios complaining that new technology has let riffraff like him into the business. :wink:

Ha...you must know me well Bob as it's quite likely that I'll end up just as you say. Though my fear isn't what you say, it's having to listen to Kenny G and John Tesh records for all eternity.

Bear in mind though that I'm not saying inexpensive gear has no place and that people can't start and learn on cheapo stuff. I just hate that companies like Behrin**r sell themselves as "pro" and so many people buy it and proclaim themselves "pro engineers."

If they pitched it as "educational tools," I'd have no beef with it at all.

I myself think of Behringer stuff as home studio equipment nothing more, it will never go pro that's for sure, but for someone like me it does fine until I go to university in recording arts.

Cucco wrote: .... Though my fear isn't what you say, it's having to listen to Kenny G and John Tesh records for all eternity....

Never imagined you'd been that bad. Or is that just plans for Saturday night.

Words hurt Bob...

Slice wrote: ...what's your guess of the best mixer brand in the same very low price range?

Well, it's obvious that price is a serious factor here since you say "very low price range". So that being the case, Behr**ger is you answer. They are cheap and can work.

If you are just messin' around it'll likely do the job you want. If you want something that will last for a dozen years or so you will need to spend more money.

I would suggest checking out the used market, craigslist, pawn shops, eslay, etc. You can likely get a better unit for around the same price.

Let's say...what's the cheapest after Behringer? (with not too bad quality)

In a word....Yamaha.

Thanks, I'll look into their gear.

yeah yamaha has a nice feel to their stuff. Its cheap but has a good quality feel about it. Safer bet than Behringer.
On the topic of Behringer and more over home recording , I think its the new punk. I don't mean that in the watered down dross angdrogenized crap that claims to be punk, but the fuck you very much establishment punk of yore. DIY recording is the male solo accoustic act of the decade and is a music movement in itself. People are thinking outside the square and doing amazing things by being inventive and making music using shit gear a creative choice. Its REAL punk! Engineers who know better will never like it because it defies the rules. But just because it defies the rules doesn't mean that it lacks merit. Some idiot savant is out there putting the lot of you to shame. Evolve or die!

Actually in some cases evolution seems to be killing us. :) sorry couldn't resist

DIY is definately coming to be more of a state of mind than it has in the past. I think using crappy gear is the best way to grow as an engineer. What better way to learn about signal flow than trouble shooting a buzz throughout your entire signal chain from your mic to your speakers? I think crappy beginner gear is what pushes pros to the top. Given, anybody who can talk to a Guitar Center salesman can call themselves an audio engineer, but without the drive to REALLY become an engineer, they will always be stuck in that "learning at Guitar Center" mentality. Behringer, hell yeah, they are cheaper components, and they will definately break down faster than say a Mackie, or Yamaha, but they are an affordable place to start, and you will be forced to learn about how to record a sound wel,l so you don't have to kill your mix by using crappy eqs to try to make it sound better.

Behringer

Hi there,

New to forum so have been catching up on different topics.

I reckon it's very much each to their own view regarding any manufacturer.

I still think it's a fairly safe bet that there are quite a few Pro Studio's using Behringer gear. Even if it's only their DI boxes or Headphone Amps or whatever!. There are also Pro's using Behringer gear in `Live` applications. They might take the view that they use Behringer gear cos it actually does the job really well, instead of being a stop gap till they can afford something better.

As previous posts have suggested, Behringer gear can be good to cut your teeth into Audio production, but I would also argue that one could really learn how to get the best results from the gear and be able to produce some quality sounds.

I could also argue re reliability by saying that `none` of my Behringer gear has let me down and I have several products.

Personally, I have a small recording setup to pursue my musical and audio interests. It is probably worth remembering that It's the music that is important to me more than the actual audio stuff. I would never claim to being an audio engineer by any manner of means, my objective is to capture my musical ideas as best as I can with the tools I've got. I don't see the need to go and buy a top notch compressor.

Given that it's all a learning curve and I've been a musician for 30+ years, I am aware however of the quality to be had from different gear!

It's also worth considering that my outboard `crappy` gear has outlasted several PC crashes, OS, software / dongle and Plugin crashes.

Read any audio forum and I'll rest my case. I think the whole PC software, plugin thing is a minefield and it's getting worse cos it's sucking everyone and his granny in.

I'm inclined to take the view to a certain extent, that as far as equipment goes,

EQ is EQ, Reverb is Reverb, Compression is Compression, Gating is Gating

Someone who has the skillset / experience to apply this stuff can do it just as well with a waves EQ plug, JMeek compressor, Alesis Reverb and Behringer Gate.

Anyway, just a shout up for some behringer gear that I've found good

Cheers
pkev

The behringer stuff I have used I inherited and haven't liked any of it. The headphone amp well.. has no power. It can't drive the number of headphones it has Jacks for, can't even drive one set properly. The DI's well they work ok. The eq well I just disconnected it because it kept doing weird things to the sound randomly. Just my experiences with their stuff maybe others have different experiences.

Behringer is kind of hit and miss. Some of it really sucks, and some works ok... occasionally a piece might actually work somewhat well.

It can still be just fine for someone to learn on.

I avoid Behringer simply for their unethical business practices, which are well documented and available to anyone who does a google search. (The now-infamous Sam Ash/Berhinger/Mackie lawsuits are a good place to start...)

The head of Behringer once bragged in a print interview that they did lots of reverse engineering to replicate other manufacturers products, to save $ and time in R&D. I simply don't need to buy stuff from the hardware equivalent of cracked software. Not only that, I'd be very embrassed to have any of their stuff for serious work here in my place of biz, for clients to see.

Having said all that, I'll sheepishly admit that I recently bought a dozen headphone amps for a click-track orchestra recording. For that, they worked just fine, and my only rationalization for the purchase is that nothing else with those specs was available at the time to do the job. They're safely put away in a box until the next time I ever need them. I don't plan on making any other Berhinger purchcases beyond that; there's simply too many other serious choices out there instead, regardless of the cost.

Of course, YMMV.

cheeseman wrote: yeah yamaha has a nice feel to their stuff. Its cheap but has a good quality feel about it. Safer bet than Behringer.
On the topic of Behringer and more over home recording , I think its the new punk. I don't mean that in the watered down dross angdrogenized crap that claims to be punk, but the fuck you very much establishment punk of yore. DIY recording is the male solo accoustic act of the decade and is a music movement in itself. People are thinking outside the square and doing amazing things by being inventive and making music using shit gear a creative choice. Its REAL punk! Engineers who know better will never like it because it defies the rules. But just because it defies the rules doesn't mean that it lacks merit. Some idiot savant is out there putting the lot of you to shame. Evolve or die!

There's several points in this post that I feel need some response.

While I agree that home recording with cheap gear is perhaps the new wave, (yes, I understand about the whole 'less-is-more' scene thats current) as far as it being the 'new punk' or a movement based on antiestablishment mores, I couldnt disagree more. Yes, there is a segment of the recording community that strives to establish itself as a viable sales force , one of the sales points being DIY in nature or inventive low-fi recordings.....Most of this has been fostered out of necessity rather than a 'breaking of the rules' and while it shows incentive and most of all the desire to record anything with any gear available, you cannot tell me that given the monetary ability to 'move up' in gear quality that these very same people would not do so in a heartbeat.

This is not to suggest that even with a better set of toys that there wouldnt be 'off-the-edge' techniques attempted and applied liberally. A Neumann through a floor pedal of some sort is simply a better mousetrap than a Ber....er mic through the same thing. The results, in fact, probably more stunning and diverse.

It makes me glad to be a member of a community that is willing to forego any established set of 'rules' in order to participate in something that we all know drives us to insanity.

But to simply call it an antiestablishment movement is simply not reality.

And for those who have no experience in the past or do not study the past as a historic perspective on today,( these forays into the seemingly untapped space of what appears to be far-out experimentation with sonic boundarys), would do well to research this back to the 60's psychedelic explosion and see that its all been done before.

The only difference is that now, due to the relative inexpensive gear readily available to the average home recordist, its much more prevalent than it has been in the past.

But in all things, a dilution of the colors or the consistancy of anything is simply not going to stand the test of time. Not to say there isnt brilliant soundmaking going on this very moment with low-budget gear and surroundings.

To assume that "engineers that know better" will not like it because of some mythical set of rules shows weakness of the understanding of these very RULES. Any quality engineer knows the only 'rules' there are , are the ones established by the physical universe and the reproduction of sound and noise in this particular dimension we exist within. A real engineer easily sees ways around limitations within these sets of parameters in order to accomplish the task at hand, is willing to do so, and ,actually, most that I know, relish the idea that a session isnt going to be one of grinding out song after song using established criteria and technique.

Its statements like these that show me that this poster has NEVER worked with an accomplished engineer of any kind or he would know this.

Lets not mix our apples and grapefruits in this. Record company executives, A&R people, and certainly not management, are not the same as the engineer. While these other types may in fact have a prediliction towards some establishment bottomline and routine to make records, most engineers are in fact weird scientists that given the opportunity to go off the map in search of new territory will do so without much prompting.

Finally. Evolution is a multifacetted process. While I do agree that the model for record making and marketting is now broken and in need of a new beginning, artistically speaking, there is only the artists themselves to be held responsible for any new and improved facet of sound that may or may not titillate the general publics musical funnybone.

As far as 'idiot savants....I have some experience with these....its very rare that ANYONE of this true nature is able to operate in public or at any level of success due to the nature of their being. So while there may be brilliance being established in someones basement with all the lights out, the chances of this ever coming to light are few and far between and certainly not to the point of threatening the existance of the entire music producing community.

"Evolve or die??" Hardly. Grow and thrive....

Dave -

I agree with a lot of what you say. But I think that there is a good parallel between punk and the DIY movement. It seems to me that most of the impetus for American punk* was not a rejection of the social establishment as much as a a rejection of the established musical conventions of the early/mid 70's. Going to three chord - two minute songs was a reaction to the Carpenters or Captain & Tennille on one hand and the prog rockers on the other. Today all of the most financially successful pop music has converged on a few very successful formulas. All of these formulas are dependent on large modern digital studios. DIYers (like others) have rejected these formulas and sought another direction. If they are smart enough to keep their eye on the musical ball and keep from believing their recycled slogans they might do something. (How many times have I heard that mess?)

As for an idiot savant coming to the rescue. It won't be an idiot, it will have to be someone damned smart. Guys like Les Paul and George Martin who made it up as they went along (and made a lot of mistakes along the way) were very bright guys. Most people who start from scratch end up with scratch.

* Brit punk is another story altogether.

What is cheap but safe?
Samson, some Alesis, Yamaha, some mackie... show me more :)