Found a Decent piece of Behringer gear!

[Tibbon]

I just picked up the Behringer B-Control Rotary, and it's actually pretty decent for what i'm using it for.

I've got my sidstation and have been wanting an easier and more intutitive way to dig inside of it. I've just been messing with it for a few minutes, and having a cheap bank of 32 extra knobs and 16 extra buttons sure does help. I've gotta make a good preset for my machinedrum and Akai sampler now...

Also in PT 6.7 you can assign anything basically to Midi... so i'm thinking it will be a nice toy then as well, when i get a Digi002R or HD instead of my Digi 001 here at home...

Neve couldn't have made me a better 150 dollar bank of knobs

[De chromium cob]

Shouldnt all Behringer posts be relegated to the low end theory forum?
Congrats for supporting slave labor and intellectual theft.
Quality like that should last you a almost a year.....maybe.
Thanks for letting me borrow your soapbox Kent!

[LumenStudio]

What company did they steal the engineering from for this product? And where's the proof of slaves? Not trying to be a a d*ck, just devils advocate here.

Sending midi messages to a sequencer doesn't seem too difficult if this is the product he's talking about. Midi.org has the spec clearly available for anyone to implement. That was the whole point of midi.

[De chromium cob]

So every Behringer post we have to rehash the history of this company?- Do a search and I'm sure you'll find what I'm talking about.

[twilt]

freinds dont let friends buy behringer

[blackcom]

I think berhinger is pretty cool for what it is....

I remember when being a little brat I coulden't afford stuff like API, Neumann etc....I got a Berhinger eurodesk and a Autocom and managed to "learn" the basics of audio engineering..

The stuff had all the "knobs" like pro gear, so it was a good point to start from...

[Duardo]

What company did they steal the engineering from for this product?

They didn't necessarily steal engineering for every product they build. But I'm with the others here...I'm not going to give them any of my business, recardless, just like I wouldn't buy a product from an authorized dealer who also sells stolen gear as well.

-Duardo

[Leo Goler]

dunno about that particular thing you're talking about but i've tried some of their "gear" in a local store just out of curiousity and man do those pres sound awful!

I don't think their pres qualify for the lowest low-end... It's just... s**t ... Mind you, mixing a pound of s**t with a pound of nice jam makes two pounds of S**T

Having said that... I have their B2031's which make my home theatre

[clan]

Oh please, really the whole behringer uses little kids to build stuff is old. Someone should burn your soapbox.

[Duardo]

Oh please, really the whole behringer uses little kids to build stuff is old. Someone should burn your soapbox.

My issue is not with the fact that they build stuff in China, but with their intellectual property theft...which was the original complaint in this thread as well.

-Duardo

[De chromium cob]

Originally posted by clan
Oh please, really the whole behringer uses little kids to build stuff is old. Someone should burn your soapbox.

Just keep your head in the sand like an ostrich and maybe trends like THIS will go away? 'Oh please' yourself.....The soapbox is now made in China and the soapbox builder is out of work and forced to look for work at Walmart.
And Behringer still bites the big one....

[shineboxNJ]

i dont own any behringer, but if they had something cool i really could give two shits if they stole the idea from someone else. Behringer isnt the only company to do this, most likely any pair of sneakers you have bought in the last decade or jeans you have bought have been made under similar circumstances. I dont like the way it works, but blasting Behringer for outsourcing production is a little unfair since they do the same thing that other companies you cant help but support do. Hell, if you bought a PC in the last 8 years you benefited greatly from this type of stuff. Look at Dell and Microsoft, they outsource their tech support now to India! Those are two homegrown American companies that went overseas to cut costs. Behringer didn't do that, their market plan was always to go after the cost conscious consumer.
I know the biggest problem is about them stealing ideas and I hear what you all are saying, its a shame its like that now, but lets be honest..Behringer went after low end companies like Mackie, who we already trying to do similar things. They stole their ideas, who stole others ideas before, and so on. I really dont think that the Neves, Manleys, GML's, have really been affected by Behringer making a crappy $49 compressor.

[Duardo]

Behringer went after low end companies like Mackie, who we already trying to do similar things. They stole their ideas, who stole others ideas before, and so on. I really dont think that the Neves, Manleys, GML's, have really been affected by Behringer making a crappy $49 compressor.

No, Neve, Manley, and GML probably haven't, but smaller companies like Ebtech...whose cable tester Behringer blatantly ripped off, down to the exact positioning of the buttons and the angle of the words, and who can't afford to take a behemoth like Behringer to court...certainly have. And while Mackie's mixers may have resembled others in the past...what mixers haven't?...they didn't directly copy any like Behringer did. And I'm sure Focusrite's sales were hurt some when Behringer ripped off the Voice Master.

-Duardo

[007]

i dont own any behringer, but if they had something cool i really could give two shits if they stole the idea from someone else.

I've always felt the same way about Behringer. My first mixer was their MX2004, which I only used for monitoring and sure enough, a couple of faders stopped working after about a 6 month period. Oh, and the noise, my god the noise!!!I swore to never buy anything from them again, even if they made guitar picks, I wouldn't do it.

The copy-cat design issue was the least of my concern. The fact that their mixers look like Mackies, their monitors look like Genelecs, or whatever else, who the f*** cares? Just make shit that works! Don't have a budget for better designers, at least spend some money in quality control for f***'s sake!

The horror stories I've heard from all the suckers who bought their Truth monitors, oh my. Loose screws right out of the box, loose tweeters and/or just non-functioning tweeters, right out of the box, and on and on. When they were released, they retailed for about $700. One year later, they were down to $349 a pair. Z'at say something?

Crap, absolute crap.

That said, I think they serve a purpose for a certain demographic. The young and hungry, eager to learn about signal routing, all the fundamentals, basically, nothing wrong with Behringer products, so that once they start moving up the gear chain, they can hear what a difference quality products can make, and then it'll be their turn to bash the big, bad B.

[clan]

Blaim capitalism. Not Behringer.

And birds have nothing to do with this. As if supermarket bread replaced the bakery. Nope, different markets. And a cable tester has been copied, boy oh boy . Call the police!

[jeronimo]

Well, I can see the copycat thing about behringer, but I have to say something.
I tested the Bass V-Amp yesterday for a short period of time, the same kind of test I did with the Bass POD almost 2 years ago and I must say the Bass V-Amp smokes the Bass POD. I don´t know about the Bass POD XT, I heard one last week, but the bass (the instrument) was sounding like shit by itself, so I can´t really judge. But I was impressed by the Bass V-Amp, specially by the price.

[shineboxNJ]

Kent-
Then I apologize, I must have missed your point.

But intellectual theft in the audio industry really doesn't make sense to me. Theres only so many ways to test a cable, to compress a signal, etc.

Company A makes a cable tester or whatever, the product is released, people buy it, people like it, and it works.

Company B finds a way to make it 40-50% cheaper, but degrade quality, people buy it anyways because they are price sensitive and are willing to take the risk. Maybe its broken out of the box, maybe it works without any problems.

Its the consumers choice, in this industry a lot of people are going to go with company B, many will get burned, but the price point makes sense for most musicians budgets. I cant blame company B for this, any consumer should realize the risk of buying something made in Asia with less quality control than products made in the US, UK, etc. I bet most of the companies burned by the Behringers of the world could have easily have competed price wise if they properly sourced material. I commend them for making their own gear and designs, but when it comes down to it everything is fair game. A lot of gear manufacturers go the extra yard to basically disguise and cover up their designs on their boards so its impossible to reverse engineer, Open up a distressor... i dont think theres anyway someone can steal that design..and it shows, because nobody has.
Totally understand what you mean, but the real gripe isnt with the manufacturers. Just my opinion.
mo

[clan]

Shinebox makes my point more clear. You shouldn't blame berry, this is a system we live in. Fender aint sueing the crap out of all the strat wannabe's... simply cuz they don't have to.
Real studio will keep buying the expenisve stuff, berry is purchaesd by musicians that drool over the original but will never be able to afford it. So really, berry is good for the pro audio market since these kids will realise berry aint gonna cut it and will book your studio!

[bnath]

..:


This is probably a bit simplistic of me, but am I missing something here?
Why is Behringer making affordable (perhaps, inferior) clones such a heated, controversial issue, yet folks regularly praise the work of Chandler, Phoenix, Soundelux and the countless others that feature various approximations/emulations of vintage gear (much of which is still in production (Neumann, Neve, et al)) as part of their product line?

I'm not propounding the ethical purity of Behringer by any means... but I do understand the role of intellectual leveraging in the progress of evolution.

And again, I realise this is a somewhat simplisitic distillation, but there is a grey area there which is diffucult to qualify at the ethical or moral level.

b :*

[toledo3]

Originally posted by bnath
..:


This is probably a bit simplistic of me, but am I missing something here?
Why is Behringer making affordable (perhaps, inferior) clones such a heated, controversial issue, yet folks regularly praise the work of Chandler, Phoenix, Soundelux and the countless others that feature various approximations/emulations of vintage gear (much of which is still in production (Neumann, Neve, et al)) as part of their product line?

I'm not propounding the ethical purity of Behringer by any means... but I do understand the role of intellectual leveraging in the progress of evolution.

And again, I realise this is a somewhat simplisitic distillation, but there is a grey area there which is diffucult to qualify at the ethical or moral level.

b :*

The difference is that the companies you have mentioned are derivitave designs of electronics that have expired patents and copyrights. Once a patent has expired it is open to any inventor to use as a starting point, or simply copy.

Berhinger usually copies items that are still patented.

On some thread awhile back, a guy was arguing that copying something that had an expired patent was still ethically wrong. I find that extremely humorous....

I mean, would that guy only use Kleenex brand tissues? Would he only drive around in Ford cars? Would he only use Bell Labs condenser mics... or would he be forced to use Johann Philipp Reis microphones? I mean, where does it stop?

[bnath]

Originally posted by toledo3
Berhinger usually copies items that are still patented.

Ahh.. okay, that explains it... there's quite a bit less grey area in that case. tutt

On some thread awhile back, a guy was arguing that copying something that had an expired patent was still ethically wrong. I find that extremely humorous....

Yeah... I think I was amalgamating the two arguments. The latter seems pretty ridiculous to me.

b : *

[Duardo]

Company B finds a way to make it 40-50% cheaper, but degrade quality, people buy it anyways because they are price sensitive and are willing to take the risk.

I don't have a problem with that, unless they way they find is to copy it exactly, but just build it with cheaper components in a place where it's cheaper to build things. People look at the two products, see that they look exactly the same, and buy the cheaper one. In the case of a mixer or something like that, at least there's an audible difference...but in the case of something like a cable tester, where there is no audible difference, they're stealing from a small company who can't afford to defend themselves.

I commend them for making their own gear and designs, but when it comes down to it everything is fair game.

Is it really fair game when a huge corporation steals the design of a small company, who would run out of money long before their case ever saw trial should they choose to sue?

Fender aint sueing the crap out of all the strat wannabe's... simply cuz they don't have to.

No, but Gibson is suing PRS, and their Singlecut guitars look less like a Les Paul than most of the clones on the market.

Why is Behringer making affordable (perhaps, inferior) clones such a heated, controversial issue, yet folks regularly praise the work of Chandler, Phoenix, Soundelux and the countless others that feature various approximations/emulations of vintage gear (much of which is still in production (Neumann, Neve, et al)) as part of their product line?

Most of the higher-end products are just what you said...approximations or emulations, not direct copies. And the few that are direct copies are, for the most part, copies of devices that are out of manufacture or patent (although there certainly has been some bad blood between Neve and API and some of the newer companies, to name a few...but the "new" Telefunken replica isn't competing with the original manufacturer, and Neumann isn't making any of the microphones Soundelux emulates any more (and theirs aren't exact copies anyhow).

-Duardo

[Synth80s]

Though it has been said in other ways, the key long-term economic problem of intellectual property theft in cases like this is not just lost sales revenue, but the unfair advantages of reduced cost structure and timeline.

Let's say company A spends the time and money to hire good people to design and thoroughly test a product -- that's a real, up-front capital outlay that takes significant time (and, generally speaking, they have to spend more to get it to market faster with equivalent quality if they're facing imminent competition).

If company B steals that design, they largely circumvent that cost and time component. They'll need fewer (if any) highly paid design engineers and they'll require drastically abbreviated design and QA processes.

So, even if company A and B are equally savvy (i.e. cost concious) about globally sourcing their parts and labor, and even if their final products have equivalent quality (which is usually not the case), company B has a clear advantage, economically, so they can afford to undercut company A on price.

Worse still, the spectre of a low cost competitor inn the marketplace will reduce company A's ability license or otherwise make economic use of their intellectual property because it will be seen as commoditized from an economic standpoint, even if illegally so. When assessing the value of intellectual property, the "workaround cost" is always considered. Intellectual property theft, if left unchecked, is the ultimate workaround because it comes at zero cost.

In a capitalist society, protection of intellectual property generally serves as a great incentive to invent, improve and refine all manner of goods. The basic rule of thumb in a capitalist society: if there's no money in it, who's going to do it?

-Synth80s

[BrianK]

>>>I mean, would that guy only use Kleenex brand tissues? Would he only drive around in Ford cars? Would he only use Bell Labs condenser mics... or would he be forced to use Johann Philipp Reis microphones?<<<

Whoever he is, he sounds like a really COOL dude!

[mwd]

It always cracks me up a little to see folks slam Behringers intellectual integrity while using a computer whose original operating system interface was stolen from Steve Jobs and base level programming language borrowed from the author of Q-Dos. That is if you use Windows of course.

I have several Behringer products. Like them a lot. 8 Channel Headphone Amp is great, Truth B2031 Monitors... great and a balanced patchbay... great. No probs. I passed on their mixer and other items.

[Naren]

Originally Posted by mwd

It always cracks me up a little to see folks slam Behringers intellectual integrity while using a computer whose original operating system interface was stolen from Steve Jobs and base level programming language borrowed from the author of Q-Dos. That is if you use Windows of course.

Steve Jobs didn't invent the concept of windows in an operating system! Or the mouse! The guy's ego may make you believe that however. These ideas predate Apple by years. 3M was responsible for much of it. By your standards, Jobs is a thief. He just used 3M's ideas, there is no dispute.

Even when that first horrible Macintosh came out, Atari and Commodore were ready to roll out far superior implementations of the 3M ideas.

Sorry for the rant, but Jobs gets way too much credit. I've hated the guy since he ran those TV ads comparing the "innovative" Apple to cultural icons like Martin Luther King and John Lennon. What a dick!

BTW, the best computers of the mid-80s in order:
Commodore
Atari
Mac
MS DOS

But the success stories are the reverse order of this list. Go figure.

Back to the Behringer debates...

-Naren

[Tibbon]

I totally retract on my comments on this unit. I returned it after about 2 weeks....

[mwd]

Never said they were Jobs idea Naren. Said they were stolen from him. They were given to him by Xerox, not 3M, because Xerox thought they were useless.

Difference was he used them (GUI/Mouse) with permission unlike Gates.

But not to rant on your rant I have no loyalty or fondness of Jobs. Just humor in the irony that one of the biggest anti software piracy moguls started as a software pirate and people never give a second thought to giving him his 6 million a day.

I just don't share the automatic Behringer slams. I have maybe been lucky in my choices but I've bought 3 items that are excellent at the same time knowing of some that are problematic.

[PoorGlory]

I own 4 Behringer products, 3 of which I've had for just about over a year. I have had no problems with any of them. Please tell me what companies and models they ripped off with these:

ADA8000
B1
T1951
UB1202

ADA 8000: Does what it says it can do... pres are nothing amazing, but not horrible either. Other companies make similar products, so who is getting ripped off? (I know about the whole thing with not getting aproval for their digital converters, but thats not the same as ripping someone off)

B1: Other than being on the sibilant side with less body than I could use, its not bad... does a decent job at room micing a guitar cab. Never had any noise problems either. Due to the large number of LDCs on the market, I fail to see who they're ripping off with this one.

T1951: Dual parametric with tube pseudo-gain stage. Lots of people make parametrics. Believe it or not this piece is actually decent.

UB1202: Small format mixer that I use only for routing monitoring. I chose this piece because Behringers mixers are relatively transparent, and I'm not routing anything from this mixer back to my DAW. I find this to be a cleaner, more virgin sound than the Mackie 1202 VLZ, the comparable model. Oh wait, lots of companies make mixers that look exactly like the 1202.

None of these products are garbage, although none of them are "high-end" either. I use real gear for the most important parts of my chain, and these are just there to do a job every once in a while.

I am aware Behringer has stolen ideas from other companies in the past, blatantly even. But tons of companies do that, in every industry. There are no other Behringer products I see myself buying any time soon, but at one time they served a pupose.

[bunnerabb]

I got an MX8000 sitting at a repair shop waiting to be tweaked out so I can get rid of it. The piece that Mackie sued them for.

48 tracks of mixdown OTB and it's not bad for that, at all. The preamps are total ass.

I have a coupe of those little, shitty, palmtop mixers. One's a headphone two buss and the other one couples A/V and jukebox feeds at my FOH rig into a return buss on the Soundcraft to keep channels open for the shows.

I also have a pair of the B2031 Truth monitors. I've heard worse but the idea that you can listen to thse things and they'll make you do what a pair of Gennies or NS-10's or Dyns will make you do, is ludicrous.

They're reasonably accurate but if you use them for a mix ref, your mix is gonna be a bass heavy crock of goo.

It's all going, ths year.

The desk, the Truths.. the small mixers belong to my FOH gig, they sit on the stage all winter.

Behringer also knocked off the dBX DriveRack. I have a three zone audio rig with subs. I'm trying to get them to pop for a DriveRack for better control and interfacing. You dont suppose that, since they're a bar and don't give a sh1t about anything but selling alcohol, that I'll be lucky to get the Behringer knockoff, instead, eh?

People dont buy records. They buy songs. People don't buy sonics, they buy things that just let them hear what they want to hear and lately, it's hard to get them to pay for the songs, too.

You can call it education, but if it's for a product, it's called advertising. Things haven't changed much. They've just been turned into a digital hash and digital makes everything inherently meaningless. Just numbers jumping through hoops. As long as Hans can get big numbers coming in to his accounts and keep the outgo numbers lower, he will be a profiteer and he will keep putting the same dog on the same pony.

The only vote you got is your wallet.

The rest is grandstanding.