Phonic: Another Behringer?

[Duffster]

Lately I have noticed the rise in Brasil of a new prosumer brand called phonic that seems to be competing with behringer. Is this stuff better than behringer? It certainly looks cooler.

[Tim Farrant]

Whilst still a low cost brand, my experience with Phonic gear has been pretty good. We see alot more Behringer gear in for service than we do Phonic - and there is plenty of it around in NZ. I think their quality control is way ahead of Behringer. As for sonics, I could not really be definitive as I don't use their consoles, but I can't imagine it being any worse than Behringer!

The XP series of PA power amps Phonic make are excellent, and comparable in performance to many other well known US brands at significantly lower cost.

Tim.

[DrDeltaM]

Phonic builds or used to build cheap stuff for other manufacturers who rebranded it under their name. Now they release under own name. I wouldn't be surprised if Behringer is/was a customer of them, the current Phonic range looks very much the same.

I'd avoid both if possible. Go for a cheap Yamaha MG series mixer instead, or one of the Spirit budget E-series.

[Duffster]

I don´t actually want to get any of this stuff, just see there comressors and preamps in all the music stores by my house. Everybody is buying it and saying that it is light years better than behringer....no accoplishment there.

[blackcatdigi]

phonic was a major OEM company and built a few well-regarded pieces (Yamaha graphics and a few mixers, specifically). You've probably used their stuff before, under a different brand. They haven't really been able to build much of a presence for their own brand, due to their rather ineffective musical chair mgmt style. I never sat down at a table with the same guy twice...

Perhaps that has changed.

[blackcatdigi]

Originally Posted by DrDeltaM

Go for a cheap Yamaha MG series mixer instead, or one of the Spirit budget E-series.

That's funny, cause phonic used to (and possibly still does) build(s) lower cost Yamaha gear!

Is this irony?

[Reptil]

coming from a low cost setup I compared phonic and folio notepad
the notepad has better build quality, but the phonic had better preamps and a better sound
this really surprised me.
I didn't buy either of em, but if you buy a phonic, don't drop it. I will break

beringher is
I had to play as a dj on beringhers. it was hell. weird eq curves, humm on some channels, mind you I'm talking new mixer here.

the mackie I got instead (6 years ago) now suddenly developed a weird dropout problem. Some channels don't work (like ch 1 and ch 2) unless I plug something in ch 3. I didn't do anything with the thing, it was just in the rack and was fine in previous sessions. Now it is crap.

I you can find it, go for an old broadcast mixer like a sony. They go on ebay cheap and have a fat (transformer) sound and good eq. Built like tanks, and they weigh as much too..

[seb37000]

I used to do a lot of live gigs and one of the band always carried a little phonic 16 channel mixer with them in case the place they played at had a shitty or even no mixer at all.
Its better than berihger in sonic and solidity, we have toured with the phonic for more than a year across europe and it has never let us down.
The sound is passable and the band still records there demos with it after 2 years of service.
The thing I really dislike about it is that I was alway's scared of breaking everything on it since it looks so small and fragile, but to my surprise it held up the hole time.
befor getting the phonic the band had a yamaha, a makie, a soundtrack, and a berihger, after about 2 months of touring all of them had several channels that where not working and other problemes.

[seb37000]

I'm sorry I made amistake it was not a soundtrack but a studiomaster.