Behringer

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WeThePeople

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Looking at the Behringer range it looks well specced and well priced so my question is it cheap tat or good stuff for those on a budget? On of their mixing desks is listed as a hot product in Future Music magazine so they cant be as bad as some folk let on can they?
 
it would be easier to list the manufacturers that have NOT sued them for copyright infringement.... and the quality controll is practiclly nonexistent....
 
WeThePeople said:
Looking at the Behringer range it looks well specced and well priced so my question is it cheap tat or good stuff for those on a budget? On of their mixing desks is listed as a hot product in Future Music magazine so they cant be as bad as some folk let on can they?
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Berhringer provides quality specs, and impressive features at a far from quility build... if you are lucky enough to have it work right out of the box, you'll be pressing that luck keeping it in service for much longer than that... Some have had good luck... but it's just that... luck. Some love it... some despise it... I sit on the fence with not much use for it... I've owned some pieces... never had horrific issues... but never excited about ether... they were sold years ago

You get exactly what you pay for...
 
MOFO Pro said:
Berhringer provides quality specs, and impressive features at a far from quility build... if you are lucky enough to have it work right out of the box, you'll be pressing that luck keeping it in service for much longer than that... Some have had good luck... but it's just that... luck. Some love it... some despise it... I sit on the fence with not much use for it... I've owned some pieces... never had horrific issues... but never excited about ether... they were sold years ago

You get exactly what you pay for...
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Actually in some cases none of what you say is true. Although I don't use for much else than scratch tracks and a talkback channel the ada8000 is a well built piece of gear. It's ran the same for nearly 4 years and so has the 8 channel headphone amp I bought from them. In fact the preamps in the ada8000 stacked up against the Presonus Eureka very nicely, nice enough that I sold the Presonus. However now that I have a True Systems P8 all my prosumer gear sounds kind of lacking.
 
I'll admit to being somewhere in the middle. I think Behringer builds some useful pieces of equipment that are worth the price, and some that aren't even patent infringements. On the other hand, build quality and quality control are spotty at best, and many of their products, possibly even the majority, are obvious cheap copies of equipment made by their competitors.

My most favorite pieces of Behringer equipment include: Vamp II and Bass Vamp Pro (which are in many ways more intuitive than POD and absolutely are not ripoffs of POD or any other amp modeler), ADA8000 (not really a bad 8 channel preamp and A-D D-A convertor), and ECM8000 (a cheap measurement mic that isn't really a bad overhead).

My least favorite pieces of Behringer gear are: any Behringer mixer (prone to failure and an obvious Mackie knockoff) and their studio mic preamps, FX boxes and dynamic processors (prone to failure and mostly sound like the cheap shit that they are).

I don't think you can praise or damn all Behringer gear across the board. It is often useful in a supporting or backup role (I use the ADA8000 for additional voiceover or drum channels, not for front line channels). Just my $.02 worth.-Richie
 
The quality control (QC) is a big issue. Behringer epitomizes what can go wrong with the outsourcing to Asia model. They were one of the first to do it on such a large scale, and really forced other manufacturers to follow so they could compete. This combined with a relatively unsophisticated market base has given us what we have today – crap.

You can buy the exact same product with either Behringer or Mackie stamped on it (some Alesis too). Much of this is not the infringement issue that you hear about, but just the fact that these companies have contracts to buy cookie-cutter no-name Chinese whatchamathings. The Asian manufacturers paint them different colors and brand them with either the Mackie, Behringer or Alesis label. They are exactly the same on the inside.

The old Behringer stuff made in Germany was excellent IMO, but like many companies they are now just a name used to sell junk.

When you see new products by Behringer, Alesis, Lexicon, Kurzweil, Mackie, etc. you must understand that these companies have changed hands (some more than once) since their glory days.

If you ever wonder why I tend to recommend vintage equipment, now you know. And I’m not a gear snob, but in fact believe one can get excellent results with modest equipment. I’ve been doing just that for almost three decades.

Someone can acquire a company and sell anything they want with the name. The name recognition is often the most important thing they’re acquiring. Who knows, next year Behringer could be bought out and go into the chicken farm business in Arkansas. Unfortunately it would probably take something like that for most people to get a clue that it’s not the same company just because it has the same name. ;)
 

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Beck said:
You can buy the exact same product with either Behringer or Mackie stamped on it (some Alesis too).
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i'm not doubting you, and wasn't suprised by any of what you said really, but i was wondering if you have any specific products in mind when you made that comment?

Andy.
 
The Behringer factory looks quite state of the art, shame its not that up too scratch. From what ive read i gather those that hate it or those that have bought bits that have fallen to pieces and those who love it have their gear and it works fine.

Anyone seen these two videos from Audiotechnology magazine? They seem to think in recent years its got better but with a video exclusive like this, can you expect them to say anything else?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqUGLUJF7y4

Its there feedback destroyer i quite fancy, its less than £100 iirc so not the most expensive bit of kit they do.
 
I was told buy a guy in a shop, yes steer clear of behringer as a rule, but of course, they are cheap, and they're fine for anything than doesn't really have parts to go wrong.

Now I was thinking of getting their quad gate, which is about a 5th of the price of anything else, and assumed there's not much to go wrong in one of them... but I've now heard of channel failures and everything! This would only be a gate for live use, so it doesn't have to have studio silence, but I don't want it to be a piece of shit. What do you guys reckon?
 
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my rule is to get behringer stuff that is so cheap it's worth the loss of quality (which ends up being their stuff that's under about $100). like the sansamp clone or a tube screamer clone. the real deals are just too much for a simple little circuit, but there's no way you could build it yourself for that cheap. I don't use them that much, but they are good to have around. If I had dropped $200 on a sansamp, I'd be pissed because it's still direct recording quality, you know? But the behringer gets the job done OK and for $30, there's no harm done if I only use it 5 times in a year to make my silly little recordings.

However, if you're in a serious band, or touring, or attempting to record professional quality stuff, then yeah, get some nice stuff that will stand the test of time.
 
WeThePeople said:
Looking at the Behringer range it looks well specced and well priced so my question is it cheap tat or good stuff for those on a budget? On of their mixing desks is listed as a hot product in Future Music magazine so they cant be as bad as some folk let on can they?
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I do not have any of their gear but I have serious problems with them.

On one hand I do not like companies that do not innovate or invent new stuff themselves. Behr just rips off other companies. Get the new mackie board, ship it to china and say "make me one like this."

Given their price points though, there is another problem, they are likely using the same or similar parts, assembly methods and possibly even chinese manufacturing plants as the companies they are ripping off, so they need to save more money.

So, to keep their price point low (which is really their only selling point) they need to cut costs. How do you do it? You loosen the quality requirements you place on your suppliers and you loosen your quality acceptance on finished goods coming in from your manufacturing partners.

I do not hate people that use their products, and I do not want to imply that all their products are crud. Just that I am personally not comfortable giving money to a company with a business plan like behr. I would rather save, and pay more to the company that actually invented the stuff.
 
jdier said:
I do not have any of their gear but I have serious problems with them.

On one hand I do not like companies that do not innovate or invent new stuff themselves. Behr just rips off other companies. Get the new mackie board, ship it to china and say "make me one like this."

Given their price points though, there is another problem, they are likely using the same or similar parts, assembly methods and possibly even chinese manufacturing plants as the companies they are ripping off, so they need to save more money.

So, to keep their price point low (which is really their only selling point) they need to cut costs. How do you do it? You loosen the quality requirements you place on your suppliers and you loosen your quality acceptance on finished goods coming in from your manufacturing partners.

I do not hate people that use their products, and I do not want to imply that all their products are crud. Just that I am personally not comfortable giving money to a company with a business plan like behr. I would rather save, and pay more to the company that actually invented the stuff.
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You know, I used to rag on behringer for their "business plan" until I realized that many many companies copy good things from other companies. How many LP copies do you see floating around? I could probably find 5 different companies essentially making LP copies within a minute. Same goes for strats. How many companies are out there using the Neve legacy to sell preamps, some going so far as to use 2 of the 4 letters of his last name. I know Behringer just has a "shady" aura around them but if you're going to rag on one company for using another's idea then you should rag on them all.
 
jdier said:
I do not have any of their gear but I have serious problems with them.

On one hand I do not like companies that do not innovate or invent new stuff themselves. Behr just rips off other companies. Get the new mackie board, ship it to china and say "make me one like this."

Given their price points though, there is another problem, they are likely using the same or similar parts, assembly methods and possibly even chinese manufacturing plants as the companies they are ripping off, so they need to save more money.

So, to keep their price point low (which is really their only selling point) they need to cut costs. How do you do it? You loosen the quality requirements you place on your suppliers and you loosen your quality acceptance on finished goods coming in from your manufacturing partners.

I do not hate people that use their products, and I do not want to imply that all their products are crud. Just that I am personally not comfortable giving money to a company with a business plan like behr. I would rather save, and pay more to the company that actually invented the stuff.
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You cant hate them for doing that though, how many of the poducts you own are produced exploiting cheap labour? Taking jobs from your own country and doing the same shoddy business as Behringer do for their entire range.

Im not sticking up for Behringer at all but they all do it, just Behringer dont do it any other way :D

Take Fender for example, you can buy a beatiful US Strat or you can buy one made in a sweat shop in some grotty country for less money and it still has the Fender name on it, atleast Gibson etc pertend they dont :D
 
Let's put it this way - if it wasn't for companies like Behringer, many people would probably not be able to afford any gear at all, because with the lack of low-end competition, brands with established names inevitably end up gauging their customers with tremendous markups.

I have used Behringer equipment, and I have used other equipment that Behringer supposedly copied. I really see little difference between them at a given price level, and correctly so - the equipment is all manufactured by a small set of manufacturers in China who all use the same schematics.

While I am NOT saying that Behringer is the best you can get, you will find that at that price range (typically very low), all equipment is the same qualitatively, irrespective of manufacturer.

And thanks to the low price range, many people who would otherwise just dream about recording/performing are actually able to get their butts out of dreamland and *do* something. :)

So don't knock Behringer too hard. If it wasn't for them, a big chunk of people in these forums just wouldn't be trying stuff out.

For the record, and despite what you may have read here and elsewhere - I own Behringer equipment and except for a blown tube in a pre-amp, I have never had any trouble with it over the years. And I drive my equipment *hard*.

Now watch my rep points dropping here :)
 
I see a lot of people spouting the same lines about "all Chinese companies using the same manufacturing plants," etc. Although this is often true about Chinese manufacturing (not just pro audio or even electronics in general. Stuff like watches, and clothes go by the same process), if you watch that AudioTechnology Behringer City video that WeThePeople linked, you'll note that Behringer has their own factories now... in fact, they own everything (in the manufacturing process) end-to-end. I really don't think Behringer is doing that kind of blatantly-flaunting-the-law copying.

That said, I have had problems with some of my Behringer gear (mixers in particular, but also a 4-channel DI) and no problems with others (my BX4500H for example gets regular use and has had no problems so far). It seems to me that the consistency of quality seems to vary by product.

The design copying issue I'm undecided on. I've wavered back and forth on that for a while and will have to do more research and thinking before I'm convinced, but I do agree that it's strange that Behringer gets a bad rap for copying products while many, many other companies in the industry get away with it without most people blinking an eye.

Certainly I think Behringer has enabled a lot of people to do a lot of things that otherwise may not have been possible, even if it is sometimes worse quality equipment. After all, it's about the music, not the equipment, right?
 
dementedchord said:
it would be easier to list the manufacturers that have NOT sued them for copyright infringement.... and the quality controll is practiclly nonexistent....
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thats funny...so true

Heres the thing...their stuff is what it is...true it's nice to have somebody make products as cheap as they do....tons of people have gotten something from them at one point or another....(me included)..but would i ever even think about buying it again....HELL NO! they make crap...simply put
 
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