What always pissed me off about Behringer was they are corporate pirates. They reverse engineered a lot of Mackie products and were blatant enough that Greg Mackie felt the need to file suit(s). I never did hear how that turned out. Shamelessly exploiting the Chinese labor differential. Hard to get warm and fuzzy behind that soul-destroying ethic.
That said, I bought a Behringer 802 for my puter mixing chores for $50. God help me... talk about self loathing
I googled and hit this thread, so I figure I should log a followup.
First, others have searched for the so-called lawsuit over Behringer getting sued over copying designs. I think it all goes back to a rumor that a mixer company sued Behringer for copying their layout, or their PCB. Behringer has never mentioned it, the mixer company in question has never mentioned it, and the folks looked for court cases and could find nothing. I think this is all a rumor.
Second, if I remember correctly Behringer *did* get sued over 3d spatial stuff, but everyone else did too. Patent stuff, you know.
Third, there is a trick to Behringer's cost. The products far and wide use ADCs, DACs and DSPs. These chips form the basis of most of their products. So in the end, many of their products use the same foundation, with different software and different front control panels. I *think* it might be possible to take some products and turn them into others by means of midi sysex dumps or firmware manipulation, but I haven't tried.
I own:
2 Ultramizer Pros - I now has a bad dial, but I transported it a lot unprotected. I bought them to use to clean up streaming audio sources (police scanners). Love the midi implentation, and figured I would end up with 12 of them. So $50 used is quite allright.
2 8024 EQs. Use them with QSC DCA amps in my home theater. One has a LCD that is getting a line or two that are bad, but they spend days sitting on. No complaints. Want the new ones
1 MDX-2100. One knob is a bit dirty. Old unit, bought used, and used for a pirate radio station. I was happy.
Vamp pro. No complaints, cheap. I actually bought it new!
FCB 1010 .. I use it with keyboards. No complaints. Bought it used.
the patchbay. .. Lots of audio cables get dirty, I suspect it won't be long before I have issues with it. Bought it used (see a trend here).
My mixer is a Sony. Sometimes I get tons of hiss. It's from one of the inputs.
Your mileage may vary.