Anyone using a Behringer Eurorack??? Feedback?

  • Thread starter Thread starter kbatschke
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kbatschke

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Hi,

I'm in the market for an inexpensive, small mixer and mic pre-amp for home PC based recording. Acoustic guitar and other acoustic instruments. I've seen Behringer and Mackie mentioned as good for this purpose. The smallest Mackie is 12 channel which is way over my needs, but I don't want to be limited to something like the ARP two channel mic preamp.
Is the Behringer equipment as quite as it is billed?

Thanks,

Karl
http://www.mp3.com/twiceshy
 
Forget the Behringer.... (to find out why, just search this forum for the keyword "Behringer"...)

Bruce Valeriani
Blue Bear Sound
 
I have both a 1604A and a 1602A and find em both to be decent little mixers...but then again, I have nothing to compare them too. They seem to work for me, and with adequet results.
 
I disagree with Bruce. I've listened to several Mackies--large and small--and I own a Behringer MX802, and to my ears the mic pres sound almost identical--and the Behringer costs about 1/3 as much as the equivalent Mackie. If you search this board, as Bruce suggests, you will read good things as well as bad said about Behringers. There are Mackie bashers as well. The infamous Ed Rei (aka sonusman) has a profound distaste for Mackies. Here's one of his earlier posts:

"I am with DaveO here, a ART will be a much better way to go than ANY Mackie mic pre.

"I have yet to find many cases where the Mackie pre amp actually imparts a better sound than the ART, or a TL Audio pre.

"The Mackies tend to have a very sharp, cold, crispy, edgy sound to them. The head room sucks which really prevents them from using a little pre amp distortion to smooth out transients when running hot. I have only found one time when a Mackie pre worked better for a track, and that was a Rhodes track I was recording. The Rhodes itself was not in that great of shape, and it was creating a lot of low end distortion. The Mackie's brittle sound helped compensate for this. But other than that, the Mackie pre just really doesn't compare. That is more than just a concensus of people on this BBS, that is a consensus of nearly every engineer I have ever talked to who has tried both."

Ed


I'm not trying to pick a fight with Bruce. He has much more recording expertise than I. And almost always his advice is excellent. But I believe he is wrong in telling you to forget about Behringer mixers. In my opinion, they are one of the best buys for people on a tight budget, and as you can see, everybody has differing opinions.
 
Well...

...I agree with you on one thing! Everyone has different opinions related to their own personal experiences.... But that's OK... the idea is really to use what you got the best way you can...... a good engineer will tend to be able to make almost any piece of gear sound usable because of their experience and technique.

I do have happen to have some direct experience in having a chance to A/B compare a Behringer MX9000 and a Mackie 8-buss. Guess who won! If people think the Mackie's are brittle they should hear the Behringer's! I use a 24*8 Mackie and have never had headroom problems - I tend to bypass the pres on recording single instruments/vocal, in favor of a PreSonus VXP pre direct to tape. I also tend to use EQ very sparingly, opting instead to get it sounding the way I want as it goes to tape. Are there better consoles out there? ABSOLUTELY! But I can make that Mackie sound pretty damn good........ actually though, I would love to hear what I could do with an SSL! :D

Anyways, kbatschke, your best bet is to try out and do some A/B comparisons at your local shop... then you can use YOUR ears to decide....

Cheers all... :)
Bruce
 
I have the 802 Behringer, and it works well for me. I am not a recording engineer nor do I claim to be.

For the money, I think Behringer makes a decent mixer. I'm a real amateur but I like the sound of my 57 Reissue Strat > Pod Pro or Boogie Subway Rocket > 802 Mixer > Turtle Beach (stock PC card). It sounds pretty good for what I have invested in it. Would I like all higher end equipment? Sure. Does my budget allow it? Not at the moment.

-mesboogie
 
I have a Mackie 1202VLZ Pro. Its preamps are good, but not quite as good as the hype would lead you to believe. They have plenty of headroom, but are very "crisp" (dare I say "harsh"), but definitely a bargain for the cost/quality.

I havn't heared the Behringer mixers, but I have a few other bits of Behringer stuff that I am very happy with, so I am not in the bash-Behringer camp, and think that it is probably worth a try. If you can A/B compare somewhere, (Guitar Center ?) that would be ideal !

Rick
 
I own a Behringer MX602 but I don´t use it any more for recording, because I recently bought a mindprint Di-port
mic pre ADDA converter. It has two mic inputs with phantom
and also a very usefull monitoring section. People are talking a lot about the mindprint en-voice in this forum,
the Di-Port has the same mic pres, but without the signal processing. If you have an I/O card without spdif you can use it just analog and upgrade later..
 
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