Behringer: beauty or the beast?

Savman

Just wondering what people's thoughts are on Behringer gear, I have found that most of their equipment is superb considering the astonishing price comparisons with the established manufacturers.

Generally I have heard mixed views on Behringer, those that like good cheap gear think they're the biz, others say they're awful and wouldnt touch them with a barge pole.

In honesty I think some people are snobbish, especially some folks who claim to have "years of experience" in some mysterious recording studio in the sticks or whatever and who just retort to "oh behringer are just crap" without trying to understand why??

Also do you think any of you could pass the "pepsi challenge" between, say, a Behringer Poweramp and a Dynacord Poweramp using just your musical ear and without being told which was which??

Karl Hungus

Having a V-Amp pro myself, I give them a thumbs up, they create some good gear for the price. Even Rusty Cooley uses the V-Amp Pro in his practice rig.

Beecher

They make great gear but always seem to have some design flaw which stops them from being perfect, for example on my behinger mixer the phantom power can only be turned off by setting the phantom power to off, unplugging the unit, then plugging it back in, or my Bass V-amp Pro, lovely piece of kit but the front dials dont seem very strong and they are directly connected to the circuit board so if you break one its gone. Still though if given the chance I would still buy them again.

bombidol

yeah one of the knobs broke off both my Vampire and my Vamp. but not properly, i was able to glue them back on perfectly

Paladin

Definately great value for money. Very little wrong with them for the price, but its like buying in Lidl.
Getting cheap pet food, who cares? Get cheap meat and you are dying sick then you will care.

Get a cheap Behringer pedal, grand. Careful about the other things you get. They might be cheap, but they might just not be good enough as my friend found out with a guitar amp. For a little more he could have gotten the great value Fender 212.

Eoin Madsen

Savman wrote:

In honesty I think some people are snobbish, especially some folks who claim to have "years of experience" in some mysterious recording studio in the sticks or whatever and who just retort to "oh behringer are just crap" without trying to understand why??

Honestly, sometimes the reasons are hard to explain unless you understand already. When I bought my Behringer mixer 3 years ago, I thought it was fine. Right now I can tell you I'll never buy behringer "pro-audio" ever again. Think Epiphone vs Gibson. It's difficult to define, but there's a fundamental lack of fidelity when compared to more expensive equipment.

Savman

Eoin Madsen wrote:

there's a fundamental lack of fidelity when compared to more expensive equipment.

This is exactly what I mean, can you expand on that? It's quite a vague statement.

I mean, what more would you want for the price??? A "fidelity button"??!

Doctor J

It's not something you can really explain. It's something you'd hear. Better stuff just sounds better. It resonds to minute changes more transparently. Usually it feels better too. That applies to most things, not just audio equipment.

Eoin Madsen

Honestly, I think it's fine for the price. You pay feck all for it, you get feck all for it. The cheaper you go the better "value" you get, that's always been the way in the audio industry. If you want twice as good, you pay 10 times the money. But at a certain point you just have to do it if you want to have that quality.

Detail might be an even better word than fidelity. Being able to hear every little nuance - the sound of guitar strings resonating so clearly that you can see them. It's timbral, not spectral. If the detail isn't in the sound, no amount of EQ can put it there.

Savman

Ok fair point, but isnt that getting into the nitty gritty technical stuff? I would guess that your average intoxicated punter wouldn't give a damn what brand name was on your FX rack

Doesnt the audience come into the equation at some point. Granted you want to sound your best but there's an old adage that a good band will sound good thru anything and a bad band wont sound any better thru a great PA.

I'd be of the opinion that Behringer has a place somewhere in Audio setups, even if its just the straight forward stuff like DI boxes and the like.

dabhoys

Behringer are excellent for the price range with out a doubt, won't argue that cuz I've one of there head phone amps and it does what it says on the tin. I've no problem using behringer gear in live situations, but the draw back to me is reliability in this situation. So to this point this is where behringer gear has it draw backs.

As for in a recording situation I wouldn't even consider it. Yes they do the job and yes there great for the price. But if they were so great no one would be buying, pro tools rigs, neves, ssl's, manley, neumanns, akg's etc. All the great engineers in the world would be using behringer. They just aren't made with the same quality components or the made with the same care. It's the same with guitars.

But at the end of the day its like everything, its subjective. No one person can say this is the ulitmate and all and be all. We have our different approaches to music and recording. If we didn't the world would be quite a boring place

As for myself, behringer offer some good products for certain applications. But do what you feels and sounds right at the end of the day.

Karl Hungus

Savman wrote:

Ok fair point, but isnt that getting into the nitty gritty technical stuff? I would guess that your average intoxicated punter wouldn't give a damn what brand name was on your FX rack

Doesnt the audience come into the equation at some point. Granted you want to sound your best but there's an old adage that a good band will sound good thru anything and a bad band wont sound any better thru a great PA.

I'd be of the opinion that Behringer has a place somewhere in Audio setups, even if its just the straight forward stuff like DI boxes and the like.

If there's one thing I hate, it's this lowest common denominator arguement. So what if some drunk idiot can't dell the difference? He's not the one with the gear, so why would it even matter? He's not the one playing, it would be me, it's my gear, it's my sound, and it's my ear. After that particular punter would go home, probably never to see the band again, I'd be the one still playing that for hours each day. So why would any of it matter with reguards to that one punter?

That's like saying you should be happy with a transvestite, because they'd fool someone who'd just see you together from a distance! Well that dog just won't hunt, monsenior. It's not someone else's perception that should matter, it's the magic that happens in bed that counts, and I think I'd want the real deal. Likewise, there's probably very few people in general who could actually tell the difference between a nice tube amp, or some digital immitation, but damnit Jim, I'm one of those few, and it matters a hell of a lot to me.

Another way you could look at it is that a musician who's only concern is whether or not some strung out crowd notice what gear he's playing, then he's probably not taking that much pride in his sound. Well that musician is just not me, and I'd have to say I don't like him at all, because music isn't about getting one up on the punter as it were, it's about the music. :v:

Savman

So, in summary, what your saying is Behringer is made by Transvestites

Karl Hungus

Savman wrote:

So, in summary, what your saying is Behringer is made by Transvestites

Well yeah, the stuff is made in Taiwan after all, isn't it?

Eoin Madsen

I have a pair of Behringer DIs. They're noisy when you really push them, and I don't think they're especially transparent.

Savman wrote:

Ok fair point, but isnt that getting into the nitty gritty technical stuff?

Well, no. At the end of the day that's just me trying to find words to describe something which my ears are recognising. I'm fairly sure at this stage that most people would hear the difference, they simply don't know what to attribute that difference to. Non-musicians in the crowd don't hear the sound between a Les Paul and a Strat. And they wouldn't be consiously aware of the difference between a Les Paul and a cheap Epiphone. But they know what sounds "good" and what sounds "great".

The good bands vs bad bands shouldn't enter into the discussion. Needless to say, you shouldn't try and use equipment to make up for a lack of a ability. But it's also worth making the observation that the really good bands always seem to have good gear.

Even at a distance, a regular is going to notice that there's something a bit iffy about your tranny girl/boyfriend.

Savman

Eoin Madsen wrote:

the really good bands always seem to have good gear.

Yes this I observe to be true and I'm sure down the years there has always been cheaper manufacturers to rival the expensive gear.

Its just that *most* behringer gear I've used is fine for heavy live use (which is where gear tends to get used and abused mostly due to awkwark positionings, transport and general wear & tear) and while I'd never 100% trust a Behringer mixer or Poweramp I have seen decent venues and decent studios using Behringer Compressors, EQ and Rack Processors.

Without falling into the "ah it'll do" attitude towards sound, I still dont see why its such a bad thing to use their stuff. I really cant see why its justified paying an extra couple of hundred euro for example a Gate unit for Drums where technically its just a tool in the signal chain and if a Behringer Gate "opens" and "closes" the channel ok isnt that enough?

Eoin Madsen

Savman wrote:

I really cant see why its justified paying an extra couple of hundred euro for example a Gate unit for Drums where technically its just a tool in the signal chain and if a Behringer Gate "opens" and "closes" the channel ok isnt that enough?

If you get an expensive Gate that may be the case... but in this case the whole signal passes through the Gate circuit. In your average analog device there could easily be a half dozen points where signal bleeds to ground (it's essential in most circuits). Quality of components and the design of the circuit itself becomes crucial if you want to retain complete transparency - signal strength and frequency balance is changed so easily. In the case of a Behringer Compressor or Gate that doesn't even apply for worse reasons - it's not analog. The signal gets converted from analog to digital, processed, and then converted back to analog before being sent on its way.

Personally, I'm all for the digital revolution - but you pick a domain and stay in it. The more you sample back and forth, the further you get from the orignal signal. Sampling is a complicated process, and the converters Behringer use are as cheap as they come. And make no mistake, they're not using digital in their rackmounts because it's particularly better. They do it because it's cheaper.

Acoustics really complicate perception in a venue. Obviously, the behringer gear works or you'd return it to the shop. But without a frame of reference it's impossible to judge how the rig compares to others - ie, whether it would sound signifcantly better if you had a Crest rig, for example, in the same venue. What you might assume to be muddiness from poor acoustics could as easily be caused by your mixer. Or it might just be poor acoustics.

Again, I'm not saying everyone should dismiss Behringer, it really is great value etc... but there's reasons why most pro engineers avoid them when possible - similar to the reasons why guitar professionals avoid beginner guitars. A great venue can sound like a CD playing on your top-end HiFi if all the factors are right. At the end of the day, if you're really serious about your rig, that extra couple of hundred quid for a gate or whatever is perfectly justifiable - you can hear it, and there's usually scientific reasons for why you can hear it.