On Wed, Dec 26, 2012 at 6:22 AM, Patrick Shirkey <pshirkey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Yes, over ten years ago Behringer's large mixing consoles had marginal or
inadequate power supplies. Smart audio engineers bought them anyway and
first thing ripped out the power supplies, put in a socket, and added an
external supply to feed the necessary DC power to the mixer. The last two
generations of Behringer mixers have been flawless. Quantum theoretical
levels of self-noise, no measurable distortion (on very high end test
equipment), and rock solid reliability even in educational settings.
Again I repeat. You haven't tested enough then. All of the equipment I mentioned have been sold in the last 10 years, and extends far beyond just their mixers. Yes some of their equipment is good, much more in my experience is bad.
Behringer products, from the past six years or so, have little if any
internal
resemblance to the competition. Different chips, different circuits, and
very clever original internal layouts. On the other hand, the internals
of most of their competitors looks pretty much the same - standard
off-the-shelf IC's, pots built into the circuit boards, capacitors of the
day, etc.
Yes they are better lately, but it does not, in my opinion, excuse past missteps of that magnitude. Of course the line you were replying to had nothing to do with internal board layout and was in response to your comment about marketing.
And no, producets from other manufacturers don't all look the same internally in my experience. For example there is a huge difference between a Mackie console at 24 channels and A&H, easily replaceable channel strips for one thing. Similar for a Soundcraft, etc. Even those other manufacturers that go for single board construction looks different in my experience.
I'm not actually a fan but I think a lot of people round here make a big
deal out of Behringer products which doesn't meet the experience we have
on this side of the pond of using them. However it may just be that we get
better quality Behringer products on our side of the pond. Maybe it's a
supply chain issue or maybe it's something to do with the stockists.
I think it is just you are either exceedingly lucky, or very limited selection of their hardware honestly. My experience has been mirrored by many professional audio engineers with a large selection of their products. Again not all their products are horrible, some have very good sound for instance, but in all cases if I buy one I am buying two for when it breaks, and also in all cases I would much rather spend a little more to get something I don't have to worry about that on.
Anyway I don't sell mass manufactured audio hardware in a chain of stores
so I don't have the stats to say if Behringer products have a higher
failure rate or return rate than other manufacturers.
I know of some of the larger professional audio distributors in the US that used to carry Behringer, and stopped (In at least the case of one which is one of the largest in the past 5 years) due to the amount of support requests and returns they had on them. Mind you most of the places I go through also end up providing at least limited support on whatever they sell as well because they develop relationships with the people they deal with, and want to make sure they sell what is going to fit their needs. In the case of that distributor it looks like they are starting to try them again, this is a very recent development for them, within the past year or so. I would be curious to have a conversation with one of the reps I deal with there (Depending on whether I am buying for myself, or one of the several companies I buy for determines which rep I deal with) to see what the reasoning is there.
Seablade
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