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Author Topic: Behringer X32, Almost Suited to Recording, but Lacks 24/96 Recording Capability  (Read 39014 times)

Mark ☻Bass Pig☻ Weiss

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Okay, here we go, fifth attempt at posting through this captcha crap:

When the X32 was announced, I was briefly excited because of the ability to record the mix to a USB drive.
My current system at the time (until the black box died) was a MOTU 896 Original and a Sony GRX560 laptop as DAW. That rig worked great and served me well for eight years, but was getting long in the tooth. So when the Behringer was announced, I was all ears.
A board that could record as many channels as I needed for a classical concert with flown mics? Great! It could record to USB thumb drives? Magnificent!
But then I started asking questions. Could it record 24-bit/96KHz sample depths/rates? After much prodding, the folks at Behringer admitted this was a 16 bit 44KHz system. Darn!
When they come out with a 24/96 version of this, I'll be very interested.
In the meantime, I'm battling it out with a new MOTU 896mk3H, and a Lenovo W500, running USB mode since the laptop's firewire port doesn't see the new MOTU (nor does my old laptop). A simple solution in one piece like the X32 would have been nice, if it supported the sample rates I need.




PS: The Captcha system sucks really bad. "The letters you typed didn't match" and when you hit 'back' your typing is all gone! And then the next time around the system says "you already submitted this post" but it is nowhere to be found! Very bad system.
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Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

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Brad Weber

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From what I have read and heard the considerations that lead to decision for 16 bit, 44.1/48kHz had to do with the intended market for the X32 and also possibly with its relationship to Midas products.  How much more would you pay or what would you give up to get 24 bit, 96kHz sampling and would a significant portion of those purchasing a X32 be willing to pay more or make other compormises?  I'm sure that just about everybody has something they wish the X32 did or had but if it did or had all those things it would probably be a very different product at a very different price point.
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Tim McCulloch

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Mark, the Captcha goes away after a couple of posts.  It's to make sure you're reasonably human...

Remember that the X32 was designed primarily to be a LIVE mixer with some recording capability.  Over at SoundForums.net there is a 204 page thread on the X32, and about half the post are from guys that have DAW interface issues, complain about sampling rates... but the recording stuff isn't part of the main feature set of the mixer.

Sorry it doesn't meet you needs, perhaps you'd like to look at Music Group's other line... Midas.
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"If you're passing on your way, from Palm Springs to L.A., Give a wave to good ol' Dave, Say hello to progress and goodbye to the Moonlight Motor Inn." - Steve Spurgin, Moonlight Motor Inn

Mark ☻Bass Pig☻ Weiss

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Mark, the Captcha goes away after a couple of posts.  It's to make sure you're reasonably human...

Remember that the X32 was designed primarily to be a LIVE mixer with some recording capability.  Over at SoundForums.net there is a 204 page thread on the X32, and about half the post are from guys that have DAW interface issues, complain about sampling rates... but the recording stuff isn't part of the main feature set of the mixer.

Sorry it doesn't meet you needs, perhaps you'd like to look at Music Group's other line... Midas.




A couple of posts? I've had an account here since 2006 and posted quite a bit until late 2007, mostly in the subwoofer topic areas. Perhaps each area has a 'newbie' effect? Oh well...


Re: X32... that's what Behringer tells me. But then, so was the DCX2496 intended to be a live sound loudspeaker manager, but it has a 24/96 mode of operation, which, IMHO, sounds considerably cleaner than it's 44K mode.


How much would I spend? Not much more than the X32 costs now. Actually, my MOTU 896 was doing a perfect job until it died on me a couple of months ago and I found out there's no repair service from MOTU anymore. My only concern back then was that the PC had a mechanical hard drive which could fail during a concert, leaving me with no multitrack audio. I was also concerned about the fragile nature of laptop computers, firewire cabling and so on.. having one box that records and can take all my mic feeds would be peace of mind. But not at the cost of 24/96 sound fidelity.
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Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

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http://www.basspig.com The Bass Pig's Lair
http://www.ampexperts.com

Tim McCulloch

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Mark, the forum software was changed a couple of years ago and you had to re-register.  The Captcha is used to keep spam registrations & posts down. If it wasn't gone for your 3rd post to the forums, it should be after #4.  Mac or one of the other mods can help if you continue to get the Captcha intercept.

From my perspective, the difference between 4xkHz and 96kHz sampling is less latency because the samples (and subsequent processing) occur faster.  For the most part, I consider the difference to be inaudible in terms of straight-thru audio in a live sound setting.

What does "cleaner" sound like?  I have some suspicions about what was going on inside the DCX, and perhaps Ivan can chime in as he used a bunch of them in budget installs until they started to fail or make unwelcome noises.  And I subscribe to the concept that if we can hear a difference, we should be able to measure a difference... but sometimes I wonder if we have the right tools for that job, or if we are measuring the right aspects of sound... but that is for another post.
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"If you're passing on your way, from Palm Springs to L.A., Give a wave to good ol' Dave, Say hello to progress and goodbye to the Moonlight Motor Inn." - Steve Spurgin, Moonlight Motor Inn

Patrick Tracy

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Re: X32... that's what Behringer tells me. But then, so was the DCX2496 intended to be a live sound loudspeaker manager, but it has a 24/96 mode of operation, which, IMHO, sounds considerably cleaner than it's 44K mode.

Welcome back. We all had to go through the process of joining the new forum.

The DCX296 has to interface with all sorts of unknown sources. The X32 recording feature doesn't have to interface with anything in real time. It's more of a convenience feature and selling point than a pro recording capability.

That said, 96k just seems pointless to me except for bragging rights and wasting storage space. But I understand that's just how it's done in in some specialties, like classical. The lowered latency seems like the biggest real advantage. I find 16 bit more of a practical limitation. You'd never actually use all the dynamic range 24 bit offers but having the huge margin of error makes live recording a lot less stressful.

John Chiara

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Okay, here we go, fifth attempt at posting through this captcha crap:

When the X32 was announced, I was briefly excited because of the ability to record the mix to a USB drive.
My current system at the time (until the black box died) was a MOTU 896 Original and a Sony GRX560 laptop as DAW. That rig worked great and served me well for eight years, but was getting long in the tooth. So when the Behringer was announced, I was all ears.
A board that could record as many channels as I needed for a classical concert with flown mics? Great! It could record to USB thumb drives? Magnificent!
But then I started asking questions. Could it record 24-bit/96KHz sample depths/rates? After much prodding, the folks at Behringer admitted this was a 16 bit 44KHz system. Darn!
When they come out with a 24/96 version of this, I'll be very interested.
In the meantime, I'm battling it out with a new MOTU 896mk3H, and a Lenovo W500, running USB mode since the laptop's firewire port doesn't see the new MOTU (nor does my old laptop). A simple solution in one piece like the X32 would have been nice, if it supported the sample rates I need.

I don't think the console is 16bit... Just limited to 48K. Internally it is 40bit floating point.  I have recorded multitrack and I assume I am recording 24 bit files. Also, if the console worked at 96K it would half the available DSP resources, I believe.
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Jerome Malsack

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true on that, the recording is less stressfull.   I add in a pair of presonus blue max compressors and run them as limiters for the four inputs on my M-Audio Quattro.  Having the safety of a limiter also makes recording live a pleasure. 
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Patrick Tracy

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true on that, the recording is less stressfull.   I add in a pair of presonus blue max compressors and run them as limiters for the four inputs on my M-Audio Quattro.  Having the safety of a limiter also makes recording live a pleasure.

With 24 bit dynamic range you can record with peaks at -12dBFS and never get close to clipping or the noise floor. I don't see any benefit to limiting unless you're trying for a pseudo-mastered recording right off the bat.

John Roberts {JR}

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This has been discussed before. Behringer needs to be careful that they don't position this as exactly like the Midas for less money, otherwise who in the their right mind would even pay the extra $$ for Midas?

I believe the sample rate is overstated as an audible difference, but this product is not positioned as a high end recording product (yet).

Never say never and this looks like an easy future upgrade to fuel a replacement cycle, but not for a while, when these are still selling well.

JR

PS: Sorry you missed all the drama of the forum software change... :-)

[edit- Behringer would be stupid to ignore the recording market which should also be significant. They have never been accused of being stupid so be patient. [/edit]
« Last Edit: January 10, 2013, 12:24:42 PM by John Roberts {JR} »
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g'bye, Dick Rees

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From my perspective, the difference between 4xkHz and 96kHz sampling is less latency because the samples (and subsequent processing) occur faster.  For the most part, I consider the difference to be inaudible in terms of straight-thru audio in a live sound setting.



From "that other thread":
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Mark ☻Bass Pig☻ Weiss

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The captchas indeed did go away after 3 posts, but the funny thing is, my login worked. Maybe I re registered a couple of years ago and just don't remember doing so. It's been a while.


I'm a big proponent of 24-bit recording because it means I can dispense with smashing the dynamic range as a safety measure, and some of the stuff I've recorded, such as pyro, has a dynamic aperture of more than 86dB and does not translate well to 16-bit format, even with dither (which adds lots of audible hiss). In the summer of 2009, I was commissioned by Zambelli Fireworks to make a surround sound recording and 3 HD camera shoot of one of their fireworks displays. We were right under the exploding shells, and subjected to maximum SPLs (had to sign a liability release in case anything went horribly wrong). Given this was on an airport runway, I prepped the mic array with a windbreaker I fashioned from chicken wire and various finer screens. The top was covered with plastic to keep any rain off, should the fireworks 'seed' the clouds as so often seems to happen. Burning debris was falling all around us. Next time I do one of these, I will bring fireman's protection so I can focus on running the camera rather than dodging hot fragments of burning magnesium. Needless to say, we got a killer recording, which I debuted at the first annual Basspig Audiophile Society Social meeting last March on Blu-ray on the 12 foot projection screen backed with 17kW of 112db1W/1M speaker systems. Instant tinnitus. Everyone loved it!


Sample rate... I prefer the 96K because it keeps the vagaries of nyquist filtering out of the audible range. There's quite a bit of sound in a symphony orchestra way up into the upper 30s of kc's. And 44k decimates much nicer from 96K than from 48k.


I've actually been experimenting with 192k sample rates here in the studio, using the car keys as a sound source. There's lots of activity up through the mid 50s. But as my friend puts it "yeah, and how many of your customers are going to notice the difference?" None, of course. Especially the ones that play my discs through 17" black plastic Daewoo televisions. Kinda like that comic posted later in this thread about the wonderful recording efforts being lost on a 99 cent MP3 through $12 earbuds. But you know what? I do the quality for ME. If the customer appreciates and benefits from it, great. But for me, it's gotta be perfect. How many here share that sentiment? Do you mix to satisfy your highest personal standards, or just give it a half arsed effort that the client is good with?
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Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

http://www.MWHDvideo.com
http://www.basspig.com The Bass Pig's Lair
http://www.ampexperts.com

Tim McCulloch

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Mark, you're carping about a recording limitation on a desk designed for LIVE source reproduction over PA systems.

While I understand your personal quest for better recordings, I think this is the wrong product to achieve that quest.  There is a 200+ page thread (over 4000 replies so far) on the X32 at soundforums.net.  Something like 35% (or more) have to do with recording issues and most of those are unrelated to the direct action of mixing live sources for a live, proximate audience.

It's the wrong tool for the job you're doing, and wishing it were something different will not make it so.  That said, I think you should wait and see what is coming at NAMM and Musik Messe, as I suspect there will be higher resolution products introduced that will better suit your needs.

The captchas indeed did go away after 3 posts, but the funny thing is, my login worked. Maybe I re registered a couple of years ago and just don't remember doing so. It's been a while.


I'm a big proponent of 24-bit recording because it means I can dispense with smashing the dynamic range as a safety measure, and some of the stuff I've recorded, such as pyro, has a dynamic aperture of more than 86dB and does not translate well to 16-bit format, even with dither (which adds lots of audible hiss). In the summer of 2009, I was commissioned by Zambelli Fireworks to make a surround sound recording and 3 HD camera shoot of one of their fireworks displays. We were right under the exploding shells, and subjected to maximum SPLs (had to sign a liability release in case anything went horribly wrong). Given this was on an airport runway, I prepped the mic array with a windbreaker I fashioned from chicken wire and various finer screens. The top was covered with plastic to keep any rain off, should the fireworks 'seed' the clouds as so often seems to happen. Burning debris was falling all around us. Next time I do one of these, I will bring fireman's protection so I can focus on running the camera rather than dodging hot fragments of burning magnesium. Needless to say, we got a killer recording, which I debuted at the first annual Basspig Audiophile Society Social meeting last March on Blu-ray on the 12 foot projection screen backed with 17kW of 112db1W/1M speaker systems. Instant tinnitus. Everyone loved it!


Sample rate... I prefer the 96K because it keeps the vagaries of nyquist filtering out of the audible range. There's quite a bit of sound in a symphony orchestra way up into the upper 30s of kc's. And 44k decimates much nicer from 96K than from 48k.


I've actually been experimenting with 192k sample rates here in the studio, using the car keys as a sound source. There's lots of activity up through the mid 50s. But as my friend puts it "yeah, and how many of your customers are going to notice the difference?" None, of course. Especially the ones that play my discs through 17" black plastic Daewoo televisions. Kinda like that comic posted later in this thread about the wonderful recording efforts being lost on a 99 cent MP3 through $12 earbuds. But you know what? I do the quality for ME. If the customer appreciates and benefits from it, great. But for me, it's gotta be perfect. How many here share that sentiment? Do you mix to satisfy your highest personal standards, or just give it a half arsed effort that the client is good with?
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"If you're passing on your way, from Palm Springs to L.A., Give a wave to good ol' Dave, Say hello to progress and goodbye to the Moonlight Motor Inn." - Steve Spurgin, Moonlight Motor Inn

Steve Milner

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Mark,
 It is a bit surprising for me to hear for the second time in one week on a forum that people cannot seem to get the newer MOTU896 Hybrids to play nice with Windows based laptops. I have been using the 896 units for quite a while now, and honestly cannot find anything that can replace them when it comes to value, features, quality and ease of use for the money. I started using MOTU products (2408Mk2) with PC desktops that I personally custom built for the job, but have in recent years been using Mac computers with great success.
 I've been slowly stockpiling outdated 896HD units as they appear on craigslist for ridiculously low prices ($200 each seems to be the average I've paid). I know that MOTU won't fix them anymore, but I'm lucky to have a good electronics repair shop nearby (haven't had to take one in yet), so for me it's still more attractive to use the outdated product, rather then deal with the growing pains of jumping on the newer releases.
 As I type this, I have a four piece band on a short tour in Boston using an 896HD I picked up for them cheap, they use it w/ a split to create 4 IEM mixes for their live gigs, and are able to track to their MacBook Pro running Logic whenever they feel like it. Absolutely incredible value and quality that would not have benefited really by any "newer" products on the market.

 I guess what I'm suggesting is if the 896 was doing the job you needed it to do, find a few cheap used ones, pickup a used Mac Mini / MacBook <$500 and have a pretty great rig for under a grand.

Mark ☻Bass Pig☻ Weiss

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I myself am seriously considering stockpiling old MOTU 896 units, as indeed they have everything I need and they just work. I don't know what MOTU did to the firewire ports on the newer 896's but they just don't talk to laptops. It's frustrating. USB is a poor substitute with it's dropped samples every few minutes at random intervals. That said, with balanced signals, the 896 mk3H does an impressive job.


I thought I could repair mine, but MOTU and S&S Technology both won't talk to me about sharing the schematics. I've written a letter to the CEO of S&S and got no response from them. MOTU says they don't publish schematics. So I have a dead 896 Original sitting here. I've taken it apart and checked all the power supply rails and it appears alive to that point, but there's no lights and on fire wire presense when connected to a PC anymore, so the microprocessor is probably not functioning. MOTU said there are no more parts available to repair these, so if they can't get the parts, how can anyone else? Without schematics, any attempt to poke around custom ASICs that are in there is useless. There's no data sheet published and no schematics. Frustrating!


Re: X32, yeah, I know it's a live sound desk. 16/44 is okay that that, given that PA systems are not that fine in resolution where it would make much difference anyway. It's so close to being the perfect solution though. An all in one product that can record.. just short on sample rate. Oh well, long after I'm in the grave, there'll be lots of great options available. I'm not complaining, really. I remember the days of struggling to fit everything into a 60dB window of reel to reel tape. You really cherished rehearsal times to peg your record levels to the dB!
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Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

http://www.MWHDvideo.com
http://www.basspig.com The Bass Pig's Lair
http://www.ampexperts.com

Steve Milner

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Fwiw- I have been using an RME Fireface 400 at my day job to track classical & piano sessions and could not be happier with the quality. I'm thinking about picking up one personally  for traveling use (bus powered is awesome when running around w/ a cart rig) and I might pair a Midas XL48 w/ it, which would be a pretty fantastic 1.5 rack space rig.

The RME 400 & 800 are the only comparable replacements I've experienced coming from an 896 background. I'd take either product any day, totally useable and functional.

Just throwing out ideas.

Samuel Rees

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A lot of times with laptops and FireWire devices, it's a matter of having the right chipset. Scope out what chipsets te manufacture supports, see if you have them. If not, MOTU could still be a viable option. Also, are you assuming the USB doesn't work? RME is quite confident that they're straightened out the USB audio interface business, maybe MOTU has also. What about other interfaces like RME, as previously mentioned? RME has a big product range they're got to have something that would work for you, and people love those products.

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Mark ☻Bass Pig☻ Weiss

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I looked at RME last month during my angry search to find any NON-MOTU product, but alas, it only has half the XLR mic inputs and the metering is poor.


MOTU just doesn't know how to make Windows drivers that work, if you read all the complaints about them. They work fine on the Macbook Pro. But if I get a Macbook Pro, then I've got more conversion headaches getting the audio into a Windows editing system.


I'm of the opinion that there is a hardware incompatibility issue at stake. Older MOTU units just worked fine. But the new ones are different. I don't know why they messed with the chipset and messed it up. It's frustrating.


USB ought to work--as they ought to have enough buffer memory to cover any system interrupts, but alas, the hardware buffer is probably minimal to keep latency low.


I'll just use it as is, and see how it goes. If there's a glitch, well, I'll try to fix it in post. A pain, given that there's 8 channels of audio to fix when that happens, but it's the chancel I'll have to take.


I'm really perplexed why Room EQ Wizard's audio generator function won't work right with the 896 mk3 either. That's showing the symptom in all it's ugliness. The Cakewalk buffers are probably covering up 99.9% of those 3X/second skips whereas REW's audio generator has no such buffering and you see that the interruptions occur 3x/second.
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Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

http://www.MWHDvideo.com
http://www.basspig.com The Bass Pig's Lair
http://www.ampexperts.com

John Chiara

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If you record on the MacBook and dump the files on a flash drive it is pretty fast and easy.
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Tommy Peel

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+1

I've had to record to my old laptop (running Ubuntu) and then transfer the files to my Macbook to edit them. I recorded with Audacity in Ubuntu (also avaliable for Windows and OSX) and exported the tracks as separate .aiff files(also possible to export to .wav, etc.. ).

Sent from my Milestone X using Tapatalk 2

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Mark ☻Bass Pig☻ Weiss

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A typical concert produces over 14GB of audio data. That takes a while to transfer, even through Gigabit Ethernet.


Early in my search for a DAW system, I tried Audacity, but it muxes everything to a temp file, and so closing the recording takes 45 minutes for the laptop hard drive to export that temp file to 8 individual 24/96 files.


I have been using Vegas 4 on the Sony laptop for 8 years. I chose it because it writes the final files from the beginning of recording. Stopping and saving takes milliseconds. Cakewalk Sonar 7 also writes to direct files, no intermediate dump, so saving and shutting down is effectively instant. If the power fails, at least I have what was recorded up to the failure. With the other programs, it's difficult or impossible to recover the temp file and demux it.


Best solution might be to buy a bunch of 896 Original boxes and stick with what worked. Really frustrated that I can't get "old reliable" repaired anymore.
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Take care,

Mark & Mary Ann Weiss

http://www.MWHDvideo.com
http://www.basspig.com The Bass Pig's Lair
http://www.ampexperts.com

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