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[Arnold B. Krueger]

Title says it.  about 1/4 the cost of the Aviom and Furman 16 channel units.

$200 for mixer and $250 for the distribution unit.   

Man, I hate Behringer stuff though.  Can't recall a working 5 year old piece of equipment.

I can look around my media booth and also check my equipment room and see quite a few pieces of > 5 year old Behringer equipment that takes a licking and still keeps ticking.   Small mixers, direct boxes, digital interfaces, line mixers, DAs, crossovers, parametric eqs, power amps, etc., etc..

In contrast every piece of Mackie equipment the church has owned (a 32 ch console and a 250 wpc power amp) have totally failed, though 2 items is well short of a statistically significant sample. 

As far as these new personal mixer products go, I was always of the opinion that at current price/performance levels, our Aviom system was a little salty for what it is.  But, nobody wants to send it back! ;-)

Let's see what a little more competition can do! 

Note that there seems to be no Mini-Yagdi card to slip into your Yamaha digital mixer to drive this system, like there is for the Aviom. That right there is a big trouble saver.  I see that there are 2 ADAT inputs, though.

Of course the natural home for these Behringer personal monitor boxes is the yet-to-be released X32 console.

Are they going to be the "new Ibanez" company...  Finally getting some respect.

Some of us we've had respect for Behringer for what they do well, for decades.  My first Behringer product was a digital graphic eq that lasted for about a dozen years.  For the price, still a heck of a deal.

Every once in a while Behringer stumbles and falls like they did with the DCX 2496 crossover a few years back. But, they seem to stand behind their gear reasonbly well, and pick themselves up and carry on.  I've heard of no problems with recent DCX 2496s.

Speaking of the DCX 2496, it seems to be getting a bit long in the tooth... I can visualize a $49.95 version of it implemented with  ARM multi-processors. ;-)

[Matthias Heitzer]

Behringer build their own factory ("Behringer City") to ensure a constant quality (i don't want to judge how high it is).

They built their factory complex away from the other established factories to attract cheap labor. Just smart business.

Before, they had to rely on oem manufacturers, who, of course, wanted make as much profit as possible and skimped on parts quality and quality control.

I actually worked with one of those OEMs, and the customer specifies what parts are used. The parts used are not part of the OEM's profit which is made purely for assembling those parts into assemblies. I have heard reports of entire runs with high reject rates due to sub standard parts specified by "the customer", an unfortunate situation for both customer and OEM.

We always enjoyed good results from that same OEM.

Some speak of freight containers full of lemons.

No OEM contract manufacturer can stay in business if all they do is make products that don't work. The customer routinely places a few of their own people inside the OEM, or visits them, to insure process and procedures are followed. Quality is largely influenced by the customer's attention to detail, while I have been inside ISO-9000 Chinese factories 15 years ago.   

Alway sgood to hear the other side of a thing.
(If we allow a little bit of Chinese wisdom, there is a third side that none of us sees. I wonder what that may be....)




After "Behringer bought Midas" it seemed to be only a matter of time until a new digital behringer mixer is launched.

I personally am curious about this new system. Digital stagebox (announced but not even a CAD drawing yet) + physical inputs at the console , surface that somewhat reminds me of an iLive (well, soundcraft compact also does..) and the PM system this thread is about.  If the components are reliable, it could be great solution for churches. Every part for itself is nothing extraordinary, but the combination of the devices and their low prices can make it attractive. If there are enough filter options, the 6 matrix buses could even replace the system controller.

[John Roberts {JR}]

Alway sgood to hear the other side of a thing.
(If we allow a little bit of Chinese wisdom, there is a third side that none of us sees. I wonder what that may be....)

There is a chinese parable about three brothers (three doctors), but that is probably not what you are thinking of.  Perhaps the Japanese concept of "unspoken truths"? There's the stated truth and then the "real" truth. 

After "Behringer bought Midas" it seemed to be only a matter of time until a new digital behringer mixer is launched.

The calculus when a company like Behringer buys a company like Midas, should not be to devalue the Midas brand and therefore their investment by increasing competition from below. If anything they should work to reduce costs and increase profits at Midas thanks to their better economy of scale in purchasing and manufacturing. The technology and engineering degree of difficulty to design an inexpensive product that doesn't suck is much harder than making an expensive product that doesn't suck. It isn't clear to me who will be teaching whom. 

It may be difficult to resist selling similar digital platforms based on the same underlying technology, through both companies only differentiated by brand. This will eventually erode the Midas brand image, but they probably bought it for a good price. The WIN/lose (larger win than loss) math probably favors such an approach eventually.   

Of course I could be completely wrong..

JR

I personally am curious about this new system. Digital stagebox (announced but not even a CAD drawing yet) + physical inputs at the console , surface that somewhat reminds me of an iLive (well, soundcraft compact also does..) and the PM system this thread is about.  If the components are reliable, it could be great solution for churches. Every part for itself is nothing extraordinary, but the combination of the devices and their low prices can make it attractive. If there are enough filter options, the 6 matrix buses could even replace the system controller.

[Matthias Heitzer]

Alway sgood to hear the other side of a thing.
(If we allow a little bit of Chinese wisdom, there is a third side that none of us sees. I wonder what that may be....)

There is a chinese parable about three brothers (three doctors), but that is probably not what you are thinking of.  Perhaps the Japanese concept of "unspoken truths"? There's the stated truth and then the "real" truth. 

Everything has three sides: the one that you see, the one that i see, and one that none of us sees .

It just got stuck in my head because it seems more realsitic than the western proverbial "two sides of a coin"


After "Behringer bought Midas" it seemed to be only a matter of time until a new digital behringer mixer is launched.

The calculus when a company like Behringer buys a company like Midas, should not be to devalue the Midas brand and therefore their investment by increasing competition from below. If anything they should work to reduce costs and increase profits at Midas thanks to their better economy of scale in purchasing and manufacturing. The technology and engineering degree of difficulty to design an inexpensive product that doesn't suck is much harder than making an expensive product that doesn't suck. It isn't clear to me who will be teaching whom. 

It may be difficult to resist selling similar digital platforms based on the same underlying technology, through both companies only differentiated by brand. This will eventually erode the Midas brand image, but they probably bought it for a good price. The WIN/lose (larger win than loss) math probably favors such an approach eventually.   
[/quote]

Behringer already advertises with "KLARK TEKNIK’s SuperMAC networking capability" and "high-end simulations of famous outboard gear such as KLARK TEKNIK DN780"


Perhaps the've chosen a similiar route as allen&heath. Similar systems in different price ranges, mostly divided by the flexibility,
but with a much broader Canyon in between...
From the information available, I could imagine that the x32 has strict limitations concerning aux sends and other outputs.
If has the output options of a Gl2400 or GB4/8, it is already restricted to a small market (small not in numbers but in the budget available) Even if it's "inner values" would be on par with Midas Pro or XL8, it simply would not be an option if it doesn't have enough Aux sends (or whatever they are called these days...)

Perhaps the x32 will have a similar future as the Mackie tt24, perhaps it's the new 01V.

Let's see what happens, i hope it won't end like the myth about King Midas.

[Matt Samudio]

Title says it.  about 1/4 the cost of the Aviom and Furman 16 channel units.

$200 for mixer and $250 for the distribution unit.   

Man, I hate Behringer stuff though.  Can't recall a working 5 year old piece of equipment.

Are they going to be the "new Ibanez" company...  Finally getting some respect.

After reading through some of this thread, I thought I could possibly provide some input ...

I understand the reservations about Behringer quality ... I've used alot of Behringer gear, and have certainly experienced some "stinkers" in the bunch.  I have also, however, had some good luck with Behringer pieces, as well.  For one example, I've reached a point of reasonable confidence in the Composer Pro, as I've had no trouble with any of the many I've bought (though I did see a friend have some trouble with his - not sure if there was abuse involved or not).  I've had exemplary experience with the Behringer multi-com pro, multi-gate pro, and ultra-drive pro.  The only thing I've had rather disappointing experiences with are the cheaper mixers.

I've become excited about the X32 and P16 lines, and I've purchased a X32 Rack, a P16-D, a P16-I, and 4 P16-M's.  I haven't received them yet, but I should get the P16-I and P16-M's this week, and I'll make a point of posting back here with impressions and results.

FYI - Sweetwater has the P16-I and P16-M's in stock for immediate shipment, and the X32 Rack + P16-D is going to be available sometime around early Oct, so the rep says.

[Mac Kerr]

I thought I could possibly provide some input ...

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Mac

[Brad Weber]

FYI - Sweetwater has the P16-I and P16-M's in stock for immediate shipment, and the X32 Rack + P16-D is going to be available sometime around early Oct, so the rep says.

Sweetwater shows the P16-D, P16-I and P16-M as all currently being in stock, but then the original discussion was almost 2-1/2 years ago.

[djpraise3]

We have had the 32x with p16ms for about a year now at our church we upgraded from a 32 channel mackie board and it is a worlds difference! We love it. Some cons with the p16s is if you daisy chain all the monitors you can have up to 7 total, the last one in the chain cuts in and out. We think its because we don't have the distributor other than that really powerful board.

[Mac Kerr]

We have had the 32x with p16ms for about a year

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Mac

[TJ (Tom) Cornish]

Sweetwater shows the P16-D, P16-I and P16-M as all currently being in stock, but then the original discussion was almost 2-1/2 years ago.

That timeline sounds about right for Behringer - maybe even a little sooner than their average product.

[ProSoundWeb Community]