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[Bob Leonard]

I don't think many people have ever heard me say much good about Uli's product. Don't like it, won't use it, cheap crapola.

And then......

My biz partner and side man of 55+ years decided we needed to record some demo tracks. OK say's I let's do it with the spare 5 minutes I have every day. So last Sunday we got together in the basement demo/recording/practice man cave and fired up the recording system I had moved over 6 months ago. And guess what? Nothing worked. The Soundcraft Performer was passing sound to the Cubase system, but no sound from the monitor distribution system, my old Mackie wackie Onyx 1640. Works great for distribution to my 8 channel headphone amp, JBL monitors, backline through the Soundcraft, stereo system or anything else I attach. So 2 frustrating hours later it's all patched back to everything and working.

Next comes the DAW which is Cubase 8.5 running on a nice Dell workstation with a pair of 24" HP monitors, and then attached via USB to the Soundcraft Performer using the USB/MADI card feeding 32 channels to Cubase. I bring it all up, everything seems to be working fine, the channels are all active, displays work, 2.5ms delay total while monitoring, and off we go.

After a period of another 6 hours, the frustration sets in and we call it a day and the discussion takes place on my front porch over beer, burgers, and sausage from the north end. The sound is just fine, and the recordings are OK, but the constant mouse clicks and keyboard commands have driven us both bat shit. Pile on the open back AKG 240's and something has to change.

The discussion ends with the conclusion the headphones needed to be upgraded (see other post) sooner not later, and something has to be done to eliminate at least 90% of the mouse and keyboard use. That brings us to the conclusion that a work surface, or some type of universal controller. The search begins.

About an hour later the search was narrowed to Slate Media, Avid, Yamaha, and dare I say it, Behringer.

Another hour passes and light dawns on marble mountain. How much was I willing to spend, and what features matter the most. So I set a limit of $1000 for the control surface, and $800 for four sets of cans. In the end I bought a Behringer X Touch, and four (4) pair of AKG 271 mkII closed back headphones, all for $1000.

The headphones are every bit as good as you might expect from AKG, surpassing the sound quality of the 240's, but maybe a little lean on the bass due to the closed back. The isolation is superb, they are very comfortable, self adjusting, come with two (2) pair of cushions made of leather and felt, come with a coiled cable and a straight cable and the bonus feature is they turn off when removed from your head, so no bleed.

My big surprise was the Behringer X Touch. The unit mated with Cubase right out of the box and after a quick upgrade to the latest firmware all of the displays worked as advertised. Nice scribble strips, responsive, quiet faders, decent rotary controls, and very nice lighted rubber buttons, 96 to be exact. Not much of a manual, but learning is half the fun.

To be fair I'll say the build quality is much like the rest of the X series hardware, decent, but nowhere close to the majority of the boards I've used in my lifetime, but more than adequate for the occasional recording duties I wanted it for. What is very nice is the faders and rotary knobs that mate to the Cubase system. EQ adjustments are now done with rotary encoders, volume levels and bus assignment are now done with motorized faders, there are dedicated buttons for the transport functions and three (3) layers supporting up to 24 channels. Another nice feature is the ability top assign more faders by cascading another X touch or X touch compact. It's a universal surface so not everything or every button has a specific function, but the functions that are supported out of the box fill the bill nicely. We'll see just how well this works out over time, but for now I'll say something you may never hear from me again. It's made by Behringer and I like it. I'll rot in hell for this.


See it here.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/XTouch

[Jeff Bankston]

I don't think many people have ever heard me say much good about Uli's product. Don't like it, won't use it, cheap crapola.

And then......

My biz partner and side man of 55+ years decided we needed to record some demo tracks. OK say's I let's do it with the spare 5 minutes I have every day. So last Sunday we got together in the basement demo/recording/practice man cave and fired up the recording system I had moved over 6 months ago. And guess what? Nothing worked. The Soundcraft Performer was passing sound to the Cubase system, but no sound from the monitor distribution system, my old Mackie wackie Onyx 1640. Works great for distribution to my 8 channel headphone amp, JBL monitors, backline through the Soundcraft, stereo system or anything else I attach. So 2 frustrating hours later it's all patched back to everything and working.

Next comes the DAW which is Cubase 8.5 running on a nice Dell workstation with a pair of 24" HP monitors, and then attached via USB to the Soundcraft Performer using the USB/MADI card feeding 32 channels to Cubase. I bring it all up, everything seems to be working fine, the channels are all active, displays work, 2.5ms delay total while monitoring, and off we go.

After a period of another 6 hours, the frustration sets in and we call it a day and the discussion takes place on my front porch over beer, burgers, and sausage from the north end. The sound is just fine, and the recordings are OK, but the constant mouse clicks and keyboard commands have driven us both bat shit. Pile on the open back AKG 240's and something has to change.

The discussion ends with the conclusion the headphones needed to be upgraded (see other post) sooner not later, and something has to be done to eliminate at least 90% of the mouse and keyboard use. That brings us to the conclusion that a work surface, or some type of universal controller. The search begins.

About an hour later the search was narrowed to Slate Media, Avid, Yamaha, and dare I say it, Behringer.

Another hour passes and light dawns on marble mountain. How much was I willing to spend, and what features matter the most. So I set a limit of $1000 for the control surface, and $800 for four sets of cans. In the end I bought a Behringer X Touch, and four (4) pair of AKG 271 mkII closed back headphones, all for $1000.

The headphones are every bit as good as you might expect from AKG, surpassing the sound quality of the 240's, but maybe a little lean on the bass due to the closed back. The isolation is superb, they are very comfortable, self adjusting, come with two (2) pair of cushions made of leather and felt, come with a coiled cable and a straight cable and the bonus feature is they turn off when removed from your head, so no bleed.

My big surprise was the Behringer X Touch. The unit mated with Cubase right out of the box and after a quick upgrade to the latest firmware all of the displays worked as advertised. Nice scribble strips, responsive, quiet faders, decent rotary controls, and very nice lighted rubber buttons, 96 to be exact. Not much of a manual, but learning is half the fun.

To be fair I'll say the build quality is much like the rest of the X series hardware, decent, but nowhere close to the majority of the boards I've used in my lifetime, but more than adequate for the occasional recording duties I wanted it for. What is very nice is the faders and rotary knobs that mate to the Cubase system. EQ adjustments are now done with rotary encoders, volume levels and bus assignment are now done with motorized faders, there are dedicated buttons for the transport functions and three (3) layers supporting up to 24 channels. Another nice feature is the ability top assign more faders by cascading another X touch or X touch compact. It's a universal surface so not everything or every button has a specific function, but the functions that are supported out of the box fill the bill nicely. We'll see just how well this works out over time, but for now I'll say something you may never hear from me again. It's made by Behringer and I like it. I'll rot in hell for this.


See it here.

https://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/XTouch

yep ! you will definitely rot in hell for that ! lol !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJgv-qBBT3Y

[Tim McCulloch]

Under the circumstances, Bob, I think this qualifies for time in Purgatory.

[John Fruits]

Under the circumstances, Bob, I think this qualifies for time in Purgatory.

Do you mean the one in Maine or the one in Rhode Island or maybe even the one in "Support your local Sheriff"?

[Justice C. Bigler]

The X-Touch series definitely fills a niche that not many others are trying to sell to.

I've been looking at them since they were announced several years ago. Being that I'm a Protools user, the HUI protocol leaves a lot to be desired with Protools. But for pretty much every other piece of software HUI still functions fine. 

Did you look at the Presonus FaderPort 8?

[Scott Bolt]

Ahhh Bob.  Now that you have started the slide into the dark side where will it all end?

All kidding aside, sounds like you picked the right tool for the job.

[Rick Powell]

Just what this forum needs. Another "confirmation bias" thread.
 

[Tim McCulloch]

Just what this forum needs. Another "confirmation bias" thread.
 

Or the "mea culpa" thread...

[Ivan Beaver]

Not all Behringer gear is bad.

There are a few "gems" out there.

Take for instance the UMC202.  It is marketed as a recording interface.

But it works great as a measurement interface.

Something has changed, but the original (with Windows 7), all you did was plug it in.  Smaart 7 found it and I was off and running.  No software, nothing, just plug and play-the way it "should" be

They also had (don't know if it is still made) a 8 channel mic pre that went to ADAT that was a good bit quieter than some "expensive well respected" brands that cost about 8 times as much.

[John Roberts {JR}]

So is the rumor true, Bob is selling all his guitar amps and replacing them with........ nah, I can't even say it. 

JR

[ProSoundWeb Community]