I know that Berhinger gets a bad rap from time to time in regards to the quality of their products, and I recently replaced my Truth monitors because of too much radio interference for a pair of Event Precision 8 monitors, but I'm willing to get Behringher another try.

I'm considering purchasing a Behringer ADA8000 Ultragain Pro-8 A/D/A converter to be used mainly as mic-pres. (See here) Does anyone here have any experience with this unit and what do you think of it both pros and cons? Is it worth buying or should I keep looking elsewhere. Thanks in advance for you inputs!!!

I have one but have only used it in live situations to add 8 channels to my digital mixer. I believe the A/D converters are the same ones used in the M-Audio equipment but not 100% sure on that.

They are the best for your money. The converters are the same as ADATs for sure.
The preamps are quiet and sound pretty darn good. I use one in a semi pro studio and
would buy another.

Know this:

They are designed to take 8 channels and send it out the adat optical port. And in turn, take 8 channels from your adat optical sound card and play them back analog wise. Beware that out of the box, you cannot get analog output from your analog input (realtime analog preamp mode) unless you jump the adat optical output back into the adat optical input. This is trivial, however in this mode you cannot then send adat optical data to or from your sound card because the optical ports are occupied by the jump.

I run mine to and from a adat optical sound card and monitor the mic inputs with a hardware mixer before the ada8000. So I don't hear the latency from the conversion and asio buffer delays. (There is no realtime monitoring function in an ada8000 in adat sound card mode. you must wait for the signal to come back from the daw after conversion and buffer delay)

I love mine - it's great for the money.

Can't do SMUX though - so it's 8 channels at 44.1khz/48khz and that's it.

Kind regards

Dave Rich

Please do not support a company that makes ALL of its money from completely copying other companies' designs. Behringer has NEVER made an original product that doesn't completely ripoff the internal schematics and design of another product. Some things are more important than saving a buck and this is one of them. Not trying to get all preachy here, just sharing my views and giving a little insight to why this company has a such a bad rap. They represent corporate America at its worst. Behringer is the Wal-Mart of audio. I read that Eli (owner of Behringer) is now staying out of the US to avoid getting slapped with even more lawsuits. They have lost 3 lawsuits for violating intellectual property laws (Mackie, Roland, and another I can't remember) and they still continue to ripoff more and more companies. They make more $$$ from the ripoff products they sell than they lose from the lawsuits, so to them, I guess it is worth the trouble. I think it is just wrong.

If you can live with 44.1/48k, the ADA8000 is really had to beat for the $$$.
The sound quality is surprisingly good...

I've used this on a couple occations. Sounds rich and doesn't add artefacts. Best BANG for your BUCK for sure and probably the only Behringer device I actually want to own.

Dave, I agree with you to some extent. But Behringer have made a lot of equipment accessible to many home studio owners. Should give them that. However, their products tend to be pretty c'r'a'p anyway. This one however, is a bargain IMO

See ya'll and merry weekend!

Marius

ORIGINAL: dontletmedrown

Please do not support a company that makes ALL of its money from completely copying other companies' designs. Behringer has NEVER made an original product that doesn't completely ripoff the internal schematics and design of another product. Some things are more important than saving a buck and this is one of them. Not trying to get all preachy here, just sharing my views and giving a little insight to why this company has a such a bad rap. They represent corporate America at its worst. Behringer is the Wal-Mart of audio. I read that Eli (owner of Behringer) is now staying out of the US to avoid getting slapped with even more lawsuits. They have lost 3 lawsuits for violating intellectual property laws (Mackie, Roland, and another I can't remember) and they still continue to ripoff more and more companies. They make more $$$ from the ripoff products they sell than they lose from the lawsuits, so to them, I guess it is worth the trouble. I think it is just wrong.

Ah, can you be more specific on what product was copied to create the ADA8000.

And do you have an opinion on what brand of Root Bear or peperoni. How about the popup toaster.

Just got one to be able to pass my 8 outs from my td-20 drum brain to my Layla3G as discrete digital channels on input. I gained back some inputs on the analog side of my Layla and a few more left for other things on the new ADA. I also (one day) will set up my Acoustic Drums and finally have a decent option for recording them. So far I'd have to say that the td-20 sounds as good or better than it did plugged directly into the Layla analog inputs. I am also running a BNC clock between the two with the Behringer gettings its clock from the Layla. Seems solid so far. but I haven't really had a lot of chance to test it yet.

It's a good solid piece of gear. I use one in the studio for drums and vocal monitoring. I would recommend it to anyone barring the caveats of signal routing mentioned above. If you don't need to monitor the inputs via both the analog outs and the ADAT outs than it's a great buy.