I wonder if the Behringer bashers that say they would never own a piece of Behringer gear have ever at least used a piece their gear. If not, how do you know their stuff sucks. I too was skeptical at first because the price was so low compared to other brands. I am not anymore. I bought a V- amp Pro and it worked and sounded great. It didn't give me all the sounds I wanted, but it was good. I later bought a Pod XT Pro, but I still use the V-amp a lot. They are not the same, at least sound wise. I could care less if they are similar, the same or close to the same, design wise. I will leave that up to the courts. If they shut them down, I won't buy anymore of their products. I since have bought 4 more pieces of their gear and love them all, including my eurodesk 3282 which is now my main board. Decent preamps, 32 inputs, 8 subs, 8 sends, a ton of headroom. What more could you ask for? This board is just as clean with more headroom than the board I retired which was a Tangent 1602 ax that cost almost $ 4000.00 back in the late 80's. The eurodesk cost me less than a $1000.00. It does have short faders but I can live with that. The only problem I have had with Behringer was a bad input jack on my Bass V-amp Pro that I replaced myself for $2.50. Not bad for 2 years of service. Just my 2 cents.

I think the negative comments about Behringer are, in general, grossly unfair.

Most products are 'copied' to some extent from other products in a competing field; when a new car is released by, say, Ford, Honda will buy on and tear it down to see what production techniques Ford use (and, believe me, it works vice-versa as well) and then determine how much profit Ford might make on it. In many cases the competing manufacturer may then look at adopting that production technique if it would lead to a competitive advantage.

Innovation is great - but then, frankly, quite a lot of Behringer products are innovative. The BCF/BCR control surfaces, for instance. Sure, there were other control surfaces prior to those, but look at the price vs capabilities of these products, and they clearly weren't 'ripped off'; they are engineered from scratch.

Since most US companies also use Chinese labour, I don't think we can fault Behringer for that. And if their after-sales service is not the greatest (haven't needed it, to be honest), that's a complaint that could be placed at the door of many an 'innovative' company.

I own two Behringer mixers, both of which have behaved flawlessly, and a BCR2000, which also has worked perfectly. I really do not believe that, in general, their products are inferior in design and quality, and I note that a lot of serious professionals quietly use Behringer gear without necessarily making a big fuss about it - it does, in general, do what it says on the tin. (e.g the UB2442 mixer. Show me a competing desk with those features at anything less than twice the price.....)

I use 3 of them as an interface to my mobile rig and the Alesis HD24.

They do what they are supposed to. I am very pleased with them.

Apparently many here have never tried to design and build anything electronic and I say that because there are many, many posts showing a complete lack of understanding of the process.

First off most of the best sounding mic pres and compressors you can buy new today are blatant design “rip-offs” especially the tube ones (think Universal Audio, GT, etc) how many different ways can you design a circuit that’s been around for 50+ years. Even the solid state designs (Seventh Circle) have been around a long, long time most just improve on features and quality components. Go look up a TI PCM2900 chip you will see a sheet called “design recommendations” hell Jensen transformers has a section with mic pre amp circuits recommendations for using their transformers.
http://www.jensentransformers.com/mic_in.html
http://www.jensentransformers.com/datashts/16a.pdf
http://www.jensentransformers.com/datashts/115ke90.pdf

If several manufactures are following the manufacturing design recommendations to ensure a functions device that is not copying. Believe it or not probably the company that has some very unusual designs is ART mostly everything else is similar and most equipment is using the same converters and opamps designs following rule of thumb and standard design practices.

wow a Behringer bashing thread I didnt get my 2 cents in on? I have to resurrect this!
It never ceases to astonish me... how whne discussing multinational conglomerates like Mackie et al a bunch of blue collar joes will rush to the defence of "capitalism" and "market forces". As if the free market was some magic fairy that elevates quality and puts a chicken in every pot. I've said it before and will say it again, just because it passes signal doea not mean it works. Just becasue it makes a sound does not mean its a good sound.
I am pretty much fed up with Mackie. I still have a 1604 from their made in the US days. Since they moved their factories to China to "remain competitive" did they lower their prices? Heck no! its still costs the same for a pair of monitors or a 16 channel desk.
The last thing I bought by mackie was a powered sub. It was DOA, I fixed it in the back of my van on the way to a weekend 3 day gig. On opeing it I noticed that the audio path was shielded with cardboard painted silver!
As for Behringer. I have seen more of their stuff go up in smoke than any other brand save Crate.
Speaking of, whats this with SLm and Mackie? Did one buy the other? If SLM owns Mackie which owns EAW then I will never buy another EAW!

If you don't have a light-pipe interface you may want to look into the SM Pro Audio PR8E. It is all analog ins and outs with 8 pre-amps phantom power and phase invert on each channel. I have one and I think it is loud and clear, for the less than $200 it cost brand new.

I do believe that these are modable to better specs. I think BLA even does one.

ORIGINAL: LionSound

Just to add on a bit, and to reply to a question in an earlier post here about what Behringer has "copied"

ADA8000 - Presonus Digimax

VAmp - Line 6 Pod

Truth Monitors - Mackie HR824

Xenyx mixers - Mackie Onyx

And this is just a small example. Each of the Behringer products is a direct rip-off of their counterparts. I don't care about where Behringer is from, or the history of mine or their respective country. When you put money into Behringer's pockets, you take money away form companies who lead and innovate in this pro-audio industry we love so much.

So I take it if you were a guitar player you would only buy Fender and Gibson, as everyone else has copied them? How about cars? Do you only drive Fords or whoever was the first to invent it? Just about everything out there is a copy of something else...

But to each her/his own!!!

I buy guitars that are original yes. One of which is a Musicman Stingray, from a company that Leo started post Fender, so it is in the "Lineage" of the guy who started the whole solidbody guitar thing. Which BTW is highly debateable. Just do some googleing, there are a lot of claims of prior art on the whole electric guitar/solidbody thing.

I have 3 of them that I use for my HD24 rig. They work like a charm.