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StageConnect is a connection to transmit 32 uncompressed audio-channels via a single XLR cable. StageConnect is based on A2B, the Automotive Audio Bus (A2B).

How is the latency? How far can a cable go without some kind of repeater?

This video says latency is two samples: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzEoYlaj9u8&t=110s>.

From the README at the provided link: "Analog Devices suggests cable-length of up to 15 meters, while Behringer allows longer cables."

I never understood the Behringer hate of the "Pro Audio" community; apparently there are many riders (requirement documents for live shows) which state "No Behringer".

I got a Behringer WING a couple of years ago, and I couldn't be happier for my home studio: Excellent connection with Midas stage boxes who have (at least for my requirements) great pre-amps, you can basically route everything, it's kind of intuitive, the possibilities are endless, it's at the same time a 32-channel USB Audio Interface which works great with Logic, I can even live-stream multi channel audio to my Mac in the other room to Logic using the DANTE card, it has easy live recording with SD cards, remote control via iPad and even 3rd party apps with APIs, etc. etc. etc. … And they just released a rack and smaller version of it, but didn't cut on the features.

As we say in Germany, maybe it's some kind of "What the farmer doesn't know, he won't eat" syndrome. From what I know and use, I am a big fan of Behringer, and especially the WING.

I use a Behringer X32 rack with a couple digital snakes to route audio between 20 or so radios, software defined receivers, online broadcasts and other audio sources, and it's one of the most powerful pieces of technology in my lab/office.

The quality however of the X32 leaves a little bit to be desired. The power supply died in it due to fault capacitors (I was able to replace them myself) and the rotary switches on the rack unit itself no longer work (I remote control the box anyway) but.. I've been able to look past all this because the sheer power of the tech is unbeatable for my use case. Running a single CAT-5 connection from my detached lab/rack to my office in the house with 32 channels of AES audio is amazing stuff for me.

It's not about the cloning but the quality control. For years Behringer didn't make any synths, just outboard - processing modules like compressors, gates/limiters, feedback managers, effects, small mixers and so on. These were original designs rather than clones of anything. The main attraction was that they were very cheap compared to the competition; sound-wise they were mediocre except for maybe their Composer compressor which was sorta good. The cheap aspect made them quite popular with aspiring musicians, especially electronic ones. Reliability was not too big of an issue because if a Behringer unit in your rack stopped working you could afford to just replace it. But they were absolutely not up to the rigors of commercial use, lacking consistency and reliability.

I like the company in a general way because I'm a big believer in accessibility to technology for entry-level people, and innovating on price is as valid as any other area (and they have innovated in many technical areas since). There are a lot of rent seekers in the pro audio industry and Behringer found a niche in the market where they had no direct competition. After building a solid commercial foundation they rolled the profits back into other areas, from cloning classic synths and guitar pedals to acquiring high quality live sound vendors like Midas. Quality-wise, their products are now really solid.

All the things you listed are irrelevant for a touring musician. All they care about is that equipment is used that sounds good. If it's a pain to set up or manage, that's the roadie and live mix engineer's job. Not saying some behringer gear doesn't sound good, just that bands can be very specific about their sound and a blanket "no behringer" rules out a lot of cheaper bad sounding gear in 2 words.

There's also the idealogical standpoint. That Behringher rips off other designs and mass produces them cheaper off shore. I'm in 2 minds about that. I now have a 2600, which would have been impossibly expensive (even with a TTSH) for me.

A few things:

1) Behringer had a reputation for poor quality and unreliability dating back to at least I think the 90s. In my experience that’s no longer fair criticism, at least for the products I’ve owned, but the reputation persists.

2) Ethical issues. They mass produce using cheap labour in the far east (I forget exactly where). There was some controversy involving a synth/instrument sponsorship a few years ago that took an excessively long time to materialise. They are perceived to rip off other companies’ IP and undercut on price because they don’t incur the R&D costs. I seem to remember some noise/drama around one or two partnerships as well - maybe the UBxa? Again, I can’t remember.

3) They are a budget brand whereas the synth and pro audio communities are somewhat overpopulated with vocal gatekeepy snobs. I’m sure they’re probably a minority but, at least in the online world, they’re often loud and visible. You will, for example, be pretty reliably downvoted for saying anything positive about Behringer in the Reddit synth communities.

4) Uli is perceived to be a bit of an odd duck, again, by people who tend to make noise online.

For myself, I don’t love everything they’ve done business wise, but they make a good product that won’t break the bank for those on a budget. I have a couple of their TB-303 clones, which are very good (loads of companies make 303 clones, often known as acid boxes, so I don’t really see this as controversial). I also have a Poly D, which is based on the Minimoog, but has an extra oscillator, paraphony, MIDI support, and a sequencer, and I wanted a taste of that without having to drop £5k on an instrument with, by contemporary standards, very limited capabilities.

There are a bunch of synthtubers I enjoy who seem to have a good opinion of their stuff: Wine & Synths springs immediately to mind.

1) Agreed. I’ve used Behringer gear that’s perfectly fine.

2) This is my biggest issue with Behringer. They do seem very questionable in the ethics department. To add on to what you mention, they also like to apply for trademark patents for existing trademarks, not to mention trying to trademark names of their critics in some weird smear campaigns (see the KIRN corksniffer debauchle as an example) and also litigate their critics when they don’t like what they say. On the cloning side, sure, clones of extinct hardware like the TB-303 I feel is fair game, but it is always questionable when the clone is competing with a product still in production. I mean, it doesn’t matter which market it is in, whether music gear or mobile phones or whatever: clones will always be perceived as lower quality imitations and morally questionable.

3) I agree. Budget brands do not always get fair credit.

4) Yeah, that he does. It’s not necessarily fair to equate the brand with it’s director/founder, but seeing as he is quite active and the brand name is his actual last name, it is kind of unavoidable. But I mean, you should be able to be an odd duck and also be a director of a brand, as long as you behaviour isn’t hurting anyone…

Yes! That was it. Your cork sniffer remark reminded me of something else, maybe part of that same situation: didn’t they put out some bizarre and derogatory cartoons/caricatures of one of their critics? Maybe 5 years ago or a bit more?

I don’t know if it was some sort of misguided “guerilla marketing” ploy but, regardless of the intent, it did come off as weird and unsavoury.

As far as rip offs go: their Arturia Keystep clone was, in my view, over the line. Their Mother32 clone, which I cannot remember the name of, isn’t something I’m entirely comfortable with either… although anyone who wants a Mother32 is I think going to spring the extra for the real deal rather than buying the clone.

OTOH I do like their 2600-a-likes and, as you’ve pointed out, I can’t really fault putting out remakes of out of production hardware.

> bizarre and derogatory cartoons/caricatures

One and the same. The illustration of the critic that the cork sniffer was mocking was at best unflattering, and at worst referenced antisemitic stereotypes.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/a-major-synth-company-create...

> But I mean, you should be able to be an odd duck and also be a director of a brand, as long as you behaviour isn’t hurting anyone…

I think the canonical example here is the Kirn Corksniffer[1] which could have been avoided with some foresight and subsequently a quick apology, but ego can sometimes get in the way.

Behringer definitely made bad products for a very long time, and while I appreciate the increase in quality the synth recreations don't really blow my mind. They're low cost, they're hardware, but almost all of them fall short of the originals.

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/a-major-synth-company-create...?

> They're low cost, they're hardware, but almost all of them fall short of the originals.

As with everything Behringer, a lot of this varies from product to product. And it also depends which axes you measure along and which you consider important.

Like, for example, I don’t think anyone who’d done their research could seriously suggest the TD-3 and its variants aren’t as good as an original 303. In some ways they’re better: MIDI support, for example, and the MO - which is the second one I bought - implements the Devilfish mods that were popular on original units. But sound-wise, they’re as similar to a real 303 as the tonal differences between two original 303s. And hardware wise, well they’re cheap plastic boxes just like the originals so Behringer have certainly nailed the feel of using a 303.

On the other hand, something like the Poly D, does have some differences to the Minimoog. Again, it has some stuff that the OG doesn’t: an additional oscillator, paraphony, MIDI, a sequencer and arpeggiator.

Soundwise it’s very close but my sense is the filter doesn’t have quite the same hollow but fat character of the Moog filters I’m most familiar with (Moog One so not directly compatible). But it’s close and I’m not sure in a mix anyone would notice you were using a Poly D rather than a Minimoog.

And then you can find areas where corners have been cut: knobs and switchgear of the Poly D are solid and satisfying to use, but the keyboard is absolutely meh. It’s functional but it feels (and is) cheap. Not a patch on the OG.

Generally, businesses that try to thrive only on "take existing designs, produce them cheaper, try to out-compete on price only while not adding new R&D to the world" are businesses I try to avoid, as I feel like it'll only introduce a race to the bottom, instead of bringing new exciting stuff into the world.

This is regardless of the sector/industry, so I'll continue buying from brands that create new things, rather than from brands that iterate on existing stuff.

But with that said, it's a trite discussion, and I despise the constant "Behringer is the cheapest" or "Behringer just steals" conversations that happen every time Behringer is mentioned, more than I despise Behringer itself.

The mixer space is the only one where behringer doesn’t actually just copy other people’s shit and make it cheaper. Their mixers are cheap compared to the competition but they’re super original and have tons of features and UX patterns not found on mixers that cost 5x as much.

Behringer earned a reputation for poor quality in their early days. things are muth better now but quality control still isn't the best.

Cloning innovative products for a much cheaper price will drive those companies out of business and cause the industry to stagnate.

These days they are mostly cloning old, usually discontinued, products. Two examples are the Roland 303 or Klon Centaur. One product that isn't exactly discontinued is Neve is continuing to sell 1073 and 33609 derived products, but they certainly aren't selling the original 1073 anymore, and their 33609 design is over 40 years old. I don't morally they have any room to complain about people cloning their old designs, nor that morally should anyone feel bad about taking decades old historic designs from another company and making a version of it that is improved or more accessible.

I'm aware that in the past they were accused of cloning more current products, but the only example I could remember was FCB1010 supposedly being a clone of the Roland FC-300 (MIDI pedal board with 2 expression pedals). There certainly is a visual similarity between the two that seems very questionable. I don't think that the Roland FC-300 was particularly innovative. I know that Mackie sued about the MX-8000 being a clone, but I'll note they did lose that lawsuit. I don't there was also a lawsuit in the 90s about the Aphex Aural Exciter Type C, but I can't say that I know the details of that. Both of those lawsuits are definitely from a time when Behringer's quality seemed to be a lot lower, so there are definately ways the company has improved in the last 30 years.

A few hints: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5RSIWbZ6Vc

I do own a few behringer devices. They work fine for me, but I'm just a hobbyist and treat my gear with care.

Behringer has been fairly consumer friendly over the years, it's much appreciated- its something I consider when buying audio stuff.

Behringer evolved from a "cheap unusable shit" to very solid gear and a company that listens to their users.

If you want to enter the market you must beat their stuff price/quality wise. That's not easy in 2025.

The entire audio/venue biz is heavily driven by mouth-to-mouth propaganda and personal networks. A friend of mine knows Uli Behringer personally - if one of his mixing console hangs itself during a concert you know who's getting a very angry call at 1:00 o'clock. If people stop losing trust in your stuff nobody will buy the rotten product (or worse entire product series) anymore.

It's the same for the video production scene. It will make you very rich if your product is very good - if it blocks a production or even worse destroys a recording you'll be beaten out of the market with fists. And the people will track your records down if you change your legal name if you are trying to back in.

The scene loves and hates with a lot of passion. And they have a memory like elephants and never forgive.

> If you want to enter the market you must beat their stuff price/quality wise

Yeah, if the market you're talking about is "price/quality", but most musical gear doesn't sit in that market, but a wildly different one, and in that one you don't have to beat Behringer to be successful, and granted your stuff is high quality and actually innovative enough, you can almost set the price freely.

I don't understand. What is the "wildly different" market that "most musical gear" is in? Do you have a citation for "most musical gear?"

> It will make you very rich if your product is very good - if it blocks a production or even worse destroys a recording you'll be beaten out of the market with fists.

I remember working support for a video production data storage company and it being straightforward problems most of the time (9 times out of 10 just walking PAs or AEs through documented steps for swapping a drive in a RAID) but executed under some of the wildest circumstances (a producer calling from a helicopter during a shoot, or hearing an A-list filmmaker yelling at the AE in the background, or security so tight that I'd get confirmation of each step as a photo of the server's screen taken on a phone that's then walked to a place that gets a signal).

In other industries I've worked in, most of those requests never would've made it to a rep's phone, but the table-stakes expectation was that someone was always available to ensure it was done right and to satisfaction, or you lost the client immediately.

When it really was a serious issue and we got shipped out on-site to a client, we were effectively told not to bother coming back if we couldn't diagnose and fix it.

Behringer has made a bunch of old (and now very expensive) synths that the original manufactures really didn't want to make again, available to the public. At a fraction of the price. And more lately they've started to clone a bunch of studio equipment.

When I started out playing music, they were mostly just seen as cheap garbage.

Apart from the cheap plastic case their circuits actually sounded exactly the same that the stuff they cloned, but it took awhile for forum users to publicly acknowledge it.

Also some plastic cases, like in guitar pedals, are sturdy enough for its usage. You need durable switches, but the casing doesn't need to be 2 mm steel. Specially if you use a floor board, the pedals could be made with a cardboard case and be enough.

I make a device akin to a guitar pedal. If you want to use a plastic case, it has to be designed for mechanical ruggedness and protection of the innards. For small time pedal makers, the cost of design and mold tooling rules this out, though I wouldn't try to predict the future of technologies such as 3d printing.

But if you're limited to drilling some holes in an off-the-shelf enclosure, it had better be metallic. I learned that lesson the hard way, and I now use metal boxes exclusively. Luckily for me, my product somehow hasn't attracted the interest of Behringer or other low-cost makers -- yet.

Also, judging from some returns I've gotten, gadgets can be subjected to a lot of abuse. A musician can control this, but a gear maker can't.

I've seen the insides of some early Behringer gear. A lot of their early stuff was mechanically delicate, and showed signs of extensive "re-work" in production.

I have a local pro A/V business- when I started they absolutely -were- cheap garbage. I was forced to work with (and repair) a lot of their consoles, mics, etc over the years and a lot of it was truly bad stuff that was made as cheaply as possible simply to get "something" to that functioned (mostly).

They have gotten a lot better- I have made a lot of money off owning my xr18 over the last 12 years. And if you count midas, the m32 etc has been really good for me too. I've go a pair of the 76kt and they have been useful as well.

It's really great that they are making synths, and cheaply.

You can use real or perceived quality to build loyalty to your brand. You can protect this with innovation, or value, or a closed ecosystem.

Behringer’s moat is value, not a closed ecosystem. If their stuff becomes a standard, it’s all upside.

Their customer service has been shockingly good. Helped me source a new part for a long out-of-production pedal of theirs. Went into that interaction expecting pretty much nothing, came out pleasantly surprised.

They've got their fair share of missteps too. Love my Behringer Neutron though, never regretted buying it at-launch despite all it's quirks. The noise on the bucket bridge delay has gotten me called some pretty nasty names on forums over the years.

I replaced a blown Phase Linear 400 with a Behringer A800 amp for less money than the replacement output transistors would've cost. The PL400 was well setup, but the A800 sounds better to these old ears.

Other digital Audio connection protocols: Toslink, AES50, AES67 (Ravenna), Dante, AVB, AES10 (MADI). Then for stage connection basically every mixer manufacture has their own protocol with Allen Heaths SLink, Soundcraft’s Ultranet/SI Link, Yamaha’s TWINLANe and YGDAI, Roland’s REAC, Avid’s AVB-based Stage 64, and DiGiCo’s Optocore/SD-Rack links...

Most of them use standard CAT cables for this since that is what has been made for the transmission of network data for reasonably long distances. You can replace the RJ-45 plugs with Ethercon connectors if you need it extra rugged and reliable.

Ravenna, AVB and MADI are already existing, open standards that do even more, but I guess they are too expensive because of the ultra low latency requirements and FPGAs involved.

The use of an specialized automotive audio bus IC is interesting and probably gets the cost down, but within a car cable lengths are rarely comparable to what would happen in a concert venue. According to Behringer there is a 15m max cable distance per spec. That is.. too low for practise. Maybe for a small rehearsal room or so, but if you go from a front of house mixer to the stage 15m is nothing, especially if you can't run it the direct way.

Nice of them opening it up still.

AES67 is the open standard, ravenna and dante are extensions/alterations of it (well dante preceded aes67 but can be run in aes67 compatibility) and none of them require FPGAs, they usually use FPGAs to keep latency very low but they work just fine with any network card that supports PTPv2 and in dante case it’s not even that strict.

Go grab the ravenna docs, it’s pretty close to the spec for AES67 with added details for how to communicate metadata. You will find it, SMPTE2110 and the likes is all built on-top of existing standards (RTP, PTP, amongst others), even AVB which has much stricter requirements regarding latency is the same. These aren’t complex proprietary standards, they are standards which just specifies restrictions and interactions between other standards.

What I’m getting at is the Klark Teknik and Behringer after then refusing to use these standards as their interconnect is the industry outlier, the only other example in this discussion which still has relevance is Allen and Heath and they now do actually support Dante stage boxes on their models.

Twinlan and the other examples were never the only options, Digico and soundcraft support madi by default, Yamaha effectively spurred dante into existence in the live industry. Their proprietary protocol are there to solve problems that cannot be solved with the standard interconnect, usually latency or channel count or both.

> These aren’t complex proprietary standards,

They aren't proprietary, but they are complex standards, and sometimes somewhat incomplete. AES67, for instance, is somewhat crippled by not having a control plane (for that you need AES70, not well supported, or various NMOS standards). AVB requires special network switches.

Behringer doesn't really refuse to support standards. They offer Dante and MADI cards for their X32 and Wing mixers. They have AES50 built in as well. I think StageConnect and UltraNet are intended to be a cheaper/simpler/more limited alternative for people who don't need the full physical range and flexibility of Dante.

Total cable length is 40m, 15m between nodes. Maybe in a non-car environment these can be stretched, because the needed noise margins are lower?

https://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/data...

That would be the interesting information. I can't imagine Behringer didn't test the parctical limits before running a digital signal via unknown impedance XLR cables.

So if they did these tests it would be nice to know the actual limits that were observed in the field.

Most likely automotive stuff is specified with huge safety margins.

For a car audio system?

Behringer drives that through a bog-standard unknown impedance XLR microphone cable. I am not saying more than 15m aren't possible, what I am saying is that this is a thing Behringer would need to mention. E.g. "Internal tests have shown that cable runs up to 100m are possible even with problematic electromagnetic interference coming from a generator".

Then you know what to expect, cause I would like to think they ran that kind of test before buying that AD IC in bulk and deploying it in their designs.

I agree that 15m is somewhat short, but I think this is intended to offer a lower cost offering, but be an alternative the the other networks they already support.

I for one am eager for audio networking standards to become more accessible. My biggest hopes would probably have been for a control plane protocol for AES67 to gain critical mass and force Dante and Ravenna to support it, but in the mean time this could be a nice alternative for some use cases as well.

Behringer is a polarizing company but they revolutionized the electronic music instrument market. I have three of their synths and I'm happy with the purchases.

They brought products that, while not top quality, had decent quality for an unbeatable price. I'm not sure their gear is the best for traveling musicians, but is perfect for the home.

> They brought products that, while not top quality, had decent quality for an unbeatable price

In my mind, Behringer didn't revolutionized anything, but rather iterated their way to fame. None of the stuff they release is really "innovative" except when you consider the price, as your comment allude to.

Not to say that isn't an achievement in itself, to build same quality gear for cheap, but I'm not sure "revolutionized" is a word I'd use to describe them.

The word has been historically used to represent a new group of people being empowered. And Behringer has empowered poor and hobbyst musicians like no one else in recent memory. That's a revolution in my book.

Huh, I guess my history been different, I always understood "innovative" as something like "new and different".

Making something cheaper can be innovative, depending on how you achieved that. But if you launched a product that is the same as a competitor only because it's cheaper, because your company is funded by VCs who can continuously inject cash to bleed your competitor, I wouldn't call that "innovative" at all.

But if you instead had figured out a way to actually create the same hardware but in a cheaper way, so that's why the price is cheaper, then you did innovative in the creation process, but I still wouldn't call the finished product innovative, I'd be more focused on the process itself.

One of you is talking about a technical revolution, that changes what things are or how things are made.

The other is talking about market revolution, where market dynamics change, typically by lowering the price.

Yeah, I think that's a fair characterization.

The word used in the original comment was "revolutionized" and in reference to "the market", not "innovative" and not in reference to product functionality.

One could make an argument that companies like Behringer, by „selling the dream“ - even if they sell it cheaper than others - are part of what makes musicians poor ;)

Cannot afford a real Jupiter-8? Now you can! And finally you will have success!

(Narrator: They did not succeed)

... That makes no sense. The value of an instrument isn't what makes a successful musician successful. The best musicians can make the cheapest sounding instrument sound amazing. What cheaper instruments offers is the opportunity for someone to even have a chance.

that is the point. It is easy to buy another 'toy'. It is tedious to practice using what you have. Thus many buy instrunents persuing sucess.

you need something to work with and despite great musicians sounding good on junk quality does sometimes sound better in ways you cannot compensate for. Also even if you can make cheap sound good it may be ergonomically harmful, or otherwise be a struggle. Thus it is sometimes justified to spend money on better.

But Behringer is mostly selling clones of famous (and expensive) synths.

You don’t need these expensive synths.

But md point is that you wouldn’t even need the clones of Behringer.

Those synths are famous and expensive because they're an important part of musical culture. E.g. if you want to make dance music it's likely you want 808- or 909-style drums. You could use samples or software simulations, but I think the hardware UI makes a difference. It's easier to follow the idioms of a genre when you're working in a similar way to the originators of the genre.

> It's easier to follow the idioms of a genre when you're working in a similar way to the originators of the genre.

This is essentially what I was after. Behringer (and others) are selling you the dream of reaching the echelons of those genre-defining originators.

But you won't. Having a Jupiter-8 clone or even an original will not make you another Giorgio Moroder or Nick Rhodes and having a Linn clone won't make you another Prince. Those synths and drum machines became famous because they existed at the right time in the right place (and under the fingers of the right people).

Behringer is selling nostalgia. Sure, you don't have to shell out the equivalent of a small car, but looking at what people are producing with these devices, for 99% of the customers, it will not bring them any nearer to their dreams.

> Those synths are famous and expensive because they're an important part of musical culture

Not only that, many synths are expensive at launch because of R&D and production costs (considering the small amount they produce), and impossible they're already part of "musical culture" as they just launched. TE and Elektron stuff is expensive at launch as just one counter-example.

But Teenage Engineering or Elektron are putting out original creative stuff. Even if it is built around vintage components like the SidStation (which is still one of the devices I really regret having sold)

All good musical instrument product development requires iteration.

So this aspect should not necessarily be viewed as dis-innovative.

Where they ‘revolutionized’ the ‘evolutionary iteration’ of product development, is they made affordable copies of other products that had already been through a few classic iterations.

>Cheap/Price/etc.

There’s the rub. First, it has to be affordable to the target audience. Second, it has to be available: i.e. can I just walk out of the shop with it right now?

Cheap Behringer gear fits many a budding rock stars’ meager budget. Behringer has capitalized on their reach by developing that market at a clip which far out-paces the bigger/prestigious brands.

What’s great is how much Behringer is agitating the Superbooth universe. It is so fun to see folks of all ages learning the old synth classic architectures, even if it is on re-implementations rather than the old planks, themselves.

Synthesizers, thanks to Behringer and other players in the market, are now not so esoteric and inaccessible as they once were, but rather well established as a 21st century musical instrument standard.

There is much mirth to be gained from observing a 9 year old kid figure out how to make the JUNO/SH101/etc. architecture do extraordinary things, without worrying about the drink-spill factor, or other antiquated notions.

> In my mind, Behringer didn't revolutionized anything, but rather iterated their way to fame. None of the stuff they release is really "innovative" except when you consider the price, as your comment allude to.

Your comment reads like "IBM didn't revolutionize anything. None of the stuff they release is really "innovative" except when you consider the price (...)"

Well, did IBM actually bring something new to the market?

As far as I know, IBM did have impressive technical innovations at first, like the Vacuum Tube Multiplier, but then at one point they stopped innovating and instead focused on basically business optimizations.

So yeah, I guess a bit similar to IBM, but that isn't the full story.

Yes, I agree.

Disclaimer: long-time musical instrument fan boy and designer, developer, with some experience in the industry working with a couple of well-known brands.

Behringer did what was there, sitting, ripe for picking: they made musical instruments standard (through copying) and they made them cheap - vital factors that musicians require in order to have a decent instrument/setup/workstation/etc.

Behringer revealed the huge situation with the musical-instrument business - it is very, very hard to be successful without pushing the expense on the end-user. Synths which might cost ~$180 to build are sold for ~$1800, for a reason: there are a lot of mouths to feed, metaphorically speaking.

And then, there is the brick and mortar factor - which is a massive thing, even still today, and I mean massive inasmuch as anyone paying rent so you can have a place to walk in and demo an instrument, is going to want to get that rent paid, too. And yes, there are still brick and mortar businesses around - barely. Internet has eaten everyone’s margins; but there are still hard core musician markets where an in-store demo is preferred.

So, Behringers machinations have played very well into that formula. Cheaper gear means better distribution; Behringer is bringing life back to some brick and mortar shops. I won’t mention names, but if you’re reading this and understanding it, you probably know where.

And let’s address the ‘cheap’ as in $ versus ‘cheap’ as in fragility. Behringer gear is actually kind of robust. They’ve put energy into making devices that Just Plain Work™. And since they offer value for money, why not get two or three of those “<mixers><eurorack modules><guitars pedals>&etc”.. might as well, “since I’m in the shop anyway”.

This doesn’t mean they don’t deserve some suspicion for the shenanigans, but when you see a teenager learning music get his first working home rig set up, and its a fair bit of Behringer gear, you will see the winning equation.

That is the start of a life-long passion for music, one hopes, and who knows what the other manufacturers of musical instruments will do, to respond to those shenanigans.

Behringer is the Robin Hood of the audio industry - they steal ideas from the expensive companies and remake them cheaply for the poor.

Many of the companies Behringer steals from are also poor, and will wither away with no sales from their innovative work.

Name one. Name a poor company Behringer has stolen from.

I don't know why you're being downvoted, that is largely what Behringer is known for, affordable clones of more expensive gear. It's not everything they do, but it's a decent chunk of it. I'm glad they produce audio gear for the masses.

That is one way to look at them. The other is more akin to a parasite, wait for small companies to invest and innovate and once a product is proven in the marketplace, copy it. I don't really want to judge them, cheap music gear is certainly good for consumers but talking to small manufacturers over many years I've yet to meet anyone who likes them. If anything smaller players are now extremely careful to open source stuff exactly because of them.

Many of those instruments are based on 40 to 50 year old designs. They've released products that were simply not in the market anymore, or second-hand at exorbitant prices. That's not parasitic. Their production processes might not stand up to scrutiny, though.

> If anything smaller players are now extremely careful to open source stuff exactly because of them.

That's the problem with all open source. If you open source something good, someone else is going to run with it.

Well, they’re also known for cloning newer devices, such as (which I didn’t realize until recently) the Korg Volca line, which were already rather cheap devices to begin with. I admit that I don’t know the exact details on those devices from Behringer apart from small snippets I’ve seen popping up in videos and perhaps they’re adding something new to it, but they sure seem very similar to the Volca designs.

The vast majority of the time, they're not cloning devices from small companies, they're cloning classic devices from large companies. The types of devices that have had their prices artificially increased due to demand from collectors.

Please be aware that this is not a first-party open source release of a previously secret internal spec/implementation, but rather the result of an impressive reverse-engineering effort by Christian Nöding, whose videos about this project have been posted on here as well. Still, minor kudos to Behringer for giving the official permission and sharing some internals to make this possible.

These news are of course good, but they sure bring up conflicting feelings in me. I mean, they should open source just about anything, seeing how they have unapologetically used other peoples designs as “inspiration” for their gear for decades for their own benefit. Sure, it has resulted in a lot of more affordable gear (I mean, super savings on development costs) and I really appreciate that, but it’s also at a cost. Innovators in the business get less business when there are cheaper devices “inspired” by theirs on the market, resulting in less funding for future innovations to inspire future Behringer gear. Then, of course, the whole Behringer vs Peter Kirn thing was just something that has left a permanent distaste in my mouth whenever I hear or see the name Behringer.

But I get it. Like someone commented here, the do seem like a sort of Robin Hood in the music gear world (although its not always just products from big companies that “inspire” Behringer products), making these expensive pieces of gear much more approachable for enthusiasts on a budget. Approachability is good and I love the idea of it. I just really wish it didn’t have to be at someone else's expense.

Companies like Behringer are necessary for patents to be ethically justified. The deal with patents is a temporary monopoly in exchange for greater competition once the monopoly expires. Cheap re-implementations of expired patents is the patent system working as intended.

Agreed. I have no gripe with companies reviving extinct hardware, such as multiple companies have with the TB-303 (Behringer included). Patents should even have a shorter lifespan IMO (although I admit I don’t know how long they last now). Sitting comfortably on a patent just encourages stagnation.

The product designs Behringer are often accused of plagiarizing are generally not patented.

If it was never patented then whoever produced it clearly didn't care about preventing competition. And Behringer products all have a Behringer logo clearly printed on them, so there is no attempt to deceive anybody.

I like Behringer products, but the story of the Centaur clone is a joke. By all means they attempt to deceive: no "Behringer" clearly visible, the centaur drawing is almost a copy, the colour, the knobs and switch distribution...

And half their pedals look exactly like Boss gear.

The version without a prominent Behringer logo is no longer sold (possibly there was legal action; I don't know the details). I agree that the old version was potentially misleading. The current version has a prominent Behringer logo. Knob and switch distribution is a functional part of the user interface.

AFAIK, Behringer received some threats, and they redesigned the case. But if you order the new redesign "Centara" they will mix your order somehow and send you the first almost exact copy they made.

The functional distribution of knobs are the one that use Boss pedals and others: common case size, knobs at top, switch under a big cover. The wide format with a naked switch offset that the Centaurs have (both original Klon and Behringer clone) is functionally pointless.

A lot of products have new ideas to them which are not patentable.

As someone who has been using behringer X/m32 products for nearly 2 decades now (hard to believe it's been that long!) and as someone who's done a lot of high and low end live audio work this is pretty cool. You don't often see mfgrs being so open about transport protocols or the specs are locked behind expensive paywalls and hardware to mess with them isn't remotely affordable.

I am curious how the pictured A2B board interfaces with the X/M32 board. If that's an AES50 implementation then maybe there's the possibility someone could roll up an AES50 router. That could be cool.

Card-carrying AES member here.

The X32 module interface is actually fairly simple: it's more or less just four 8-channel I2S TDM streams going in either direction. Easy peasy to interface with, nothing as complicated as AES50 involved.

AES50 itself is actually a standard; you can buy a copy of it for $50. It's basically just "Ethernet with fixed addresses and a custom frame format across two of the wire pairs, a super fast (64x the sample rate, with a -12.5% followed by a +12.5% duty cycle pulse every 2048 samples) clock signal across the other two". I've been meaning to whip up some boards that speak AES50 one of these days, just for fun.

A router would be totally possible, with of course the caveat that AES50 itself is point-to-point so you'd need some sort of out-of-band mechanism to tell the router where to send all the incoming audio streams it's receiving.

Lack of open standards also had a very negative effect on prices. A&H stageboxes are super expensive compared to others, but if you run Allen console then there is no alternative. Other than Dante I guess, but that is also expensive.

Why would you choose XLR as a connector for an application like this? Why choose one of the most common connectors you’re likely to see in an environment where someone will be mixing audio for a completely incompatible application? Hope the devices can handle accidental 48V phantom power without damage.

The audio world has history here. A simple TSR audio jack can be used for either stereo or balanced audio, headphone or mic or (multiple) line levels, hi-Z instruments, two incompatible MIDI (digital) connectors, multiple incompatible foot controller connectors, etc.

The options for connectors that are robust enough for stage work is limited and the alternatives tend to be expensive since they are no where near as ubiquitous. 1/4" Phono plug and XLR have proven themselves and only take a couple minutes to replace when an accident happens. So we use XLR and Phono everywhere for audio. The real question is why fragile barrel connectors in three different sizes and no wiring standard for power? And now we have just as fragile USB in three different sizes, but at least the wiring is standard. You can't power up but you can still plug it into the board!

It is rare you see anything in the audio world with an XLR that can not survive an accidental encounter with phantom power. People are paranoid about it but for some reason have no issue with phono being use for speaker connects which is far more likely to kill gear. I used to repair audio gear, every bit of gear I encountered that got fried by phantom power had an XLR to TRS in the mix.

XLR with Neutrik Plugs + high quality cables is crazy robust.

You can tow a car with it and then use it to work a festival with Tier 1 bands afterwards without any problems. Most likely it will work even better than before.

Also differential signal nature by design is the standard - It's like CAN. This kills 99% of non-wanted signals coming from the wire physically.

XLR is a perfect: it'd literally designed for differential signal transmission, they're in plentiful supply on the jobsite, and 48v isn't a concern if you understand how differential and phantom feeds work anywwy.

Fortunately the audio industry isn't plagued with Apple-like "engineers" removing headphone jacks, SD card slots, USB ports, and replaceable batteries. Sure something could be "better", but there doesn't need to be.

XLRs are everywhere and already installed. You could choose cat5 but it's not as common.

That’s my point - reusing an existing connector type for a new and completely incompatible role will not make life easier.

I joked to a friend once that it would be far better if we just used a single connector type for everything in audio and get rid of jacks, XLR, power connectors, MIDI, etc. They liked the idea - I deadpan suggested regular mains plugs and sockets would be good - cheap, ubiquitous and sturdy.

That's fair point - I can imagine someone plugging a digital out into analog in, not expecting the hell that's about to break. Probably it sounds like digital noise, not sure about levels.

But the advantage of reusing cabling that already exists in 100% of the venues, stages and churches cannot be overstated. It is literally a drop-in upgrade, boom, now a single cable carries 32 channels instead of 1.

> reusing an existing connector type for a new and completely incompatible role will not make life easier

I don't think it's completely new purpose for XLR, I'm fairly sure I've seen other stuff than audio being pulled through XLR more than once even in professional environments.

DMX over three-pin XLR is extremely common, and it’s also rather common for lighting equipment to be right next to the sound equipment.

Exactly - AES/EBU over XLR has been a thing in the broadcast world for ages. The Behringer WING mixer even has a pair of AES/EBU ports on the back.

I've seen XLR used for DMX lighting. The advice for stage techs seems to be "don't do that". Same thing applies to this standard probably.

I was a lighting designer for several years and in that time in don't think I ever saw a proper 5-pin DMX512 connector. Even in venues with millions in house lights, the connection backstage to the house was XLR.

The proper DMX512 connector is XLR, though? The 5-pin variant, that is.

I worked as a tech at a stage for a short while. We always used XLR5 for lighting and XLR3 for audio.

Yes, I only saw 3-pin XLR for DMX512, while being aware of 5-pin XLR as "correct". Everything from the lighting console, to dimmer packs and moving heads, to the aforementioned connection to house lights. This was 2009-2013. Maybe it was regional?

Technically DMX needs 110 ohm cable - the connector is less relevant. But most DMX devices are forgiving, and will accept whatever rubbish cable you throw its way.

It's the same thing as USB-C, actually. The connector looks the same, but the cable can vary a lot. At least audio cables are labelled.

It's already common to put digital data over XLR in stage environments, like DMX lighting and AES3. Also venues will have an XLR snake but definitely not a TRS jack snake from stage to mixer.

As a person who routinely uses XLRs to carry stereo headphone feeds with TRS converters on each end, I kind of like that there are only a few connectors that do different things. I have a pelican that's already heavy enough and adding more adapters to my kit doesn't sound great.

Once you know that just because you can fit a jack in something you can't rely on it not to have 48 volts across pins, you stop putting fingers in light sockets or hooking your laptop to XLR inputs using TS->XLR adapters.

Aren't there already a number of applications using canon connectors with digital? What's your opinion about AES/EBU using XLR? Or DMX over 3-pin xlr?

XLR is balanced, meaning you can transport a voltage accurately over a longer distance.

There is a mirror voltage on a second line that is mirrored and summed with the first again at the receiving end.

All noise picked up underway will affect both lines fairly equally, so the reversed line has the same noise as the normal line.

The noise will be inverted and summed with the regular noise, theoretically nullifying it completely.

Because it is everywhere and very robust. And phantom power is called "phantom" for a reason. It does not harm the most devices, if they do not support it, because the voltage just cannot apply, except on some rare old devices.

Nice to see that the parent Philippines holding company (Music Tribe) which went on a massive acquisition spree and bought a bunch of specialized audio companies still allows things to be free & open sourced.

(Though just read up that the CEO/Founder of Music Tribe is Uli Behringer)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_Tribe

Once your company is big enough you have a lot of potential open doors to optimize your company structure. Everyone does this.

Is A2B itself completely undocumented? All I can find are AD transceiver datasheets that treat it as an opaque protocol. I like that they can tunnel I²C over it. Such a small thing that's really useful.

It's proprietary.

Are there patents that need to be licensed to use this?

No, it uses a first party Analog Devices IC AD2428 which has the patent licence - A2B was meant to simplify and reduce cost in automative audio https://www.analog.com/en/resources/technical-articles/innov...

I'll buy behringer products until i can justify my ROI's on the more expensive (better sounding) gear.

Behringer will always hold a special place in my heart.

> A StageConnect/A2B main-device uses a virtual I2C-connection

Uh oh.

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