Why no "High End" Behringer Modeler ...... seriously ?

[Dave Lewis]

Zoom don’t own a massive town & factory facility in China like the ones Mr Behringer has built

 

[paisleywookiee]

Zoom don’t own a massive town & factory facility in China like the ones Mr Behringer has built

Zoom does have an R&D department though.

 

[Frodebro]

Zoom does have an R&D department though.

Behringer has an industry leading reverse engineering department.

 

[pipelineaudio]

It uses the same TheSycon drivers as Neve, SSL and every other USB interface manufacturer besides RME and allegedly sometimes MOTU

 

[Sleezy E]

It uses the same TheSycon drivers as Neve, SSL and every other USB interface manufacturer besides RME and allegedly sometimes MOTU

Even Focusrite?

 

[wgowwgo]

I like Behringer. At many a bar, I've run through a Behringer bass amp or a Behringer PA. Affordable and decent enough quality.

I hate TC Electronics. Mediocre products with terrible customer service. Hopefully they improved after Behringer bought them, because before then they were rotten. Their recent amp sim pedals sounded terrible too.

 

[pipelineaudio]

Even Focusrite?

Especially focusrite

 

[pipelineaudio]

I heard it was tc proprietary driver. It was right after behringer aquired them.

The TC proprietary drivers were the DICE-II ones for firewire

 

[OneEng]

Think of how Behringer buying Midas and Klark Teknik changed the blueprint of the live paradigm. This wasn't cloning anything, it was setting the rules.

From a business perspective, Behringer is very good a making lots of hardware things very cheap. This WAS (IMO) their entire advantage. They borrowed heavily from others designs and made them much less expensively.

As others pointed out, their digital mixers are quite good. How? They bought companies that made good mixers, then told them to design a new line of mixers with the guidelines of using this set of major parts. They got great economy of scale and was able to make a VERY good digital mixer at an unheard of price (X32 and X-Air line). They have advanced this recently with the Wing line again moving the bar. Seriously, you an buy a Wing Rack for $1600.00 and outfit it with 48 inputs for well under $2K..... complete with M3000 reverb. That is flat out insane. Just 15 years ago such a rig would have cost you 50K. Shoot, the M3000 alone would have been 4K.

I agree that the same trick would work for a digital amp. I suspect that the best bet for Behringer would be to purchase either Kemper, Fractal, Line 6, etc, and do the same trick. Design an entire line of digital guitar processors that are as good (or better) than today's products and mass produce them to achieve a price point a fraction of the current market price for such devices.

After all, when I look at the BOM in these devices (I am an EE manager), you can easily see you you could make the device pretty cheap..... if that were your goal and you had lots of volume to spread your NRE around, and you had a team that could quickly put together a new design from their experience.

It might even be a better money maker for them than the mixer. After all, bands generally only have 1 mixer. They usually have 2 guitar players :). Double the market size :).

 

[the swede]

From a business perspective, Behringer is very good a making lots of hardware things very cheap. This WAS (IMO) their entire advantage. They borrowed heavily from others designs and made them much less expensively.

As others pointed out, their digital mixers are quite good. How? They bought companies that made good mixers, then told them to design a new line of mixers with the guidelines of using this set of major parts. They got great economy of scale and was able to make a VERY good digital mixer at an unheard of price (X32 and X-Air line). They have advanced this recently with the Wing line again moving the bar. Seriously, you an buy a Wing Rack for $1600.00 and outfit it with 48 inputs for well under $2K..... complete with M3000 reverb. That is flat out insane. Just 15 years ago such a rig would have cost you 50K. Shoot, the M3000 alone would have been 4K.

I agree that the same trick would work for a digital amp. I suspect that the best bet for Behringer would be to purchase either Kemper, Fractal, Line 6, etc, and do the same trick. Design an entire line of digital guitar processors that are as good (or better) than today's products and mass produce them to achieve a price point a fraction of the current market price for such devices.

After all, when I look at the BOM in these devices (I am an EE manager), you can easily see you you could make the device pretty cheap..... if that were your goal and you had lots of volume to spread your NRE around, and you had a team that could quickly put together a new design from their experience.

It might even be a better money maker for them than the mixer. After all, bands generally only have 1 mixer. They usually have 2 guitar players :). Double the market size :).

From that perspective they seem to be a little shy, telling TC to do it kinda. More like, let’s try that but really carefully, let TC do that.


I do think they’ll keep letting TC do the guitar thing though.

 

[dronerstone]

From that perspective they seem to be a little shy, telling TC to do it kinda. More like, let’s try that but really carefully, let TC do that.


I do think they’ll keep letting TC do the guitar thing though.

Yup, seems likely - maybe they're trying not to cross the streams too much. Some folks haven't caught up and actually aren't aware that TC was swallowed by Uli after all.

 

[Orvillain]

A lot of the TC people got fired quite recently. I wouldn't expect much from them for some time.

 

[OneEng]

From that perspective they seem to be a little shy, telling TC to do it kinda. More like, let’s try that but really carefully, let TC do that.


I do think they’ll keep letting TC do the guitar thing though.

Well, I am certain that they will continue to brand any studio effects or guitar processors "TC". "Behringer" isn't recognized as a brand at all in these markets today.

I also still believe they will use the TC design team for this, but will have the Music Group manufacturing and parts selection to keep the production costs low.

A lot of the TC people got fired quite recently. I wouldn't expect much from them for some time.

That is very sad indeed.

Still, when you purchase a company, the way to make 1+1=3 is to eliminate duplication of effort and processes. There is almost always layoffs in HR and IT for this reason. In the Behringer/TC situation, the mechanical engineering, manufacturing, manufacturing design, procurement, layout, etc would all be best served by Music Group. I would think the product design engineers and firmware engineers would all be retained as well as validation teams.

 

[Orvillain]

There is almost always layoffs in HR and IT for this reason.

Set fire to anyone ever involved in HR.


I said what I said.

 

[pipelineaudio]

Behringer has been sitting on pretty good guitar fx and modeling dsp for more than a decade. I’ve been blown away that they didn’t just stick it in a box based on their FCB1010 and dominate.

 

[OneEng]

Behringer has been sitting on pretty good guitar fx and modeling dsp for more than a decade. I’ve been blown away that they didn’t just stick it in a box based on their FCB1010 and dominate.

I had one of these for a while (before the Kemper foot controller came out). Have you ever seen what is inside it? One tiny little, very inexpensive, microcontroller, and a socketed ROM (that can be replaced to give the FCB1010 new code like the Uno4Kemper ROM).

MIDI is basically just a serial port with a funny port vs a PC 9 pin connector (if you are old enough to remember these). Super cheap to implement in any old micro.

Now, the FCB1010 enclosure was pretty decent. I actually ran over mine with my old 2000 TransAm. Only had to fix one switch that got sticky from the episode. Pretty tough pedal.

 

[pipelineaudio]

I had one of these for a while (before the Kemper foot controller came out). Have you ever seen what is inside it? One tiny little, very inexpensive, microcontroller, and a socketed ROM (that can be replaced to give the FCB1010 new code like the Uno4Kemper ROM).

Yes, I've written extensive articles about the FCB1010, modding it, using it in a battery powered setup, controlling DAWs with it, etc..

Putting it in a slightly bigger package with a USB port and some DSP would be simple for someone like Behringer

 

[OneEng]

Yes, I've written extensive articles about the FCB1010, modding it, using it in a battery powered setup, controlling DAWs with it, etc..

Putting it in a slightly bigger package with a USB port and some DSP would be simple for someone like Behringer

That's like saying that both the McLarin ultimate series hypercars and the Ford Escort have wheels and just adding an Hypercar engine to the Escort would make it a hyper car as well .

The FCB1010 has virtually NOTHING in common with a Kemper, AxeIII Fx, or any modern digital amp. They both have a PCB and foot switches.... that's about it.

Now, what is MORE true is that Behringer digital mixers have a great deal in common with modern digital amps. Digital mixers utilize quite a bit of DSP algorithms to achieve very low latencies and process a huge amount of sound. The big difference being that digital mixers do much less processing on each signal, but do MANY MANY more signals at once compared to a digital amp.

I think getting good amp tones is much less understood than getting a good parametric eq, or compressor, or even a reverb engine is.

Still, it isn't outside the realm of possibility to see Behringer release a digital guitar amp. 15 years ago, no one believed it was possible for Behringer to release a good digital mixer ..... but after purchasing 2 companies, borrowing their engineering and product design, and applying really good manufacturing scaling, here we are. More X32's out in the wild than any 5 other brands put together.

I do believe they would go about it by buying a company first though. That is their MO.

 

[pipelineaudio]

That's like saying that both the McLarin ultimate series hypercars and the Ford Escort have wheels and just adding an Hypercar engine to the Escort would make it a hyper car as well .

No it really isn't Behringer has several lines of products with DSP, some of it world leading, like TC Electronic

The FCB1010 has virtually NOTHING in common with a Kemper, AxeIII Fx, or any modern digital amp. They both have a PCB and foot switches.... that's about it.

Yes, a footswitch is a footswitch, not a modeler. You are correct.

I do believe they would go about it by buying a company first though. That is their MO.

They already have TC

 

[gumtown]

Now, the FCB1010 enclosure was pretty decent. I actually ran over mine with my old 2000 TransAm. Only had to fix one switch that got sticky from the episode. Pretty tough pedal.

Using two FCB1010's as wheel chocks ?