Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Clayton Fernandes said:
I know for live sound 48 is sufficient, but would like to see some of Behringer equipment launched using rates of 96kHz or more. A S16 at this rate and the potential for connecting directly to PC or MAC would be perfect for studio or live recordings. Also miss an ADA8000 (now ADA8200) rate of 96 (s / mux). Please express your view on the matter.

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Clayton,

As I have stated elsewhere on this forum and others, 96kHz is 99% marketing hype. There are hundreds of other things you should be more concerned about in terms of recording that matter much much much more. There are countless recordings by top tier acts mixed by top tier mixers who do not use 96 to this very day. Probably one of the most famous and respected ones bounces everything through a 16bit 48K process for every project he does. This is a man who can afford whatever gear he wants, and he is happy with 16bit 48K. I am too, and believe you can be too. Check out the Ethan Winer demonstrations about lowering bitrate and see when you can actually tell a difference, you will be surprised.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Hi Frank,

Have you checked out the iPad and PC control software options for the X32? Both are free downloads and will give you remote, wired or wireless control over the X32. We have been shooting instructional videos of the software this past week and it really is amazing to see multiple instances of the PC software plus several (5 in our case) iPads all controlling the mixer remotely. Check out the X32 page on our website for more details.

Costa

Frank DeWitt said:
I had the pleasure of being a board jockey at a multi room event using SAC The live program was in one room with a guy running FOH who had been there for the rehearsals I received a post fader feed from his board to my board in a overflow room. It was post fader because he knew what to expect and I didn't. I did have full control of every channel and my own EQ so I could tailor the mix to the room I was in. The setup was repeated in a third room.

At my church I have one PC and one license feeding the house. Another PC on a free remote has a complete mixer including his own solo ETC for his record mix. We have 9 more mixers (not aux but full mixers) running. One for each member of the Worship Team. They each control there PC with a $100 used laptop running wireless and battery powered so no hook up, cabling, wall warts ETC are needed. There is hard wired cabling to a headphone jack at each location.

Frank
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Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Uli,

Lynx say they have asked Midas for the MIDI over AES50 spec and that they have not received anything.

Could you comment?
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Dear James,

thanks for your question.

I know that the Midas people are incredibly busy right now and the team is also moving into our newly opened R&D Center in Manchester which creates additional workload.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Uli,

I would really like see the asnwer to the question posed in post #215. Re: Possilbe X8 or X16

Thanks,

Jim
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Dear Jim,

thank you for your comment.

I am sure you will understand that we cannot fully disclose our product roadmap. However I can share with you that we are indeed working on a comprehensive range of smaller format digital consoles.

Over the past years we have made huge investments in developing the technology platform which products such as X32, S16 and P16 are built on. This now allows us to scale in multiple directions.

The X32 is just the beginning of a revolutionary audio eco system that will potentially include auto mixing functions as well as complementing products such as remote controllable PA speakers, studio monitors etc.

We are also considering opening our technology to invite 3rd parties to develop products such as software apps.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Dear James,

Unfortunately sending MIDI to the Lynx PCI card is currently not possible. There are some complex reasons for this so I will try and keep my explanation brief.

Although the audio aspects of AES50 are open standard and can be used freely by any manufacturer, the way control data works is not. There is a band width available for control data within the AES50 specification but it is up to the manufacturer how they wish to use that bandwidth. At Midas we use a propriarty format for the control data that allows us very fast and flexible control of our consoles and its peripherals. But our hardware is specifically designed to work efficiently with this type of control data.

As you may already know when you connect some Klark Teknik or third party AES50 devices to the console network we use a mode for that connection called a 'Generic AES50' device. The difference between this type of link and the one used for other Midas based hardware is that only audio is sent to that network port, so no control data is part of that connection. This means there is no way to send MIDI, or any other control data on that link.

For us to be able to send control data to the Lynx card we would need to develop a seperte device type in software. It would also be highly likely that the hardware within the Lynx PCI card would need to change to access the control data being sent from the console. I'm not familiar enough with the Lynx hardware design to give a more detailed answer on this part of the equation. But I am sure its not a simple task.

I hope this has given you some insight into the situation.
But please contact me at my Midas email address if I can be of any further assistance.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Thanks Uli,

The x32 may be too much mixer for me but a smaller verison just might fit the bill.

Regards,

Jim
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Jeff Babcock said:
Clayton,

As I have stated elsewhere on this forum and others, 96kHz is 99% marketing hype. ....
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In terms of the limits of human hearing, I would tend to agree....

However there are advantages to using 96 kHz... including:
- More controlled A/D and D/A conversion. The analog anti aliasing filters can be more gentle with less phase change near 20 kHz.
- Digital filtering approaching 20 kHz is easier in that Nyquist is up at 48 kHz (not 24 kHz for 48 kHz sampling.)
- Compressors/limiters benefit from the higher sample rate in their control paths.
- Lower latency. DSP's are more efficient when executing instructions in blocks of samples. Longer blocks have less % overhead in function calls and allow for more interleaving of instructions - reducing pipeline stalls. They get higher effective instructions per clock cycle. <16 sample blocks are very inefficient. 32 sample blocks work better. 32 samples at 96 kHz is half the latency of 32 samples at 48 kHz.

Cheers,
Michael
 
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Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

A succestion to Uli and partners, now that you have in house touch sensitive faders in production, please update DAW controllers what you have now.
And if I can ask have the desing more like a pro controller would be, no curved edges or anything... almost rackable -to fit the extencion also offerd, I imagine

Matti
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Matti Lehtonen said:
A succestion to Uli and partners, now that you have in house touch sensitive faders in production, please update DAW controllers what you have now.
And if I can ask have the desing more like a pro controller would be, no curved edges or anything... almost rackable -to fit the extencion also offerd, I imagine

Matti
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Actually the design matches somehow the design of the Midas Pro series. IMHO no big deal and if you need to put in a rack I think it's bigger then 19" so that's not gonna work anyhow? Also from what i understand is that the motorised faders are good. But not touch sensitive, I could be wrong here.. And hope so ;)
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

My experience with different word length and sampling rates is with dCS's upsamplers and DA's. In the case of those units, 24 sounds better than 16, and 96 sounds better than 48. 24/96 sounds a lot better than 16/24.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Uli, that's great - but don't let your desire to get fixes out quickly tempt you to take short-cuts on regression testing! (been there, suffered the results of that!)



Uli Behringer said:
Thanks everyone for the great feedback.

We have just posted the latest firmware 1.06 with a number of minor bug fixes many of which were reported by you.

I am personally overseeing the implementation of fixes to any reported bugs and you can see our German software team are turning them around in a heartbeat.

Behringer: DIGITAL MIXER X32

Uli
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Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Michael Smithers said:
In terms of the limits of human hearing, I would tend to agree....

However there are advantages to using 96 kHz... including:
- More controlled A/D and D/A conversion. The analog anti aliasing filters can be more gentle with less phase change near 20 kHz.
- Digital filtering approaching 20 kHz is easier in that Nyquist is up at 48 kHz (not 24 kHz for 48 kHz sampling.)
- Compressors/limiters benefit from the higher sample rate in their control paths.
- Lower latency. DSP's are more efficient when executing instructions in blocks of samples. Longer blocks have less % overhead in function calls and allow for more interleaving of instructions - reducing pipeline stalls. They get higher effective instructions per clock cycle. <16 sample blocks are very inefficient. 32 sample blocks work better. 32 samples at 96 kHz is half the latency of 32 samples at 48 kHz.

Cheers,
Michael
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I fully agree that use 96kHz has advantages.


For PA does not impact much (would complement) but to see how recording at least necessary to have the option.


So I would like to see Mr. Uli opnion. on that rate.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Dear Uli,


thought important to the revitalization of the site and believe this move was in order to improve it.


However, I would like to expose a viewpoint always followed because their site and products from the old version of the same.


Thought the old site much more complete than this, ... photos in greater detail to analyze the product manual and specifications more accessible and light are the main differences I noticed.


For a proper worldwide release of their products (the site is the largest port of) like that met my suggestion.




Clayton.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Michael Smithers said:
In terms of the limits of human hearing, I would tend to agree....

However there are advantages to using 96 kHz... including:
- More controlled A/D and D/A conversion. The analog anti aliasing filters can be more gentle with less phase change near 20 kHz.
- Digital filtering approaching 20 kHz is easier in that Nyquist is up at 48 kHz (not 24 kHz for 48 kHz sampling.)
- Compressors/limiters benefit from the higher sample rate in their control paths.
- Lower latency. DSP's are more efficient when executing instructions in blocks of samples. Longer blocks have less % overhead in function calls and allow for more interleaving of instructions - reducing pipeline stalls. They get higher effective instructions per clock cycle. <16 sample blocks are very inefficient. 32 sample blocks work better. 32 samples at 96 kHz is half the latency of 32 samples at 48 kHz.

Cheers,
Michael
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Hi Michael,
Certainly the technical advantages are there as you have nicely indicated. My point is that companies' marketing usually ignores the latency issue etc and pitch 96kHz as a selling feature most typically in terms of implying better sound quality, which while possible, is "small potatoes" in the broad scheme of the final end result. In the case of an X32, burning up half of the I/O on the device simply to gain 96kHz would be a really poor tradeoff with nearly irrelevant benefit to sound quality for most applications.

I know you already know this (but I'll say it for the multitude of users out there who are blinded by the marketing machine) - many assume that any 96kHz product must sound better than one at 48. (Often the same people who believe line arrays are always superior). This is absolutely not the case, and even if it were, the electronic part of sound reproduction has much much much much much much much much much less impact on sound quality than physical things like capsules, drivers, and humans. The users who get the best results are usually the ones who understand this.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Jeff Babcock said:
Hi Michael,
Certainly the technical advantages are there as you have nicely indicated. My point is that companies' marketing usually ignores the latency issue etc and pitch 96kHz as a selling feature most typically in terms of implying better sound quality, which while possible, is "small potatoes" in the broad scheme of the final end result. In the case of an X32, burning up half of the I/O on the device simply to gain 96kHz would be a really poor tradeoff with nearly irrelevant benefit to sound quality for most applications.

I know you already know this (but I'll say it for the multitude of users out there who are blinded by the marketing machine) - many assume that any 96kHz product must sound better than one at 48. (Often the same people who believe line arrays are always superior). This is absolutely not the case, and even if it were, the electronic part of sound reproduction has much much much much much much much much much less impact on sound quality than physical things like capsules, drivers, and humans. The users who get the best results are usually the ones who understand this.
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I know If I was trying to differentiate for brand management purposes, between a premium digital product (Midas) and value digital product (Behringer), the sample rate could be a useful distinction. Sonically it doesn't hurt the cheaper products performance (really), but it gives the customer with more budget something to aspire toward, and justify spending more money on.

Offering Midas products with 96k and limiting Behringer to 48k, may just be clever merchandising.

You really need to have 96k, let me show you this nice Midas model. :)

JR
 
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