Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

I have been a very lucky individual. As an owner of several different Behringer units spanning from several different era's, I have had nothing but good service from them. Honestly they make me a lot of money and seem to continue to do so. Beyond that my first mixer that is now pushing 12 years old is still working, although not entirely........

So on to the question: It's become apparent that as a company, the goal is to deliver better quality at a price the regular folk can afford. Has your intentions included the idea as you turn the pages, to include a higher end line that could earn more respect from the richer side of the audio pool? I'm not in that pool, but I don't want to fish in the shallow end either. Do you imagine a sister brand, or direct product that will be higher end, and aimed at the intermediates that will never go for a Midas PRO series desk, but want something in that ball park?
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Hi Uli,
I was one of the many thousands who helped you get to where you are today, having spent over 10K on various
Behringer products over the last 15 years. I am wondering why has the static automation of DDX3216 not been brought forward into the X32 line? I am in some real desperate need of some static automation of at least volume faders, and fx returns, {although pans, solos, mutes and EQ's would be icing and most welcome} at reasonable cost:
why not incorporate these Midi maps into the line?
The DDX was brilliant but the technology and sound quality is dated and obsolete.
Pairing some more of that midi mapping or sysex topology with your X32 would be equally brilliant with today's state of the art SMD technology and technical spec's, any possibility of this? I really would like an X32 in either a Producer or Rack format, but I just dropped 7.2k replacing my whole signal chain with Midas Venice F32's and F16R's, {which I'm sure you will be glad to know.} Peace from the bleeding edge in EPA,Cal...
Rick A. DeNardo
RAD Records Inc.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Dear Rick,

thank you very much for your continued support and faith in the BEHRINGER and MIDAS products lines.

We appreciate your suggestions regarding some basic MIDI automation functions to be considered for future X32 firmware updates. Please note that we have published a lengthy response related to this topic on our Behringer forum and I have copied its content below for your reference.
We suppose those MIDI parameters will cover the requirements for automating the X32 parameters you suggested from basically any MIDI-driven environment or sequencing application.

When we developed the DDX3216 digital mixer around 15 years ago, MIDI and Sysex was basically the only way to control a hardware remotely in a synchronized way, which is why we had given it ample room in the user interface design.

Nowadays, we are obviously looking into more powerful and future-proof options, such as Ethernet and OSC-based protocols, and consequently the MIDI implementation was given a little less room in the X32.
Major sequencing software developers such as Steinberg, Ableton or Cakewalk etc., consider or actually provide support for OSC already, and we are confident there will be more applications using it soon.

Quote from our Development Team:

"Full MIDI support" is quite a relative term when using standard CC commands, considering the disparity between 10,000 parameters on the X32, and only 127 CC commands per MIDI channel.

There are not a lot of technical challenges, but rather challenges identifying what would be satisfying to most customers’ expectations.

MIDI Ch01 > program change commands to recall scenes 1…100 is already implemented.
We are considering something like this with one of the future firmware updates:
MIDI Ch01 > CC commands for controlling the 80 channel and bus Faders
MIDI Ch02 > CC commands for controlling the 80 channel and bus Mutes
MIDI Ch03 > CC commands for controlling the 80 channel and bus Pan

Just to give an example: Equalizers have on/off state, 4-6 bands with 4 parameters each, so it’s a total of 17 or 25 parameters per channel. Multiplied by 40 channels and 25 buses we get a total of 1280 EQ parameters—not even considering that some of those parameters require more than 7-bit resolution. This might be spread over a minimum of 10 different MIDI channels in a pretty obscure pattern. Considering the three channels we used up already, there would only remain 3 MIDI channels for all the rest you are wishing to control. So, the classic continuous controller approach is obviously not very useful for this.

Providing anything more than faders, pans, and mutes would only make sense with a comprehensive Sysex implementation—which appears a little outdated in the light of OSC that already exists. However, we will consider what makes sense here.

I hope this helps.

Warm regards

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

Hello Uli,

I've been selling and using your products since the first Composer days, as a pro audio salesman at Ace Music of Miami for 10 years as well as a musician and studio owner.

I echo Rick's call for expanded MIDI implementation and if I could chime in, I'd want to see MIDI control of effects selection, effects/aux sends and effects/aux mutes to make it viable for live automation. I run a fully automated show for an act down here and all I need is a mixer that will respond to my laptop sequencer to automate faders, effects selection and effects send level/mutes. I prefer to mute effects at the send rather than the return so you don't cut off reverb or echo tails.

The fact that the Presonus mixers only implement MIDI control of effects returns is what has kept me from buying one. Even the newly announced Soundcraft Si Expression boards only allow scene changes from MIDI, making it also useless to those of us still running our shows from a sequencer.

If a firmware update can provide this degree of MIDI automation I'll be buying a Producer for my live rig. OSC is nice for remote live control but I need bread and butter automation from my laptop. For me, OSC is the icing, but MIDI automation is the cake.

Additionally, in my studio I have an aging Yamaha 02R and would replace it with a full x32 in a flash if I could continue to build automated mixes from my Mac with Digital Performer as I've been doing for many years.

MIDI certainly has its limitations but it's convenient and already implemented everywhere. The fact that so many newer digital mixer manufacturers have largely ignored its use seems like we've taken a step backwards. And it extends elsewhere. In the early 90s I bought a small, inexpensive DMX lighting controller that output full, dynamic, recordable MIDI signals of every fader, button and control on its surface. Try to find one today.

Thanks so much for making yourself available to us here. You're a pretty cool guy to do this, and as a bass player for 45 years who has played with a lot of great musicians I can say I dig your keyboard chops, too.

Steve Cruz
Coconut Creek, Florida
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Dear Uli,

Although it is understandable why you do not want to go down the midi route - is there any immediate likelihood of introducing automation using OSC - as you point out many Daws now support this.

I think I recall you were also thinking of developing your own DAW - for my part a basic DAW for recording with basic editing facilities - even just being able to use an external editor such as audacity - would suffice BUT with the ability to also to introduce dynamic/static automation of all the on board X32 family "parameters" using OSC to allow the building of automated and recallable mixes made OTB using the X32

all the best

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

Hallo Uli,

ANY news about the iQ Speakers?

I love the concept of a digital conectable speaker. But the Ultranetsystem is used for Monitorchannels.
About my information:
When i connect the speakers, i have to sacrifice some of the 16 Monitorchannels, but i have up to 48 Outputs per AES Port for nothing. So please make them AES50 compedable. And a small remote control to load the Presets from the internal DSP of the speakers from the X32 would be a burner!

like this
iQ Control.jpg

thanks a lot
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Hi Marcus,

You are right, the Ultranet assignments were originally intended for use as personal monitoring channels, obviously. However, please note that the X32 gives you all the freedom to decide what to do with it, and with 32 inputs plus backing/click-tracks and FX returns, you might need to find a compromise for the 16 channel personal mixes, anyway.

Just to give an example--On many typical small to medium scale gigs, people may be perfectly happy with using 6 iQ-series speakers for classic floor monitoring and/or side-fills, and using the remaining 10 channels for additional personal monitoring. You might as well configure 2+14 or 4+12, or whatever seems appropriate. Using an S16 stagebox would allow to do all this and still have 8 independent XLR outputs on stage...

If that's too much of a compromise for your application, then I suppose we are talking about a larger setup, including two S16 stageboxes, several P16-M etc. In that case you might link a P16-I to the S16 ADAT outs. Doing so, you might tap the personal monitoring signals from the P16-I (which btw allows to connect 6 P16-M mixers directly bus-powered) and use the Ultranet output on S16 feeding the PA/monitoring iQ-series speakers with a different set of 16 signals. In that scenario you would have the maximum of 48 output signals on just one CAT5 line from the console, available on stage (XLR 1-8, XLR 9-16, 2xADAT to P16-I, Ultranet to iQ) -- which sounds pretty awsome to me.

FYI, there is also development in progress for remote preset recall on iQ speakers directly from X32, which is pretty close to what you drafted as well. We consider iQ-presets for typical positioning options (wegde, floor, stack, corner, flown...) as well as presets for authentic speaker character modeling, allowing you to emulate the response characteristics of well-known systems.

Hope that dispels your concerns.

Tschüss,
Jan
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Nick Davis said:
Dear Uli,

Although it is understandable why you do not want to go down the midi route - is there any immediate likelihood of introducing automation using OSC - as you point out many Daws now support this.
...
Nick
Click to expand...

Hi Nick,

Our X32 OSC protocol is public already, please see the download section on X32 page:
Behringer: DIGITAL MIXER X32

Configuring your DAW to send those commands via UDP port 10023 will immediately give you access to virtually any parameter in X32.

Best,
Jan
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Uli Behringer said:
Dear Rick,

thank you very much for your continued support and faith in the BEHRINGER and MIDAS products lines.

We appreciate your suggestions regarding some basic MIDI automation functions to be considered for future X32 firmware updates. Please note that we have published a lengthy response related to this topic on our Behringer forum and I have copied its content below for your reference.
We suppose those MIDI parameters will cover the requirements for automating the X32 parameters you suggested from basically any MIDI-driven environment or sequencing application.

When we developed the DDX3216 digital mixer around 15 years ago, MIDI and Sysex was basically the only way to control a hardware remotely in a synchronized way, which is why we had given it ample room in the user interface design.

Nowadays, we are obviously looking into more powerful and future-proof options, such as Ethernet and OSC-based protocols, and consequently the MIDI implementation was given a little less room in the X32.
Major sequencing software developers such as Steinberg, Ableton or Cakewalk etc., consider or actually provide support for OSC already, and we are confident there will be more applications using it soon.

Quote from our Development Team:

"Full MIDI support" is quite a relative term when using standard CC commands, considering the disparity between 10,000 parameters on the X32, and only 127 CC commands per MIDI channel.

There are not a lot of technical challenges, but rather challenges identifying what would be satisfying to most customers’ expectations.

MIDI Ch01 > program change commands to recall scenes 1…100 is already implemented.
We are considering something like this with one of the future firmware updates:
MIDI Ch01 > CC commands for controlling the 80 channel and bus Faders
MIDI Ch02 > CC commands for controlling the 80 channel and bus Mutes
MIDI Ch03 > CC commands for controlling the 80 channel and bus Pan

Just to give an example: Equalizers have on/off state, 4-6 bands with 4 parameters each, so it’s a total of 17 or 25 parameters per channel. Multiplied by 40 channels and 25 buses we get a total of 1280 EQ parameters—not even considering that some of those parameters require more than 7-bit resolution. This might be spread over a minimum of 10 different MIDI channels in a pretty obscure pattern. Considering the three channels we used up already, there would only remain 3 MIDI channels for all the rest you are wishing to control. So, the classic continuous controller approach is obviously not very useful for this.

Providing anything more than faders, pans, and mutes would only make sense with a comprehensive Sysex implementation—which appears a little outdated in the light of OSC that already exists. However, we will consider what makes sense here.

I hope this helps.

Warm regards

Uli
Click to expand...

I threw this suggestion out in the thread that you copied the above from, but since i like my idea so much, i'll go ahead and throw it out again.

Since there is already a complete OSC control system in place for the X32 family, if you gave us a simple table whereby we could 'patch' and one of the roughly 1600 available MIDI CC messages to whichever OSC command we wished, that would take care of 99 percent of our needs. I know that there are 7-bit resolution issues to resolve, but even if we just made MIDI control a much coarser control set, i still think that would suffice for most of us. I , for one, would do a little happy dance of joy. I currently use about 12 BCR2000s to control Yamaha digital mixers for a Personal Monitor System. I would LOVE to simply replace my complicated rig with 3-4 X32 cores and call it a day.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

drew gandy said:
A DSP version is what I was looking for when the NU4 model was first announced. I have about 8 times as much interest in the DSP version than the non-DSP.

And on the fan noise issue, I absolutely want a low noise version. The 6000 that I picked up to evaluate is, I think, about as loud as an old Crown MA idling which I consider unacceptable in this day and age. How about just adjusting the thermal curve so the fan is off until it reaches a higher temp? For some of my uses I don't think the amp would ever need to warm up enough to even need the fan. But for a show where the amp is actually doing some work, by all means, crank the fan. If the curve could be changed in firmware....
Click to expand...
If you don't want to wait for a lower noise version, you could put in a switch to wire the fans in series for low noise shows (or light home use) and back to parallel for high power use.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Jan Duwe said:
Hi Nick,

Our X32 OSC protocol is public already, please see the download section on X32 page:
Behringer: DIGITAL MIXER X32

Configuring your DAW to send those commands via UDP port 10023 will immediately give you access to virtually any parameter in X32.

Best,
Jan
Click to expand...

Hi Jan,

true - but what I need to do first would be for the daw to record the x32 OSC parameters in the automation envelope for each track so that they could be "played" back in sync with the audio,

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

Hallo Jan,

maybe i can live with the first idea for smaller gigs, but the second is not the yellow of the egg.
I think you need a direct connection from the X32 to a box (maybe a P16D between them) to get the remote control working. If i generate the digital signal from a P16I, i don´t have remote control, rigth?

I got another idea for larger gigs: I use the analog XLR outs from the S16 to send the audio signal to the boxes. The 16 Ultranetchannel for monitoring. One port at the P16D to connect all boxes additional to the Ultranetsystem (that comes direct from the S16 that is connected to the X32) for remote control.
Not the finest solution but this could work, right?

Danke

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

Thanks Art. That's an interesting idea. Although, I would prefer something that would ensure full volume airflow when the amp needs it whether I have the switch in the correct position or not. Pesky switches always seem to get put in the wrong position... I was thinking of a circuit with a zener and maybe a darlington to act as an override switch to make sure it would switch on full when it needs it. I took 5 minutes to pop the lid and see how the thing looks inside and check out the fans. If I recall correctly it's just over 7v feeding the fans at idle (any less and they probably won't spin but I haven't experimented with that at all) and can I assume 12v at full boogie? The fan in my unit has a datasheet rating of 40db but who knows what the chassis configuration does to the overall level. And, to amend my earlier post, after listening to the amp again I don't think it's quite as loud as an MA2400. But it is louder than most amps (definitely a lot louder than the PL236 amps I've got next to it). And to anyone at Behringer listening: I'm sure the home theater guys who use these things would love a quiet version too. All this said, I haven't done much other testing with this thing. The plastic front panel looks like a dollar store toy and the knobs don't quite spin smoothly apparently because something doesn't line up perfectly but I won't assume that these are predictors of it's reliability. Sound wise, I'm not sure yet but from the little bit of testing I've done it seems to sound just like any other amp.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

I have a relatively simple request on the x32 variants ( rack etc) On a lot of occasions I need to be able to have a master out that is AESEBU for interface into additional equipment. It would be fantastic if one of the outputs could be switched to Digital AESEBU
Thanks
John
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

drew gandy said:
The fan in my unit has a datasheet rating of 40db but who knows what the chassis configuration does to the overall level.
Click to expand...

And that's the driving force behind the noise. Specifically, the duct behind the fan. There isn't much you can do except replace the fan with heavier blades and a slower speed (higher pitch to maintain air volume). Fans like this are expensive, and that's why they're not used. Remember the old 120V fans? They're substantially quieter, but cost 10x more than the OneHungLo brand.
A possible fix is a variable speed fan controller. I am pretty sure they still make an inline thermistor/PWM controller that is sold by PC accessory stores.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Aaron Hammett said:
And that's the driving force behind the noise. Specifically, the duct behind the fan.
Click to expand...
There isn't really a "duct" per say. The fans are just mounted to the back panel but I think the plastic front (which I guess you could call a duct) offers some constriction of the flow causing noise inducing turbulence.
A possible fix is a variable speed fan controller. I am pretty sure they still make an inline thermistor/PWM controller that is sold by PC accessory stores.
Click to expand...
These amps already have a variable speed function (using a dc fan) which is why I suggested that perhaps the necessary adjustments could come from the mother ship. Of course, this is also based on speculation that the current arrangement can withstand improvement. For all I know, the current fan speed is necessary for continued operation. I'm curious to hear what Behringer say.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Just to bring you up to date on my ADA8000 problems and to give a little extra weight to the rumour that Uli & Co do care about customer service, I was asked to send my ADA87000 for a free inspection to the local UK Music Group service centre and it returned today, very promptly, all working fine FOC.

Way beyond what I expected as the unit was several months out of warranty, so a big thank you and a big UP for Uli and the Music Group guys and gals.

But I was a little disappointed it wasnt washed waxed and valet`d like my local ford dealership does.....

:D~:-D~:grin::twisted::lol:
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Hello Uli

I have not used many of your products but the one that I have came across Alot has been the DCX2496. My main question is why do you not make a 4 in 8 out unit? This would be an invaluable tool for the mid market PA company's monitor racks.

Sorry if this has been asked a million times before. PS Looking forward to having a play with the new digital desk offering.

Best regards.

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

Dear Jason,

thank you for your question.

The DCX2496 is indeed one of the most popular products in our Company history.

We are currently developing concepts for cross-overs based on a very different and super-intuitive remote control via tablet. However at this stage we cannot reveal more.

Warm regards

Uli
 
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