Behringer Inuke 3000

John Chiara

Senior
Jan 11, 2011
931
0
0
Troy, NY
Got one of these, scratch and dent for about $230... also have a few Peavey IPR 3000's on the way. I needed amps to replace Carvin 2.0's in stereo in a small stage monitor setup. A club I tech has 2 Carvers running PAS SW 1.2 15" coaxials and VM 1.2 12" coaxials. It is a simple monitor from FOH setup with a DBX 31 band graphic on each mix. For those familiar with the Carvers they are workhorse+ amps...I have 12 in service at the moment for all my portable club systems.
The club was a great Setup for comparison as I could just switch out the amp with all else remaining the same.
I replaced the mix 1+2 Carver directly with the Inuke 3000. Fired it up and it worked fine.
Band was a drum/bass/guitar with 3 vocals playing 80's rock/metal. heavy vocal mixes.
Mix 1 was a single VM 1.2-8 ohms, and mix 2 was 2 SW 1.2 in parallel- 4 ohms. The band was loud and the monitors were loud enough to be audible from FOH during sound check.
Summary, the Inuke worked all 3 sets, seemed to have plenty of gas for this setup and the mixes remained clear and present the whole night. My other concern was heat...the Carvers can get hot and I usually let them run after a show to let the fans cool down the internals. Right after the encore, Quiet Riot's Metal Head, I ran to the stage to check the amps temperature. The fan was blowing cold air and all amp surfaces were as cool to the touch as when I turned it on.
Overall success for this application. I will try this amp and other lightweights on a variety of boxes in the next few weeks.
I am hoping to put together both monitor and FOH setups that I can easily hand carry in for smaller gigs where larger racks are awkward and load in is difficult and/or long. I do a bit of hotel ballroom shows and the logistics are many times less than optimal. The testing on sub duty will tell the tale.
 
Last edited:
Re: Behringer Inuke 3000

My present amp rack is a plastic Gator 6U shallow rack loaded with an NU3000 and two IPR1600's - 6 kilowatts and only 35 pounds! The NU3000 powers my subs and the IPR's power my monitors - I carry 8 and have run up to 5 on one channel no prob. I run powered tops. I was running big 4 ohm horn loaded subs on the NU3000 last Friday outdoors with the clip limiters flashing a bit (sometimes a lot) and had no problems. I wish the NU series had separate crossovers on each channel like the IPR's. I normally run the monitors with the 100 Hz HPF's engaged - NU1000's would have been considered for monitor duty otherwise. OTOH I wish the IPR's were bridgable, had a mono mode (easy enough to use a patch cord though) and had a four wire SpeakOn output of both channels like the NU series. I also own an IPR3000 but replaced it with the NU3000 so I can bridge it into my pair of 8 ohm TH-Mini's when needed.
 
Re: Behringer Inuke 3000

Got one of these, scratch and dent for about $230... also have a few Peavey IPR 3000's on the way. I needed amps to replace Carvin 2.0's in stereo in a small stage monitor setup. A club I tech has 2 Carvers running PAS SW 1.2 15" coaxials and VM 1.2 12" coaxials. It is a simple monitor from FOH setup with a DBX 31 band graphic on each mix. For those familiar with the Carvers they are workhorse+ amps...I have 12 in service at the moment for all my portable club systems.
The club was a great Setup for comparison as I could just switch out the amp with all else remaining the same.
I replaced the mix 1+2 Carver directly with the Inuke 3000. Fired it up and it worked fine.
Band was a drum/bass/guitar with 3 vocals playing 80's rock/metal. heavy vocal mixes.
Mix 1 was a single VM 1.2-8 ohms, and mix 2 was 2 SW 1.2 in parallel- 4 ohms. The band was loud and the monitors were loud enough to be audible from FOH during sound check.
Summary, the Inuke worked all 3 sets, seemed to have plenty of gas for this setup and the mixes remained clear and present the whole night. My other concern was heat...the Carvers can get hot and I usually let them run after a show to let the fans cool down the internals. Right after the encore, Quiet Riot's Metal Head, I ran to the stage to check the amps temperature. The fan was blowing cold air and all amp surfaces were as cool to the touch as when I turned it on.
Overall success for this application. I will try this amp and other lightweights on a variety of boxes in the next few weeks.
I am hoping to put together both monitor and FOH setups that I can easily hand carry in for smaller gigs where larger racks are awkward and load in is difficult and/or long. I do a bit of hotel ballroom shows and the logistics are many times less than optimal. The testing on sub duty will tell the tale.

So how have the iNUKE amps been holding up so far? I finally found a published review of what looks like a well done bench test on the NU6000. Pretty interesting. Behringer inuke NU6000 vs KAM KXD7200 bench tested - Speakerplans.com Forums - Page 1
 
Re: Behringer Inuke 3000

I've finally gotten enough experience with the NU6000dsp to post a "review" of sorts. I have posted some complaints on the forum already, mostly just about the spl of the cooling fans. Here's my new list. A foreword: I've been using QSC PL236 amps for many years now as my primary amps. They have done pretty well for me (despite the one amp that quit during a show because of a diode leg failure). I mention them here for comparison as I was hoping that maybe the Behringers would work as supplements or even replacements for the QSCs eventually.

A) The noise. And this time it's not the fans. There is considerable hiss on the output. This may not be as big a deal for different speakers since mine probably have more high frequency sensitivity than most. But I did a side by side comparison with the PL236. With the input knobs all the way down, I have to practically put my ear to the grill in order to hear the hiss with the QSC. With the Behringer I can hear it plainly 10+ feet away. Did I measure the noise profile between the 2 amps? No. But it's basically a white noise type of sound coming from the Behringer. For me this noise is a deal breaker. I can't use it on quiet corporate gigs or some of the religious events while driving tops; it's just too noisy. Now, I generally run all my subs on the "2" pins and tops on the "1" pins such that I run one NL4 cable from the amp to the speaker location and then a shorter NL2 cable from the sub to the top. I find it to be a convenient cabling and signal flow arrangement [and I have a theory about the delay between the sub and top signals helping even out the current draw of the amp as a whole]. So, if I run this Behringer amp for subs and use different amps for tops then my cabling gets more complicated. But, if I'm willing to make that change then how about subs?


B) This amp won't drive lab subs. At least my testing so far says so. I think the issue is the power cutoff mentioned in the bench review linked above. I had this amp out for a July 4 gig. We had about 125' of 6/4 SO cord between land power and a distro box that landed right at the amps. Each power amp had it's own 20 A circuit. I found that when I started to push the amp hard with a single lab sub on each channel it would cutout. The VUs on the front of the amp would stop but the power indicators and lcd display were still on. I turned the power off and back on to get the signal back. I encountered this a few times (during system check) before I decided to experiment a little. Thinking it was the current limit issue noted in the bench test, I switched one lab sub from parallel drivers to series drivers and then boosted the level on that box a little bit. Not ideal but the amp didn't cut out after that. btw, I had 2 labs per side of the stage; one pair on the behringer amp and the other pair on #2 channels of PL236s. Each sub had it's own amp channel. And, the Behringer driven subs were on the end of about 100' of 12 ga speaker cable. If this was a low impedance shut down (short circuit protection) then I wouldn't have expected the amp to act fine when one channel of the amp still had a "low" impedance load. I also measured the voltage at the distro while we were cranking the test tracks. Very little variation so I don't think we were browning out. Obviously this wasn't scientific but real world and this failure has me sheepish about using it on subs. If I get a chance soon I will crank up some labs at the shop and see if I can recreate this problem.


C) I've used this amp a few times on wedges or in other "utility" situations and have been frustrated that there isn't a parallel inputs option in the menu. Finally a light bulb went on in my head and I realized that if I put it into biamp mode but leave the filters off, it will do this useful function. Unfortunately, I think that this renders the channel 2 front panel volume control useless which means that balancing levels has to be done in a menu. So, a wye cable at the input is still a little more functional. But at least parallel can be accomplished without it.


D) This is an old one but... when side by side with an idling PL236, the fan noise is considerably different both in level and character. The Behringer is simply noisy.


E) This is an issue that a lot of amps, not to mention wireless receivers (I'm talking to you, Shure), have these days. The friction fit of an IEC cable is simply not a very good way to handle the power going into a critical piece of gear. I have the wire clips on some of my QSC amps and I find that they still wiggle loose over time. This Behringer doesn't appear to be any different.


F) The VU meters are on the outsides of the volume knobs and sort of tilted inward. I found this to be a little less than helpful since you can't see both of them unless you are mostly on axis of the front panel. This is a minor gripe since a lot of amps don't even give you VU's but I thought I would mention it.


Additional note: The specs don't seem to tell the story here. The Behringer manual says >98db on the noise spec. The QSC has what I think is a quieter noise spec (-107db). Both numbers seem like reasonably low amounts of noise, at least if I'm understanding the Behringer spec correctly. I didn't expect this to be an issue. Also, I found that the noise on the output is affected by the EQ in the dsp. I turned on a high shelving EQ (at about 350hz) and tried cranking it up and down. Lowering it by the 15db maximum seemed to knock a couple dbs off the noise level. Boosting it 15db seemed to boost the noise 15db. This tells me there might be a couple sources of the noise. Some intrinsic to the amp and some happening before or even in the dsp (dither?). There's also the chance that I have a defective unit although it seems to pass signal just fine (except for the lab sub thing) and all the dsp functions seem to work.
 
Re: Behringer Inuke 3000

Dear Drew,

Allow me to chime in and offer some comments.

In regards to fan noise: We have received some comments from customers about the fan noise of our NU amps. As a result, we have asked our R&D team to look into this issue. We are pleased to announce that we have managed to improve the fan speed control so the unit is now much quieter, especially when run at lower power. You will find this improvement in our recently manufactured units.

System noise level: It is important to point out that you are comparing our DSP-based amplifier with a non-DSP version from the competition. Understandably adding a full DSP processor with AD/DA conversion slightly increases the noise floor. Our non-DSP version offers SNR values way above 100 dB.

Also note that boosting high frequencies with your EQ setting will increase the noise floor.

Hope this helps.
 
Re: Behringer Inuke 3000

Thanks Joe,

I think it's also fair to point out that I'm comparing the Inuke to a vastly more expensive (even used) amplifier. That said, these "advancements" in digital amplifiers are promising a lot.

Noise: The non-dsp inuke amp manual specs say they have a SN of >100db vs >98db for the dsp versions. The difference would appear to be 2db. I'm not sure if you are saying that the non-dsp version has significantly less noise or marginally less noise.

Fan noise: The upgrade you've described sounds great. I have never noticed this NU6000dsp to have a temp higher than "cool to the touch" regardless of how I have used it. I suspect that the fans could run practically off, most of the time.
 
Re: Behringer Inuke 3000

Thanks Joe,

I think it's also fair to point out that I'm comparing the Inuke to a vastly more expensive (even used) amplifier. That said, these "advancements" in digital amplifiers are promising a lot.

Noise: The non-dsp inuke amp manual specs say they have a SN of >100db vs >98db for the dsp versions. The difference would appear to be 2db. I'm not sure if you are saying that the non-dsp version has significantly less noise or marginally less noise.

Fan noise: The upgrade you've described sounds great. I have never noticed this NU6000dsp to have a temp higher than "cool to the touch" regardless of how I have used it. I suspect that the fans could run practically off, most of the time.

The -107dB number for the QSC amps seems like they could easily be audibly quieter. While perhaps not obvious, in use we operate amplifiers with significant voltage gain to make the large output voltage swings to drive loudspeakers. For the amplifier's self-noise to not compromise the console or source noise floor, it must be lower by this amount of amplifier voltage gain.

Not obvious unless you designed power amplifiers. :-(

JR

PS: A DSP located inside a power amp should not be significantly noisier than inside a crossover in the path before the power amp while execution and individual component performance matters.
 
Re: Behringer Inuke 3000

Dear Drew,

Allow me to chime in and offer some comments.

In regards to fan noise: We have received some comments from customers about the fan noise of our NU amps. As a result, we have asked our R&D team to look into this issue. We are pleased to announce that we have managed to improve the fan speed control so the unit is now much quieter, especially when run at lower power. You will find this improvement in our recently manufactured units.

System noise level: It is important to point out that you are comparing our DSP-based amplifier with a non-DSP version from the competition. Understandably adding a full DSP processor with AD/DA conversion slightly increases the noise floor. Our non-DSP version offers SNR values way above 100 dB.

Also note that boosting high frequencies with your EQ setting will increase the noise floor.

Hope this helps.
The noise from the 6000dsp in neutral is quite a lot. No other amp that I have outputs so much hiss!

Will we be able to get this fan control update via the usb interface for the older units?

It would be nice to get rms based limiting in addition to the peak limiter.
 
Re: Behringer Inuke 3000

Ok, an update of sorts. First of all I need to make a disclosure. I am currently a Behringer dealer. Please take all of my comments with an extra grain of salt. Second, I have now performed some rather crude measurements of amplifier noise. I will post shortly.
 
Re: Behringer Inuke 3000

Ok, here are the results of some "measurements" I made. Please note that these measurements are not calibrated to any specific signal level. I was intentionally trying to simply compare 3 amplifiers. The measurement setup is as follows: All the equipment was connected to the same power circuit. There was one 25 ft speakon cable going from the amplifier under test to a speaker. There was another speakon cable (approx 50 ft) coming out of a parallel speakon jack on the speaker that teminated into an XLR connector. The neg of the amp was connected to pin 3. The pos of the amp was connected to pin 2. This xlr went into channel 1 of a Metric Halo ULN2. I cranked the gain up to around 24db on the preamp with the NU6000DSP connected which was just below clipping on the preamp. After that I left the gain alone and simply switched the speakon cable from amp to amp to take the measurement. The input levels of each amp were all the way down. The DSP was blank; no boost or cut of EQ etc. Subjectively, the NU3000 seemed to be comparable to the QSC in terms of how much noise was coming out of the speaker. The NU6000DSP was quite different. Joe, does this look right to you?

PL236 extra.pngNU6000DSP extra.pngNU3000.png
 
Re: Behringer Inuke 3000

Ok, here are the results of some "measurements" I made. Please note that these measurements are not calibrated to any specific signal level. I was intentionally trying to simply compare 3 amplifiers. The measurement setup is as follows: All the equipment was connected to the same power circuit. There was one 25 ft speakon cable going from the amplifier under test to a speaker. There was another speakon cable (approx 50 ft) coming out of a parallel speakon jack on the speaker that teminated into an XLR connector. The neg of the amp was connected to pin 3. The pos of the amp was connected to pin 2. This xlr went into channel 1 of a Metric Halo ULN2. I cranked the gain up to around 24db on the preamp with the NU6000DSP connected which was just below clipping on the preamp. After that I left the gain alone and simply switched the speakon cable from amp to amp to take the measurement. The input levels of each amp were all the way down. The DSP was blank; no boost or cut of EQ etc. Subjectively, the NU3000 seemed to be comparable to the QSC in terms of how much noise was coming out of the speaker. The NU6000DSP was quite different. Joe, does this look right to you?

View attachment 7905View attachment 7906View attachment 7907

I'm no expert, but the NU6000DSP graph kinda resembles comb filtering. Maybe something to do with the DSP, but I don't know.
 
Re: Behringer Inuke 3000

Dear Drew,


My name is Al Walker and I am a senior systems engineer working for MUSIC Group.

I would like to share with you the attached plot from our own testing of an NU6000DSP. It shows the FFT plot of the noise floor, with the following test configuration:-


  • Input terminated with a 600 ohm resistor

  • Output driving an 8 ohm resistive load

  • Front panel gain control set to maximum

The DSP section of the NU6000DSP was set to default values with no processing sections active.

We used an Audio Precision ATS for our testing.

Kind regards,

Al Walker
Senior Engineer, Systems
MUSIC Group


RnD Conc CN_NU6000DSP_13-09-10_Rev.2.jpg
 
Re: Behringer Inuke 3000

Thanks Al. It's nice to see an alternate measurement, particularly with a "real" measurement platform. I have a few questions.

A) What is this measurement referenced to? 0db = ?
B) Do you have this type of measurement for the NU3000 in order to compare it to my graph?
C) What were the power conditions when this was taken? (line voltage, freq etc)
D) Since you have hands on experience with all the models, do you notice significantly more noise from the dsp models vs the non-dsp?
 
Last edited:
Re: Behringer Inuke 3000
This amp won't drive lab subs....


I need to apologize. I should have updated this thread a LONG time ago. I discovered that one lab sub driver in one box had a weird factory defect that caused it to short. Eminence even replaced this long out of warranty woofer because of the defect. This would presumably explain my problem with the NU6000 cutting out. It likely wasn't that the amp couldn't drive the load but that the load was not what it should have been. Again, I apologize for not updating this info sooner and I hope I didn't steer anyone in the wrong direction. I have used a few other NU amps in the years since and have had no issues. But, I have avoided the dsp versions on account of the noise and rather limited dsp capabilities.
 
I need to apologize. I should have updated this thread a LONG time ago. I discovered that one lab sub driver in one box had a weird factory defect that caused it to short. Eminence even replaced this long out of warranty woofer because of the defect. This would presumably explain my problem with the NU6000 cutting out. It likely wasn't that the amp couldn't drive the load but that the load was not what it should have been. Again, I apologize for not updating this info sooner and I hope I didn't steer anyone in the wrong direction. I have used a few other NU amps in the years since and have had no issues. But, I have avoided the dsp versions on account of the noise and rather limited dsp capabilities.
Drew,

Good to know the NU6000 is short protected.
I ran a QSC amp into a short when comparing it to the NU4-6000, the QSC blew an output device.
Even though it would have been covered by it's three year warranty (had I had working internet at the time of purchase...) QSC refused to honor the warranty. QSC has permanently lost Welter Systems, Inc. as a customer

As far as the fan noise issue, the later versions of the NU4-6000 are as quiet as any fan cooled amp now- in fact I'm using one of my NU4-6000 two feet away from me to drive my studio monitors (I should say studio monitor, yesterday my 30+ year old Hafler DH-200 amp developed some DC output on the right side, and burned up one of my 20+ year old Tannoy PBM 6.5 monitor's woofer :^( ).

Signal to noise ratio on the NU4-6000 is excellent, I don't hear any noise from 115 dB sensitive HF horns even with my ear to the horn.

Just before the 2015 Christmas holidays I conducted a battery of tests on some old amplifiers and a new (to me) Behringer NU4-6000 four channel amplifier. To my surprise, the NU4-6000 performed as well on low frequencies as on mid/high frequencies, and is capable of near full power sine wave output with all four channels driven to rated output at two ohms, or two bridged mono pairs driving four ohm loads each. The $350 NU4-6000 appears to be within 3 dB of the $5500 Powersoft K10 published rating on sustained (more than 1 second) output.

The NU4-6000 with two bridged mono pairs each driving four ohm loads just below the illumination of the clip/limit light each put out 85.5 volts at 60 Hz (1828 watts), 84.6 volts at 30 Hz (1789 watts), dropping the mains voltage on a 100' 10AWG 120V line from 118.1 volts down to 107.2 volts, drawing 31 amperes.

Using just one bridged mono pair, the amp ran for 40+ seconds before I terminated the test, as the amp was drawing 19.8 amperes, and the "tired" 20 amp mains breaker had popped several times in various tests already. The amp would have put out more power given a full 120 volts, but the test represents a "real world" situation, we don't generally plug our amplifiers in to an outlet two feet from the mains transformer.

I also tested my old "heavy iron" bass favorite, a Crest CA9, bridged into a 4 ohm load it dropped the mains to 99.6 volts, drew 37.8 amps but only put out 80 volts (1600 watts). The NU4-6000 put out more power, and drew only 50% of the power from the mains compared to the CA9, and weighs a small fraction of the "heavy iron".

My back (and bank account) have been very pleased with the NU4-6000, since the testing I have purchased another three.
I may purchase one of the less powerful NUs rather than repairing the aged Hafler DH-200 and buying a DC protection circuit for it..

Art
 
Ok, so all the reviews are great, and noise floor is important, but how'd they sound otherwise?
Karl,

The NU sound is neutral up till current limit, and the current limiting sounds better than many, not quite as transparent as others, as it clamps down hard when reaching threshold. That said, with the dollar to watt ratio this series of amps have, there is no reason not to purchase one that has plenty of headroom.

I'm using a NU4-6000 for my Tannoy PBM 6.5 near-field studio monitors, it sounds the same to me as the old Hafler D-200 did before it dumped DC on the right channel, burning up one of the woofers..

Art