New Yamaha TF series digital mixers

Re: New Yamaha TF series digital mixers

... and I actually prefer having real faders and knobs under my fingers, regardless if they are on a digital surface or (gasp!) analog.

Speaking of knobs, anyone have an opinion of the slider knobs on the Mackie VLZ4 mixers? When I first saw them I thought "wow, how cheap can you get?". Then I had to actually use one and found that I actually like the feel of them for mixing. Been meaning to ask this for awhile...


Justice C. Bigler said:
Shouldn't be hard to compete with Behringer's quality, at whatever price point.


I've been hearing a few comments like this recently and I'm confused. Did something in particular happen recently that I didn't notice?
I guess I still think the X32 has impressive build quality, particularly for the price point. Or at least it feels like it's decently made. But what do I know?
 
Re: New Yamaha TF series digital mixers

I've been hearing a few comments like this recently and I'm confused. Did something in particular happen recently that I didn't notice? [/COLOR] I guess I still think the X32 has impressive build quality, particularly for the price point. Or at least it feels like it's decently made. But what do I know?

The thread title perhaps?

JR
 
Re: New Yamaha TF series digital mixers

Shouldn't be hard to compete with Behringer's quality, at whatever price point.

Are you sure about that? Then why hasn't any one done it? I'm sure every mixer company in the world would love to sell 250,000 digital mixers at the $2,999-$2,799 price point. Yet no one has. Now the price has been lowered to $2,299 making it even harder for any company to compete with Behringers quality, features, and price point.

Behringer has made nearly 1/2 Billion $ on X32/XAIR products. Where's the competition?
 
Re: New Yamaha TF series digital mixers

Gross sales and profit are two separate things.

Behringer sure keeps his profit margin high by sharing R&D between all Music Group brands and manufacturing in China. Of course almost everything is made in China nowadays, but most companies (even Apple) are outsorcing manufacturing to somebody. Uli owns factory in China where he keeps everything under control, from costs to quality.

Seems like he has enough cash reserves for some major acquisitions, like recent one of TC Group (TC Electronic, Helicon, etc.). Wondering how long it would take for the TC M-One reverb to appear on X32 effects rack?
 
Re: New Yamaha TF series digital mixers

From what I've heard the price of a behringer product is, manufacturing cost + r&d + small profit (for growth) and that their profit margin (compared to competitors) is quite small.
 
Re: New Yamaha TF series digital mixers

From what I've heard the price of a behringer product is, manufacturing cost + r&d + small profit (for growth) and that their profit margin (compared to competitors) is quite small.

:-) They make it up on volume. Charging too much for these products would make it too easy for competitors to under cut him on price (like he does to so many others).

The classic catch-22 regarding digital consoles would there ever be enough sales volume to justify tooling up for and manufacturing in large scale. The digital console has been around for decades but generally reserved for niche lower volume and higher priced applications. Behringer recognized (or gambled) that they could sell enough units at a new lower price point and make a profit, and create a new substantial product category (value digital mixers). Of course this is a bit of a simplification and there was some good sharp pencil engineering applied to making their own moving faders ( a major cost component in these). While digital consoles are mature they are not trivial, I suspect there was some very useful practical experience transferred from Midas engineering in the latter stages of development.

That's all history now. So Behringer has demonstrated that value digital consoles can sell in large enough quantity to support lower prices. Just like Columbus demonstrating that you can sail east to find treasure, others followed Columbus and will follow Behringer. He probably left some extra margin in the original product to help pay for learning curve costs. Now that the production process is mature, they can trim that fat to hold off new competition with even more aggressive pricing.

Interesting times.

JR
 
Re: New Yamaha TF series digital mixers

The fixed aux configuration is kind of bummer (8 mono + 6 stereo). It would be nice it that was configurable up to 20 mono sends or say 10 stereo. Or any combo thereof. Why lock it down?

The 8 mono auxes can be linked to make four more stereo auxes (or any combination of mono and stereo for those auxes). The last 6 aux buses (or 12 by yamaha math) are stereo only. Those 6 stereo auxes can also be individually routed back to the main stereo bus and used as stereo subgroups. The first 8 auxes are aux sends only and cannot be routed back to the main mix. There are two more auxes that are dedicated to the on board effects with their own dedicated labeling and return channels.

I'm sure they had many conversations about how to arrange the auxes and decided to keep it simple to understand for the target market. However, as an experienced engineer, I appreciate that there is some flexibility in them.

I am really impressed with the TF series and the amount of flexibility in it. All the one-knob stuff can be turned off for those of us that know what we're doing. Even though I am well versed in all the details, I still appreciate the one-knob options as well as the presets because it saves me time. I can set up my TF3 for a show faster than I've ever been able to set up any digital console before. That time savings is well worth it to me. One can argue that the X series is still cheaper in up front cost, but to me, the ongoing time savings will more than make up the difference in initial cost.
 
Re: New Yamaha TF series digital mixers

That's all history now. So Behringer has demonstrated that value digital consoles can sell in large enough quantity to support lower prices. Just like Columbus demonstrating that you can sail east to find treasure, others followed Columbus and will follow Behringer.
But.... the problem Yamaha have is product cannibalization. If the new entrants are both cheap enough and good enough then that will harm sales of the next models up. Uli doesn't have this problem; there is a branding gap gap between the Berry products and his "next one up", from Midas.

I'd suggest the inflexibility of aux routing in the TFs is a decision based purely on market segmentation; its just software choices with no actual per-product cost, so they could have done it but have chosen not to. Which isn't, of course, to say they couldn't change this in a subsequent software upgrade.

Interesting times.
Hell yeah!
 
Re: New Yamaha TF series digital mixers

I'd suggest the inflexibility of aux routing in the TFs is a decision based purely on market segmentation; its just software choices with no actual per-product cost, so they could have done it but have chosen not to. Which isn't, of course, to say they couldn't change this in a subsequent software upgrade.

Indeed it is. It's all just software at this point. And compared to the other common mixer in this segment, the "20" auxes on the TF is a bigger number than the "16" on the X series. Doesn't matter if there is really only 14 auxes (8 mono and 6 stereo). If you count the stereo auxes as two auxes each, you can get a bigger number and that makes it look better at a glance than the competitor. That's all this is really about anyway....just trying to look better than your competitor.

That said, IEM's are getting way more popular with bands anyway, so setting it up with a number of stereo auxes for IEMs is another great marketing way to make it look better.

Though I don't know if they will ever change the aux config with a later firmware update. The sends on faders buttons on the right side are labeled as 1-8 and 9/10 - 19/20. Seems like the screen printing pretty much says they're never going to unlink those stereo auxes to give us 20 mono auxes. Besides, that would definitely start cutting into their sales of QL and CL consoles. Heck, even the Avid D-Show that I run at church only has 16 mono auxes.

In all honesty, I'm surprised that they give the flexibility in the first 8 auxes to allow them to be run either mono or linked into stereo pairs. Since this console is aimed at the novice market, I would have thought that they would have limited it one way or the other to avoid confusion. I'm continually surprised at how well this console works for veterans while still having the options to make it easy for novices.

Though there are still a few advanced features that I do miss...
1. no snapshot crossfade
2. unable to route the stereo inputs (and EFX returns) to the sub bus. They pretty much set up the sub bus to function as an aux fed sub without tying up one of the 14 auxes, but then left the stereo inputs and EFX returns out of the routing screen to that bus.
3. I wish Aux masters could be assigned to DCAs
4. The options available on the UDKs are a bit limited. Let me assign a specific aux send level to the user defined knob. Let me use a user defined key/button to bring a specific channel's overview to the screen. As it is, the knobs pretty much just do the Gain, EQ, or Dynamics parameters, the buttons are pretty much for snapshot control. They have other, less useful functions too, but seem pretty limited for the really useful functions. Again, I'm sure this was a marketing decision so as to not overload a novice user with options they wouldn't understand.

Still, for the price, this is a fantastic little mixer.
 
Guys I’m facing a problem with my tf5
Any have recorded the sound with the effects processor
I use it on studio when I add effects to the Chanel the sound that is passing by the direct out is without effect I mange to add the eq comp and noise gate but not the effect processor any idea or it is just like that and the effects are connected direct to the master and auxiliaries
Thanks in advance