Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Dear Jason, thank you for your comment.

I am sorry to hear about the trouble you have experienced. Indeed some years ago we had a problem with a flat ribbon cable which caused intermittent connectivity due to improper crimping on the connector side.

In electronics, connectors and cables are the single biggest cause for failure. Because of that reason, we decided around four years ago to move the assembly of all cables in-house. Some of you who have been part of our yearly arranged factory tour have seen the highly automated production area. At the end of the production line every single cable is tested before it is qualified for use.

Allow me to comment on failure rates.

Thomann is the largest dealer in Europe and as a matter of transparency he publishes all manufacturers’ failure rates. You might be surprised to see that Behringer has one of the lowest failure rates in the industry.

In the link below you can exchange the manufacturer name in the URL which will give you the failure rate of any other manufacturer. The rate is displayed in the upper right corner.

http://www.thomann.de/gb/behringer.html

Behringer’s failure rate is at 0.73% which represents an average over the last three years. Due to the massive investments in quality systems and people especially last year, the number of returns today is even lower than indicated.

We are surely not perfect and never will, but we are extremely focused on quality management systems such as ISO9000, DFM, Lean Six Sigma or "Kaizen" which is Japanese and translates to "constant improvement". Kaizen is a system that involves all employees, from the executives down to the cleaners and all employees are encouraged to come up with little suggestions how to improve their workplace or anything else they feel can be improved. Companies such as GE and Toyota invented those systems, however you can only implement Kaizen in your manufacturing environment when you actually own the factory, which we do.

There are quite a few videos about our factory already out there and we will post more to show you how our factory looks like.
 
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Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Jeff Babcock said:
Thank you for this insight, it appears that the early days of Chinese manufacturing were significantly harmful to product quality and contributed to some of the perceptions that many professionals have regarding Behringer. Do you have any numbers you could share (failure rates w/Kwanasia vs your newly renovated Midas-integrated plant?)
Click to expand...


This is why I am willing to give Behringer a second chance. I experienced this first hand myself. While I was working for a small company that built electric vehicles in China we encountered the same situation. The prototypes would be fine and then the production run would have as high as a 100% failure rate. Specs would change randomly. Even paint colors would be so far off that the refinish products would not match at all.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Uli Behringer said:
Dear Phil,

thank you for your question. I have a degree in sound engineering and I am a classically trained pianist with a love for jazz - in particular for Oscar Peterson whom I greatly admire. If you like to know more about my background and the Company here is a link:
BEHRINGER: The BEHRINGER Story
Click to expand...

Uli,

Thanks for the link. I was hoping for the more personal version. Years ago I did consulting for Sabine, and I enjoyed Doran's very personal account of starting with guitar tuners.


  • For instance, the picture of your synthesizer and early digital reverb shows a level of build that I could not have achieved at that age. Did you have access to a metal brake, or a machine shop? Did you father have access to such resources as a physicist?
  • How did you find a facility to make the screening?
  • What was the first product that sold enough to enable you to work on product #2
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Hello everyone, and thank you Uli, for inviting me to contribute.

I have to admit, that back in 20210 when I first learned we were going to be acquired my the Music Group, I had considerable reservations, to say the least.
Two companies with very different backgrounds and cultures. The belief that we would simply be "assimilated" was prevalent even at Midas h.q.

However, two and a half years on, and our recent raft of new products says more about, and stands greater testament to the changes which have occurred at Midas within that time. Don't get the wrong idea, It hasn't been an entirely painless process, and there is still a way to go. Being part of a corporation means having to deal with numerous "processes" and other unavoidable corporate BS. It just "goes with the territory". However, none of the dire predictions of Midas' decline have any sign of becoming reality. In fact, we are continually learning from each other, and using the other partners expertise where there is opportunity for improvement. Instead of Midas-badged Behringer products, we see Midas influence, expertise and technology appearing on other MG offerings - we see Behringer high-volume manufacturing efficiencies applied to Midas product build, and the resulting cost saving. Almost the opposite of the industry pundits predictions.

Anyway, I AM the Midas marketing guy, so you'll all expect me to say all this. If you want to find out if we really are still committed to providing professional, quality products, don't read about it, go and find out for yourself.

Thanks for your time.

Richard Ferriday - Brand Development Manager MIDAS
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

rferriday said:
Hello everyone, and thank you Uli, for inviting me to contribute.

Anyway, I AM the Midas marketing guy, so you'll all expect me to say all this. If you want to find out if we really are still committed to providing professional, quality products, don't read about it, go and find out for yourself.

Thanks for your time.

Richard Ferriday - Brand Development Manager MIDAS
Click to expand...

Hi Richard-

Welcome to SFN.

I'd like to "find out" for myself, but the Midas training and demonstrations seem to be limited to the East/West coasts of the USA. For those of us in the middle this represents a significant obstacle. Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas, Denver, etc. would be very good places to hold training. I realize that the majority of your potential customers are along or near either Interstate 5 or Interstate 95, but spending upwards of $1000 to travel to LA or New York to evaluate a product by attending pre-purchase training is an obstacle not presented by Yamaha or Harman.

It's good to hear that Midas has benefited from the acquisition by MG. While I'm not a Midas "fan boy", I have respect for the brand and firmly believe that Midas has been an asset to the console industry. Good luck in your future endeavors.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Jeff Babcock said:
Thank you for this insight, it appears that the early days of Chinese manufacturing were significantly harmful to product quality and contributed to some of the perceptions that many professionals have regarding Behringer. Do you have any numbers you could share (failure rates w/Kwanasia vs your newly renovated Midas-integrated plant?)
Click to expand...

Eric Cagle said:
This is why I am willing to give Behringer a second chance. I experienced this first hand myself. While I was working for a small company that built electric vehicles in China we encountered the same situation. The prototypes would be fine and then the production run would have as high as a 100% failure rate. Specs would change randomly. Even paint colors would be so far off that the refinish products would not match at all.
Click to expand...

I have often found myself a defender of off-shore manufacturing here and on other forums as a healthy business practice when properly managed. In my experience blame for any associated quality problems should fall on a failure of manufacturing process control, marginal design, or poorly specified raw components, not which country a SKU happens to be assembled in. While there are bad actors around the world.

Speaking of first hand experience I have actually worked with and been inside several factories in China (including Kwanasia). It is human nature to stereotype all Chinese factories as the same, and some may be tiny fly by night operations, but Kwanasia is a large world class ISO-9001/ISO-14000 operation with many large western customers from other than audio industries. They are owned by a publicly traded company and have their own website for anyone who is interested. I never personally experienced quality problems with Kwanasia (in connection with my old day job). Note: I have also seen small businesses fail when they purchased a container load of crap from some incompletely vetted manufacturer purely on price, because they trusted too much and verified too little, so caveat caveat emptor.

I think it's on page two of "manufacturing for dummies" that any factory needs adult supervision at critical stages of the process, whether that factory is 25 miles away or thousands of miles away. China is just the most recent of a long list of low cost manufacturing centers (India, Korea, Taiwan, and who doesn't remember 240 Japanese Yen per USD?). The major issue with offshore mfg. is communication, across different cultures and languages, and the all to common tendency of small companies to have incomplete process documentation because the factory workers already know how to build it. These days as a tiny company, I only do a tiny fraction of my manufacturing offshore, because i can not afford the overhead cost to have boots on the ground on the other side of the world, while I can take advantage of some very tightly specified processes like bare PCB, and some metal parts that are adequately defined by CAD files, but even then we must be diligent.

I'm sure Uli could tell us stories about manufacturing in China with his expanded operation there that would curl our hair... While I don't ask or expect him to share all that. Congrats on getting Midas engineers to locate over there. Western engineers are very useful to have in house over there.

If I could ask another question before he answers my first, what are Uli's expectations about long term yuan appreciation, rising wages and standard of living for Chinese workers, and the upcoming central government leadership transition? IIRC his factory is located away from the more populous manufacturing center so he may not see the same strong wage pressure as soon as facilities there, but the trend across the entire country seems to be toward higher costs and deteriorating exchange rates (at least wrt USD).. Hon Hai is building new factories in the north away from the coast and buying lot of robots. I think the car companies are already building factories in Africa as the next low cost manufacturing frontier.

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

Uli Behringer said:
Dear Jason, thank you for your comment.

I am sorry to hear about the trouble you have experienced. Indeed some years ago we had a problem with a flat ribbon cable which caused intermittent connectivity due to improper crimping on the connector side.

In electronics, connectors and cables are the single biggest cause for failure. Because of that reason, we decided around four years ago to move the assembly of all cables in-house. Some of you who have been part of our yearly arranged factory tour have seen the highly automated production area. At the end of the production line every single cable is tested before it is qualified for use.

Allow me to comment on failure rates.

Thomann is the largest dealer in Europe and as a matter of transparency he publishes all manufacturers’ failure rates. You might be surprised to see that Behringer has one of the lowest failure rates in the industry.

In the link below you can exchange the manufacturer name in the URL which will give you the failure rate of any other manufacturer. The rate is displayed in the upper right corner.

Behringer - Thomann UK Cyberstore

Behringer’s failure rate is at 0.73% which represents an average over the last three years. Due to the massive investments in quality systems and people especially last year, the number of returns today is even lower than indicated.
Click to expand...

Uli,

Thank you very much for your reply. and as others have mentioned, thank you for putting yourself out there in a public forum.

my only skepticism (and the reason I wanted numbers straight from your records) is that when someone like me complains directly to Behringer and gets replacements around the traditional returns system those obviously don't get counted by the company who originally sold me the goods. the vendor who sold them to me only saw the first bunch of failures and then later I had bypassed them, so their records would still show a decently low return rate.
Although I don't doubt Thomann's numbers, they might not be the whole picture.

Certainly these are statistics that you keep track of for your own purposes (I hope!) and if the trend is toward better reliability then I figured you wouldn't mind sharing?

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

Jason Lavoie said:
Uli,

Thank you very much for your reply. and as others have mentioned, thank you for putting yourself out there in a public forum.

my only skepticism (and the reason I wanted numbers straight from your records) is that when someone like me complains directly to Behringer and gets replacements around the traditional returns system those obviously don't get counted by the company who originally sold me the goods. the vendor who sold them to me only saw the first bunch of failures and then later I had bypassed them, so their records would still show a decently low return rate.
Although I don't doubt Thomann's numbers, they might not be the whole picture.

Certainly these are statistics that you keep track of for your own purposes (I hope!) and if the trend is toward better reliability then I figured you wouldn't mind sharing?

Thanks again
Jason
Click to expand...

While Uli doesn't need me to defend him, I don't think you appreciate the high cost of replacing finished goods. Every business has a simple profit and loss balance sheet accounting and would run out money and out of business if they experienced significant across the board failure rates. A company selling value products with narrow profit margin, has even less buffer, to support large scale product replacements. It does not take a very high failure rate to consume all profit margin. Something that companies review when setting warranty duration.

I see no reason to doubt the Thomann numbers. I suspect there can be a handful of high profile isolated cases of SKUs with unusually high failure rates (he isn't the only mfr to experience problems with ribbon cables) but in the average for all products, he is obviously profitable, clearly. Do the math.

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

John Roberts said:
I have often found myself a defender of off-shore manufacturing here and on other forums as a healthy business practice when properly managed. In my experience blame for any associated quality problems should fall on a failure of manufacturing process control, marginal design, or poorly specified raw components, not which country a SKU happens to be assembled in. While there are bad actors around the world.

JR
Click to expand...

I could not agree with you more John. We forgot to read page two of "manufacturing for dummies" and nearly went bankrupt because of it. We had our guys there during all subsequent production runs and those problems went away. There are some really good products coming out of China these days. I am very happy with all of my A&H and Soundcraft consoles among other things. Your point about supervision at critical stages and control applies to any manufacturing process no matter where it is or what country it is in. We learned the hard way just as Uli did and are now better because of it. I mentioned the China experience because it hit home with me but it has everything to do with being in control and taking responsibility for the quality of your products yourself. I didn't hear Uli blaming China or anyone else. He didn't know just like we didn't know and then you have all the other factors involved like language, culture, and sheer distance. Once we figured out what the problems were we handled the situation. My new found confidence in Behringer product quality comes from actually taking time to research it after reading the exchange between Jack and Uli. I will shamefully admit that I wouldn't have even considered it before this thread. Even Evan's (whose opionion I greatly respect because of his quickness to tear into a product if it is bad) recommendations of some Behringer products would not have gotten me to buy anything with the yellow triangle on it. Uli if you get a chance to read this the only other question on my mind is John's original question about IP which you said you would answer when you could take the time. What ever the answer is we all appreciate your time and honesty with us.
-Eric
 
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Failure rate

I bought 5 ADA8000s in 2010 They all failed One was intermittent on arrival, the last one failed after 18 months. I don't have a question.

Frank
 
Re: Failure rate

Dear Frank,

I am sorry to hear about your experience.
Would you please drop an email at [email protected] or at my personal mailbox here with your contact details. We now have our own service center in Las Vegas and we will have these units investigated and repaired.
I am also happy to post the results afterwards here in the forum. Thanks
 
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Re: Failure rate

Frank DeWitt said:
I bought 5 ADA8000s in 2010 They all failed One was intermittent on arrival, the last one failed after 18 months. I don't have a question.
Click to expand...

Frank,

I know Uli was kind enough to address your concern, but this is a discussion thread, not a griping thread. We are talking about Music Group as a company, not just the brand that built that company, and certainly not one of that brand's products. I hope you understand why I feel your post crosses a line. I don't like to moderate heavily here, so I call you out in order that I may not have to do it again in this thread.
 
Re: Failure rate

Dear Benett,

I appreciate your comment, however I don't mind people sharing their experience openly as long as these posts are genuine and not competitor "marketing" which we unfortunately encounter. We often see "complaints" and "reviews" from people way before we actually shipped a new product or actually never owned a unit.
So all I am asking are facts such as serial numbers that allow us to track the unit.

In order to help me out here, I will also ask our VP or Customer Care, Patrick Fredig to come in and address any service issues. We are always happy to learn and improve our products and hence we appreciate the opportunity to listen.

Some years ago I was personally in touch with Bob Lentini who invented the marvellous SAC system and he shared with me the problems he encountered with a newer version of the ADA8000, where we had upgraded the Alesis ADA converters to better Crystal chips. The integrated auto-mute function of the chip caused some problems with the SAC software.

Because we appreciate that there is such a huge SAC community out there that uses the ADA8000, we modified the unit to meet the SAC requirements. However this was not a defect of the ADA8000 but a rather unique requirement of the SAC system. We were happy we could help.

I remember that in earlier versions (and this unit is now around 8 years on the market) we had an overheating problem with a voltage regulator especally when the units are stacked on top of each other, preventing proper cooling. I believe a heatsink was added which should have solved the problem - but if not, please let us know. Thanks!
 
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Re: Failure rate

Bennett Prescott said:
Frank,

I know Uli was kind enough to address your concern, but this is a discussion thread, not a griping thread. We are talking about Music Group as a company, not just the brand that built that company, and certainly not one of that brand's products. I hope you understand why I feel your post crosses a line. I don't like to moderate heavily here, so I call you out in order that I may not have to do it again in this thread.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure this is really a fair assertion. The opening post stated, "This should be a great opportunity to learn a little more about the industry, several of our most beloved brands, and the future of manufacturing for Pro Audio." As such, there has been some discusssion about various brands under the Music Group umbrella, and mostly about Behringer, and, as was stated, the Elephant in the Room: perceptions of Berhinger's quality and service. Some mention of particular products were brought up in an effort to determine specifics over the 0.7% claimed failure rate, which Frank added to. The DEQ was mentioned earlier, which is a popular entry level DEQ, and Frank's product of choice is THE product of choice for anyone starting into any software based mixing such as Software Audio Console, or expansion of digital mixing boards via ADAT-equipped preamps. Moreover, I know Frank, and know of his trials with his ADA8000s and how much of a generous chance he gave them, and how they failed in a critical application, so it's not as if he's simply willy-nilly brand bashing. I, personally, would appreciate hearing Uli's feedback on this and other entry level gear that is half the price or less of it's nearest competitor.

Jeff
 
Re: Failure rate

Jeff,

A brand is not usually defined by a product, but I am not going to argue with you. I just want to ensure this thread stays civil, which so far it has managed to do. Certainly Mr. Behringer has shown himself to have plenty thick skin, but there are undertones to this discussion you are no doubt aware of that I want to avoid. Frank DeWitt certainly has a reputation of giving back to the community so I do not begrudge him his comments, and hopefully some good with come of them, but that is where I feel the line should be drawn. Not having a question in a Q&A thread doesn't serve the purpose of this discussion.
 
Re: Failure rate

Uli,

I have to admit, I had my doubts that you would actually join us on the board. You've graciously put yourself in the line of fire.... I've had mostly good experiences with your products... but sometimes find them to not be as "clean" sounding as others. Anyhow, I had a Eurodesk MX1604 last me a good 7 years before one of the pots started getting 'fuzzy'. I've owned a few Behringer DI boxes for 6+ years... they've taken a beating and still work great. On the flip-side, in my bands beginning stages, I did own a 4600 series compressor that worked for a year, then one gig, just wouldn't power on. Completely dead. So like many others here, I've found consistency to be hit-and-miss, and has led me to look in other directions.

That all said, you deserve a great deal of respect for coming here, and some of your answers regarding your new manufacturing processes have turned my opinion of your products.

If I did have any question at all... it would be about the X32. My band is in the market for a new digital console, as we are looking to upgrade from our Allen & Heath MixWiz3. We have been looking at the new A&H GLD board, but have had a passing interest in the X32. If we're going to make an investment in a product of this sort, we will need to actually "use" it, and not make a blind purchase off of specs and images online... This would entail using our speaker system so we can have a real 'A/B' style comparison to our current MixWiz. Is this something that you or one of your resellers would be able to facilitate? I'm sure that there will be several other interested parties in having a similar "demo" experience.

Thanks again!
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Dear Phil,

I’d love to answer this question even at the risk of boring some readers because it reminds me of the very early days when I first got started.

Much of my knowledge comes from my father, who was a Nuclear Physicist. He worked at a Swiss research facility that operated a heavy-water reactor. His attention to detail and scientific thought process impressed me as a boy and I still remember today how he explained why it is important to pay attention to details even if you can’t see them later.

I learned a lot about determination and proper planning from watching my father build a full-fledged pipe organ in our house with over 1000 pipes! In addition to having a scientific mind he was also a passionate musician who regularly played the organ in our church. For him it was only natural to combine his love of music with his passion for imagining and building things that most people wouldn’t even dream of.

So, he salvaged an old broken organ from a dismantled church, then set about completely rebuilding and converting it to electronic control. In the process he ended out constructing the world’s first electronically controlled pipe organ. Only recently did I find out, that he earned a patent (Espacenet - Bibliographic data) for one of his inventions.
It was 1967, semiconductors had just become popular and I remember how my father would meticulously select Germanium transistors on our dining table.

My father had a full-blown workshop and often I would look over his shoulder, absorbing the care with which he built things. Every once in a while I would help him on his projects and thereby learned to have the same sensitivity to precision and pride in the result. Soon I started building my own projects and by the time I was 16 I had built my own synthesizer, complete with metal parts that I milled at the machine shop next door and rub-on “Letraset” labels on all the controls.

My first commercial product? By the 1970s, when I was around 12, I was ready to take on my first commercial product and it wasn’t in sound but rather in lighting. I had discovered the power of Triac and Diac semiconductors and was building them into “lightorgans” which triggered light bulbs to the rhythm of the music.
Very popular at the time, I sold so many around my neighborhood that I soon had enough money to buy a motorbike and get into all kinds of other trouble.
 

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