Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A Question and suggestion Re ,X32

Mattseymour said:
Well early reports from sac forum are that the ada8200 doesn't work. Same problems I experienced with late model ada8000, the adat chip is basically bust. So it appears Behringer's QA still doesn't stand for anything.
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Behringer know there are problems with the ADAT chip, and they are working on a solution BUT they decided to release the product anyway (there was overheating problems with the 8000) but with a few caveats placed on it.

It is the fault of wavefront/alesis (the chip manufacturer and currently only source for the ADAT chip) that they do not work correctly and behringer have been unable to get them to try and fix the problem.

Behringer are trying to design their own semiconductors which will remove the problem but they aren't ready yet.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A Question and suggestion Re ,X32

Goodness.... And you consider that to be acceptable?

i realise there's a parts supply issue and wavefront have screwed up.... We're not talking about an incompatibility with some hardware (the motu 2408) but a failure to clock with RME and other equipment.

It takes time to develop custom components and get them into manufacture.... But there's no point making a unit that doesn't work properly using a known faulty component. It's this sort of shoddy practice that underlines why Behringer's name has been poor among professionals... And it will continue to be so as long as they fail to deliver on promises and ship products that don't work properly.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

It's the one month anniversary of the shipping notice. Any word on where the boat is and when the stores will get their first deliveries?
Hate to be a bother but I'm anxious to get my X32-rack on the road. I guess this is the downside of having such a hot product line.

Uli Behringer said:
View attachment 7636

Dear Mark,

thank you for your question.

The X32 RACK is currently in full production and the first shipments are leaving the plant right now. The attached picture shows our aging test where each unit is "burned in" for 4 hours.

Large shipments of the X32 CORE have already left the factory and you can expect units to be in stores in a few weeks.

Mass production of the X32 PRODUCER is planned to start next week.

Warm regards

Uli
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Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A Question and suggestion Re ,X32

Bill Yacey said:
I haven't experienced any problems other than the power supply wanting to cook itself to death.

Clocking and sync work fine.
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Yes, I have four that have been around for a while now and they all work just fine... But the new ones don't, and neither it seems does the ada8200
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A Question and suggestion Re ,X32

Mattseymour said:
It's this sort of shoddy practice that underlines why Behringer's name has been poor among professionals... And it will continue to be so as long as they fail to deliver on promises and ship products that don't work properly.
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I would be cautious to remember what thread you are posting in. You have essentially chastised the company CEO for "failing to deliver on promises" based on your clocking issues when other users have not had the same issue. This certainly does NOT scream "widespread product deficiency". What did their support technicians say when you contacted them?
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A Question and suggestion Re ,X32

Actually reading the SOS review of the 8200 there are new behringer designed ADAT chips in it (well in the review model). The new model uses Cirrus Logic CS4270 Combined AD/DA's and for the ADAT side of things they use CS7242/7241 which are behringers own designed chips.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A Question and suggestion Re ,X32

Jeff Babcock said:
I would be cautious to remember what thread you are posting in. You have essentially chastised the company CEO for "failing to deliver on promises" based on your clocking issues when other users have not had the same issue. This certainly does NOT scream "widespread product deficiency". What did their support technicians say when you contacted them?
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I have always liked Behringer products but I've always had problems with them. I loved the ui design of the ddx3216 but when mine failed it was found capacitors were not soldered in place. I've been perfectly happy with the ada8200 but I've had one suffer psu failure and three fail to clock brand new out of the box. I've experienced failure of the rack compressors fail from overheating despite being in an air conditioned plant room. Oh and there was the compressor that actually filled an OB vehicle I was running with smoke as the transformer burned out,

in short the experience hasn't been all that good. Of 10 Behringer products I have personally owned 6 have given me trouble and that is not a good ratio.

As long as the equipment is cheap enough lasts long enough there will be a market. However that is not where a Uli wants to be and there is a strong push to improve the company's reputation, hence threads like this.

When a company screws up I'll say so. Equally when they get things right, I'll shout about that too. It's interesting that if you buy a product and it fails, if the manufacturer deals with that failure well and sorts you out, your perception of that company will be better than if the failure had never occurred. Sadly when I had problems with my Behringer kit, I got nothing from them. Not even a reply to an email.

bottom line is I will take a lot of convincing ;)
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A Question and suggestion Re ,X32

"It's the one month anniversary of the shipping notice. Any word on where the boat is and when the stores will get their first deliveries?
Hate to be a bother but I'm anxious to get my X32-rack on the road. I guess this is the downside of having such a hot product line. "

Based on the previous two X32 products it's going to be 8 weeks so hold on your half way there.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A Question and suggestion Re ,X32

Dear all,

My name is Al Walker and I am a senior systems engineer working for the MUSIC Group. I have been working on understanding the causes for the noise issues reported with our ADA8000, and have recently posted on the SAWStudio forum to reach out to the members there to learn about the set-ups that they are using in order to improve our understanding of the mechanisms responsible for generating the noise. I would like to do the same here, and invite the members of this forum to share with us the details of the audio interfaces, computers and software packages they are using to allow us to fully capture a list of equipment that people are experiencing problems with.

Previously we had received reports about noise generated when ADA8000s were used in conjunction with the MOTU 2408 unit, and to investigate the cause we obtained a MOTU 2408 Mk3 unit and PCI-424 card. It was during this testing that we identified the difference in performance between the original Alesis AL1401A version of the ADAT Encoder (transmitter) IC and the current Wavefront AL1401AG version when the ADA8000s were slaved to the ADAT output from the MOTU 2408. We have now had a report of this same problem occurring with the RME Digiface, which we will be investigating.

We discovered that some ADA8000/AD8200 units do work just fine with the MOTU 2408, and to this end we conducted 100% screening of the Wavefront Optical Encoder ICs used in our ADA8200 production as we found that the noise generation varied with temperature. We tested sample units with our MOTU 2408 Mk3 and did not see any difference in performance between 44.1 kHz and 48 kHz operation – if we had, we would not have made the decision to ship the ADA8200. As all our testing results confirmed correct operation at both 44.1 kHz and 48kHz, we still need to better understand under what circumstances the noise that has been reported with ADA8200 appears.

The fact that an audio interface always operates with other devices means that careful examination is needed to find out on which side the problem occurs. Our investigation has shown that the MOTU 2408 clocks are subject to clock jitter (noise) which leads to syncing problems, which the Alesis version of the ADAT Encoder IC is better able to reject. The noise generated in this condition varies, but is usually acombination of high amplitude digital noise and clicks and pops indicative of a clocking problem.

This is why we felt that we should at least advise users of the known issue when used with MOTU 2408, hence our disclaimer notice which you can find on the product pages of our website. We decided that our only choice moving forwards was to be able to control the manufacturing of these ICs ourselves and as has been previously posted we are now ramping up production. We expect the first lot to arrive in our factory in September and from then onwards we will be switching to the new silicon.

As an aside, most digital audio ICs use three separate clock inputs, the master clock frequency, the bit clock (the data rate for the individual data bits) and the word clock which runs at the sampling frequency. In typical designs operating at 48 kHz and 44.1 kHz sample rates, these clock frequencies are 12.288 MHz, 3.072 MHz and 48 kHz, and 11.025 MHz, 2.822 MHz and 44.1 kHz respectively. The most typical way of generating these clocks is to successively divide down the output of a very accurate crystal oscillator operating at the master clock frequency to obtain the bit and word clocks, this ensures the phases of the clocks are maintained and that any (very small) error in the crystal oscillator output is not magnified when generating the other clock frequencies.

The design of the ADAT Encoder IC is unusual in that it only has a word clock input and internally multiplies up this clock frequency to generate the much higher bit clock and master clock frequencies. This multiplication process, done using a phase-locked loop (PLL), needs to be able to reject any jitter noise present on the incoming word clock signal, as obviously otherwise when the sample clock frequency is multiplied up first 64 times and then 256 times, so is the effect of any incoming noise. This has been the issue with the Wavefront version of the ADAT Encoder IC compared with the original Alesis version. Whilst Wavefront themselves have not been at all forthcoming about the changes to the IC design that we have seen to have occurred, we have worked with our supplier to obtain die revisions of the IC that we were advised had improved jitter rejection, and then screened these ICs ourselves for correct operation at multiple sample rates and temperatures.

With regard to some of the comments about power supply-generated heat on ADA8000, one of the key improvements we made with ADA8200 was the change to a high-efficiency switch mode power supply to eliminate the concerns with heat generation, so the power supply design is completely different compared with ADA8000.

I would appreciate it if forum members could help provide answers to the following, and also any other information that they think may be relevant to help us fully resolve this issue.


  • What type of noise (clocking noise, low level noise) is generated?

  • Does noise occur with both PCs and Macs?

  • What audio interfaces have been tried that result in noise being generated?

  • Does the problem only occur if the ADA8000/ADA8200 is slaved to the audio interface which is in turn slaved to the computer or PCI internal clock?

  • What DAW software packages have been tried?

Thanks for your support.

Kind regards,

Al Walker
Senior Engineer, Systems
MUSIC Group
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

mark anderson said:
It's the one month anniversary of the shipping notice. Any word on where the boat is and when the stores will get their first deliveries?
Hate to be a bother but I'm anxious to get my X32-rack on the road. I guess this is the downside of having such a hot product line.
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Dear Mark,

We have commenced shipping the X32 Rack during August and further orders will be shipped in September.

You should be able to obtain your first X32 Rack very soon.

Enjoy and please share your experiences with us!
 
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Re: Behringer Forum

Hey Scott,

This afternoon and evening, I'm also experiencing a performance issue with the Behringer forum. Hopefully, they will have it sorted out soon and back to normal.

Paul
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A Question and suggestion Re ,X32

Mattseymour said:
Sadly when I had problems with my Behringer kit, I got nothing from them. Not even a reply to an email.

bottom line is I will take a lot of convincing ;)
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Matt, their support structures have completely changed, from that perspective it is like a different company now than say 5 years ago when there was basically no North American service.
It took me a while myself, but I have a much better impression now than in the past, and I no longer hesitate to recommend their products in situations where they would be suited.

They seem to be working very hard to undo their prior reputation. This very thread is testament to that. I'd encourage you to go back to the beginning of this thread, there is plenty of reading about this there.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A Question and suggestion Re ,X32

<sigh> Wanted a pair of cheap SDC mics. Bought a pair of Behringer C-4s. It isn't possible to actually get an XLR plug into these things without extreme violence sufficient to void the warranty.

Honestly... Everything I see tells me Behringer are still making stuff that isn't worth the relatively low price they're charging for it.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A Question and suggestion Re ,X32

Mattseymour said:
<sigh> Wanted a pair of cheap SDC mics. Bought a pair of Behringer C-4s. It isn't possible to actually get an XLR plug into these things without extreme violence sufficient to void the warranty.

Honestly... Everything I see tells me Behringer are still making stuff that isn't worth the relatively low price they're charging for it.
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You know which end plugs into the microphone?

Xlr-connectors.jpg
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A Question and suggestion Re ,X32

Mattseymour said:
<sigh> Wanted a pair of cheap SDC mics. Bought a pair of Behringer C-4s. It isn't possible to actually get an XLR plug into these things without extreme violence sufficient to void the warranty.

Honestly... Everything I see tells me Behringer are still making stuff that isn't worth the relatively low price they're charging for it.
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If they are EWI cables I can plug the into the X 32 outputs but getting them out...$@%^££>!!
 
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