Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Hi Uli,

I appreciate you coming to this forum to answer some questions. In fact, I joined this forum to get into this discussion with you.

I have owned several pieces of your gear over the past few years. V-Amp 2, guitar stomp boxes, a couple of mixers, rack-mount effects, and currently have a couple of power amps and a digital eq/crossover. Quality has been hit and miss with all of them. Some have been rock solid, while others proved to be quite unreliable. I recently learned that Sweetwater had started carrying Behringer gear again after doing an analysis of your new products' quality, and agreed that some major improvements have been made in QC. I trust Sweetwater, so that speaks volumes to me. I have long been a critic of your products, but I will honestly say that I am open to giving your gear a chance again.

I am still bothered by one thing, which is my question. Please understand that I am not trying to be inflammatory here, but honestly would like to know. If your gear has come that far, and really is on it's own level, then why do you guys still mimic the visual looks of your competitors? I mean, it's easy to see the clear similarities between Mackie gear and many Behringer products. Knob and switch placement, color schemes, etc. My power amps look very much like some QSC amps that we have. Bugera amps are quite similar to Matchless amps. Now, I understand that the interior components are quite different. I am just talking about the actual visual design of the products.

Just interested in your thoughts on this. Thank you for your time.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Uli,

I have a few questions that come into my mind.

1. Looking back on the history of your enterprise, what's the most important decision you made?
1a. What was your biggest fail in the past?

2. What are you trying to achieve within the next 10 (20) years?

Greetings from Hamburg, Germany,

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

Q: Hi Uli,

Will you be providing training seminars similar to Yamaha does with their digital boards for the X32? If so when and where? What is your plan for the English speaking Caribbean which is a market usually ignored by other manufactures? Some worldwide or region based competitions offering some of the X32's as the prize to winners at the time of launch for promo purposes would be great. Finally, considering you are a piano player like myself, when can we expect a Behringer workstation or synth? I wouldn't mind putting one of those through the paces.

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

Dear John, (and others),

Thank you for your comments. You make several important points here and I’d like to address them individually.


First is the issue of product reliability and the public perception about our products in that regard.

To be clear, there is no manufacturer who can guarantee defect-free products no matter how much emphasis they put on using quality components and quality assurance systems. Ultimately all products will fail – the question really is when and how. Just look at how many times NASA has to cancel or delay space launches as an extreme example or how frequently high-quality automotive companies have to recall cars.

In the electronics industry we buy components from reputable semiconductor manufacturers such as Analog Devices, Texas Instruments, Motorola and others who specify their anticipated component failure rates in ppm (which stands for "parts per million"). Those ppm numbers sound very low but consider what happens when for example 7,000 parts are combined into one large mixer. Suddenly, the statistical failure rate increases dramatically and now you’re talking significant percentages.

Someone here asked for our internal failure rate numbers but frankly they are irrelevant as they can’t be independently verified. We have instead elected to direct people to the actual failure rate numbers published on the Thomann.de site which are there for public viewing. You can see clearly that ours are among the lowest failure rates of any company in the industry.

There is however a persistent belief in the marketplace that our products are more prone to failure than those of other manufacturers. This false perception is driven by a second important dynamic that isn’t really clear to many people. That is the sheer volume of product that we produce and sell; more than 5 million pieces annually! When you think about it, even 1% of that volume equates to 50,000 pieces; enough to ensure that our products are going to be found on a repair bench more often than others.

The reality is that our products are much better than this perception would lead one to believe. With 5 million products a year and the slim margins we work on, if our products were generally fault-prone we would have been out of business long ago. Instead we focus on failure prevention where the cost is far lower than trying to clean up a mess through after-sale service. Our dramatic growth underlines that customers are happy with what they are buying from us.

That said we are the first to admit that we are certainly not perfect and have made mistakes in the past. But we have improved greatly and continue to get better every day by making the necessary investments in the equipment and fantastic people who care and who take immense pride in what they do.

As a direct result, we have now reached a quality level that allows us to confidently offer a 3-Year Warranty Program since the beginning of this year.


I must admit however that our customer service left something to be desired in recent years.

As our business doubled year over year, we failed to take proper care of our customers and struggled to build the support infrastructure. We relied on external service centers and third party spare parts providers that clearly didn’t work and I apologize for that on behalf of the Company.

We’ve learned our lesson and have since made significant investments in our Customer Care Operation. We have recently purchased a state of the art facility in Las Vegas that houses our US response team, repair depot and parts fulfillment. We also repurposed our Midas manufacturing facility in Kidderminster, UK to serve as our European Care Center. Overall, our Care Division now employs over 125 employees on four continents providing support in 7 languages and we’re investing more.

While we haven't achieved the desired Customer Care level yet, it is our Company goal is to provide the very best customer experience in the industry.


And finally, the new X32 digital mixing console is the most sophisticated and most exciting product we have developed in our 23 years of company history. It was the first product that was designed by our German engineering team in collaboration with the Midas team in the UK. I am very proud of the people who designed this product, also because it is a step change and the start of new journey for our Company.

The X32 is the realization of a long quest to not only follow the market but to take a leadership position. This is a product that combines all of our expertise, our ability to build great product and just as importantly to do it at a price many can afford. We are investing in intellectual property, in design and engineering talent and the X32 showcases the result of those investments better than any brochure, website or advertising could ever do.

Of course you have every right to be skeptical and so you should be, as this is a big investment. All that I can tell you is that we have done our homework on the X32 and I believe that it will prove to be a landmark product for the industry. The very same engineers responsible for the hardware, software and development of Midas consoles as well as our other 500+ products have invested their talents into making this our best product ever.

Plus, we stand behind every X32 with a full 3-Year Warranty Program!

Thanks again for the opportunity to answer your well-considered questions.
 
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Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Uli Behringer said:
Dear John, (and others),

Thank you for your comments. You make several important points here and I’d like to address them individually.


First is the issue of product reliability and the public perception about our products in that regard.

To be clear, there is no manufacturer who can guarantee defect-free products no matter how much emphasis they put on using quality components and quality assurance systems. Ultimately all products will fail – the question really is when and how. Just look at how many times NASA has to cancel or delay space launches as an extreme example or how frequently high-quality automotive companies have to recall cars.

In the electronics industry we buy components from reputable semiconductor manufacturers such as Analog Devices, Texas Instruments, Motorola and others who specify their anticipated component failure rates in ppm (which stands for "parts per million"). Those ppm numbers sound very low but consider what happens when for example 7,000 parts are combined into one large mixer. Suddenly, the statistical failure rate increases dramatically and now you’re talking significant percentages.

Someone here asked for our internal failure rate numbers but frankly they are irrelevant as they can’t be independently verified. We have instead elected to direct people to the actual failure rate numbers published on the Thomann.de site which are there for public viewing. You can see clearly that ours are among the lowest failure rates of any company in the industry.

There is however a persistent belief in the marketplace that our products are more prone to failure than those of other manufacturers. This false perception is driven by a second important dynamic that isn’t really clear to many people. That is the sheer volume of product that we produce and sell; more than 5 million pieces annually! When you think about it, even 1% of that volume equates to 50,000 pieces; enough to ensure that our products are going to be found on a repair bench more often than others.

The reality is that our products are much better than this perception would lead one to believe. With 5 million products a year and the slim margins we work on, if our products were generally fault-prone we would have been out of business long ago. Instead we focus on failure prevention where the cost is far lower than trying to clean up a mess through after-sale service. Our dramatic growth underlines that customers are happy with what they are buying from us.

That said we are the first to admit that we are certainly not perfect and have made mistakes in the past. But we have improved greatly and continue to get better every day by making the necessary investments in the equipment and fantastic people who care and who take immense pride in what they do.

As a direct result, we have now reached a quality level that allows us to confidently offer a 3-Year Warranty Program since the beginning of this year.


I must admit however that our customer service left something to be desired in recent years.

As our business doubled year over year, we failed to take proper care of our customers and struggled to build the support infrastructure. We relied on external service centers and third party spare parts providers that clearly didn’t work and I apologize for that on behalf of the Company.

We’ve learned our lesson and have since made significant investments in our Customer Care Operation. We have recently purchased a state of the art facility in Las Vegas that houses our US response team, repair depot and parts fulfillment. We also repurposed our Midas manufacturing facility in Kidderminster, UK to serve as our European Care Center. Overall, our Care Division now employs over 125 employees on four continents providing support in 7 languages and we’re investing more.

While we haven't achieved the desired Customer Care level yet, it is our Company goal is to provide the very best customer experience in the industry.


And finally, the new X32 digital mixing console is the most sophisticated and most exciting product we have developed in our 23 years of company history. It was the first product that was designed by our German engineering team in collaboration with the Midas team in the UK. I am very proud of the people who designed this product, also because it is a step change and the start of new journey for our Company.

The X32 is the realization of a long quest to not only follow the market but to take a leadership position. This is a product that combines all of our expertise, our ability to build great product and just as importantly to do it at a price many can afford. We are investing in intellectual property, in design and engineering talent and the X32 showcases the result of those investments better than any brochure, website or advertising could ever do.

Of course you have every right to be skeptical and so you should be, as this is a big investment. All that I can tell you is that we have done our homework on the X32 and I believe that it will prove to be a landmark product for the industry. The very same engineers responsible for the hardware, software and development of Midas consoles as well as our other 500+ products have invested their talents into making this our best product ever.

Plus, we stand behind every X32 with a full 3-Year Warranty Program!

Thanks again for the opportunity to answer your well-considered questions.
Click to expand...

With all due respect, you avoided my question about Behringer products strongly resembling competitors' products physically. If you maintain that your products are all original in internal design, and that their performance speaks for themselves, then why continue this practice? Again, I mean no disrespect in any way. This is just something that bothers me about your company's gear. Would love for you to address this issue. Thank you.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

HEy

I have some questions

1. will there an standalone multi track and Summ output recorder Splitter converter to ADAT and MADI - like the Joeco JoeCo - Home of the BlackBox Recorder or Roland R-1000 48-Track Recorder / Player | Recording | Professional Audio - Roland Systems Group EMEA

2. will there an AES50 PCI card for the PC to get the Signals from an X32 STagebox into the PC without ADAT and other things

3. will there an X16 16 input 12output short Version of the X32 and X16 working as a sidecare like Digico does with SD7 and in the old days Midas does with XL3 and XL4 extender.

4. X32 and X32 or X16 as a FOH MON and with Recording in one network.

5. S32 32in16 Stagebox so i can use one STagebox in the Amprack and one on drums and use about 4-12 inputs at the Foh Desk X32 for Wireless and some outputs at FOHdesk für Delay

6. Preset Comp like SPL Dynamaxx or Behringer Studiocompressor - im still using 20year old 6-8pieces of them and love them

7. Preset Gate like SPL Dynamaxx it works perfekt for Backing vocals and so on

8. Ilike Kuhle and SPL easy to use Comps and Gates setting the threshold thats it.

9. Presets in the Reverbs for Sounds we are fammilar with like the famos PCM 70, SPX , Roland Delay, TC 2290 straight Vocal Delay and so on

10. Is it possible to do a Basic PA Controlling in the Desk HP LP BUT/LR 6-24dB Slopes - additonal to the 30band EQ an 8Band Fullprametirc on the 30Band there can be only 15 Bands usable at one time - like in the LS9 - thats ok

11. will there a NEW DCX with 6in 16out for PA controlling AES 50/AES EBU input direct from the X32desk without AD DA

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

HI Uli,
Perhaps this is more due to a decision made by the Canadian Distributor, but I was disappointed to not see any representation of Behringer products at the recent MIAC show in Toronto. Although MUCH smaller in scale, it's Canada's version of the NAMM show.
I'm a former Behringer dealer in a small rural area that your most recent Canadian Distributor has been trying to get back on board.

Questions I was going to ask your representative are about warranty policy. In the past, whether due to parts shortage, or manpower or whatever- items returned under warranty were simply replaced with a new unit, which started the warranty period from scratch again. Is this a policy that will continue now with the current 3 year warranty? I wonder if a unit fails before the 3 years if there will be lengthy waits for parts as there are now. I know of a few shops who are getting frustrated waiting for out of warranty parts.

I have also heard that out of warranty repairs must currently be shipped to the USA as well as you requiring money orders for parts even with established accounts.

I'm just trying to make an informed decision.
Thank you for being accessible.
BJ
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Hi Uli, I'm looking forward to the x32. I used to own a ddx3216 and loved the ui of that desk. In fact I've always found Behringer digital gear to be easily among the best for usability however I've also been stung by build quality and reliability issues (caps in my ddx3216 fell out of the board when it was moved around) and I've been disappointed by the quality of analog circuits. So the ddx3216 was great in the digitsl world but the on board preeamps were noisy and frankly a bit poor compared to anything else I tried. My experience with some analogue gear, like the pmh5000 is also of poor analogue circutry with little headroom. I feel youve adressed the build quality issues so I have two questions:

1: how do the preamps and sensitive analogue circuits Behringer builds now differ from those of 10 years ago?

2: How happy are you with the power ratings on products like the pmh5000, which is rated at about 400w output, but into a realistic load is more like an 80w amplifier?
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Dear Steve,

Once again thank you for your question. This is an often asked question and frankly has led to criticism over the years.

The simple answer is that we have for many years considered our products to be followers of market trends and have designed them accordingly. Our product strategy has been to introduce products into categories where there is proven market demand and win based on our value proposition. That strategy has spawned many products whose visual appearance “mimics” that of the market leaders in many segments.

Also we do listen to our customers as this has been and will always be a huge part of our philosophy. In fact it has formed our company motto: "We hear you". We listen when customers tell us what they want and they do this often to a very detailed extent: "We'd like you to make an amp like this brand, but with these features and this look but can you make it at this price?" And we do listen to our customers.

Using ideas from other competitors is perfectly legal as long as you don't infringe on patents, trademarks, etc. and again what the law permits and what the public deem acceptable often differs greatly.

How many guitars look like Fender Strats? How many cars or phones look alike?

Frankly every manufacturer becomes inspired by other competitors and this is how the world works. When we attend trade shows we often see other manufacturers "borrow" our designs, and where legal we have no issue with it.

One may legitimately ask, “How close is too close?” when it comes to appearance. Everyone may have a different personal opinion on the topic but there are rules in law and trade practice that govern what is referred to as “trade dress”. A product’s form, shape and control placement can be protected by a Design Patent if the manufacturer believes that these are defining features that are unique. In that case other manufacturers cannot make a product that shares the same features.
However if these are not unique or protected features, then everyone is free to use those ideas.

Our intent is to make great products that are affordable and intuitive to use. Sometimes that means that the industrial design will follow the well-established protocol for that type of product. Other times it means we must start with a clean sheet of paper and do things differently.
Examples of the latter are our Eurocom line of installed products, the iNuke power amps series, our new Q series mixers and of course our new X32 digital mixer. I have been largely involved in the design of those products and all have been designed to be unique to the extent that they are even covered by multiple design patent applications in my own name.

As a fan of great industrial design, it has always been my dream to build products that set us apart from others. This dream is about to be realized with the opening of our new Design Center of Excellence in Manchester, UK later this summer.
Headed by award-winning designer Mark Harman Powell, who brings senior design expertise from BMW, Jaguar, Land Rover and JBL, the team will be responsible for setting design direction for all our products.
Great design is no less important than features and reliability so we are investing heavily here.
 
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Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Behringer was the first company in the pro audio industry to move production to China and for several years we enjoyed a strong competitive advantage. 20 years ago China was considered the undisputed cost leader in manufacturing because wages were so low as to be practically irrelevant. At the same time, quality was spotty but with the low cost of labor, reworking products wasn’t considered to be a big deal.

We all accepted it as part of the cost of doing business there.

Since then however many other companies have followed, including Soundcraft, Allen & Heath, Avid, Mackie, Peavey and more. That sudden influx of local manufacturers has meant that our first-mover cost advantage has largely gone away as we now compete with companies who have the same costs as us. It has also meant fierce competition for available workers and that has in turn caused costs to rise dramatically.

With labor prices increasing 20% per year, China is no longer considered a low-cost place for manufacturing. Factory workers now have plenty of choice who they work for and their salary demands are ever-increasing. In fact, the salaries of skilled engineers have now reached Western levels and it’s only a matter of time until the salary gap will close altogether.
This pressure affects not only our products but those of every manufacturer based in China. However, in my view this is a good development as this trend equalizes salaries around the globe and ultimately brings jobs back to the West.

Despite these increases in labor cost, China remains a great place for manufacturing. One must consider not only the cost of labor but also the productivity of the work force, access to an employee talent pool and of course the supply chain for raw materials.
By that measure we remain committed to our manufacturing plant in China and in fact are planning to build a new factory of over 4 million square feet to further expand production. To us this is a better option than moving production to Vietnam, Mongolia or even North Korea as some have done.

As one hedges against rising labor costs we are continuing to invest in automation. Last year alone we invested over $20 million into our electronics, loudspeaker and wood production lines, automating what have traditionally been manual labor processes.
The benefits have been lower production costs and most importently higher quality as mundane repetitive tasks are now handled by machines, allowing people to work in more stimulating aspects of manufacturing.

This brings me to a final point that is even more important than labor cost. Nothing is more costly than the turn-over of employees who are seeking greater job satisfaction elsewhere. Today, employees have a great range of choices and are looking for a good company environment, career path, benefits and all of the comforts that Western workers have enjoyed for years. In Guangdong province, the attrition rate in factories is between 20-30% while our own rate is a phenomenal 3%!

We take great pride in employing a stable and motivated workforce in our factory in China. To be clear, we have invested in the country and the people and are proud to have many managers inside our company who started on the factory floor.

That is the kind of long-term thinking that has contributed to our success thus far and we don’t plan to change it anytime soon.
 
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Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Not to pick out details, but it seems to me Behringer is still more worried about their bottom line than the customer or their appearance. While I find this thread to be a great step forward as to putting a little effort out to meet some of your customer base. I find it also revealing to how your company looks at people. To get to my question; I purchased a speaker and mixer from your company, and not more than a month later both were discontinued. They're product cycle was extremely short, and although not very costly, still concerns me. I see more and more companies designing "obsolete factors" into their products, What I mean is seeing a product that was designed with a short life span time not to reduce cost but to increase sales of newer products. To me this may work well for a tech industry that is evolving rapidly (cell phones/computers) but for an audio company not so much. Do you feel your company is moving in that direction? If not could you explain where your company sits as far as future support of products.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Dear John,

Thank you for your open question and apologies for my late and lengthy reply. Since much of this topic goes way back, it took me a while to gather the facts.

The issue of Intellectual Property is an important one to us; especially because we have been accused of not honoring the IP of other manufacturers. I have heard and read over the years many accounts of lawsuits, judgments and sanctions against our company that are frankly based in fiction and not fact.

I welcome this opportunity to set the record straight not only on past cases but to also clarify our view on IP and what constitutes fair competition as well.

About 20 years ago, as a small garage operation, we became involved in a patent dispute with Aphex over a processor we were building. At that time there were several companies who produced those exciters, such Akai, SPL, D&R, etc. Our patent attorney advised us that the Aphex patent was invalid and I also applied for my own patent (DE3904425), with sponsorship from the acclaimed Fraunhofer Institute, the inventors of MP3. Despite assurances and our own beliefs, we ended up in court where the judge ruled in Aphex’s favor and we lost the case. We paid damages and moved on.

This case illustrates very clearly what I came to understand over the ensuing 20 years about patents and IP. Disputes over intellectual property are commonplace in many industries and especially so in the technology industry. IP is a grey area, as it deals with patents, trade dress, copyrights, designs etc. where not much is black and white.
Just look at cases with Gibson versus PRS, Microsoft, Blackberry, Yahoo, Google, Samsung, Apple etc. Lawsuits are often used as “guerilla tactics” and especially common in the US where legal fees are sky high and each party has to pay its own fees regardless of the outcome of the case.
This, along with the fact that IP litigation is often used as a tool to push a competitor out of business, are reasons why there are so many cases in this area of law.


Misconceptions around IP

One needs to be clear about the distinction between blatantly copying someone else’s product and the principle of reverse engineering. Copying a product 1:1 is clearly illegal, however reverse engineering is something that takes place every day and is accepted as part of a product development process known as benchmarking.
Often one company will establish a new market opportunity for a unique product and others will follow with their versions of that pioneering product. Think iPhone followed by Samsung Galaxy. This is the principle of competition.

The following Article from Berkeley Law School gives a great read and provides valuable background information. A quick excerpt demonstrates why public opinion often differs from the law.

“Reverse engineering has a long history as an accepted practice. Lawyers and economists have endorsed reverse engineering as an appropriate way for firms to obtain information about another firm’s product, even if the intended result is to make a directly competing product that will draw away customers from the maker of the first product.”

One of the cases that endures in people’s memories is when we were sued by Mackie over alleged infringement of their alleged IP. After a series of very costly and bitter court cases which we all won, Mackie reached out to us for a settlement which did not involve any money.
It was proven in court that we had not copied their schematics or PCB layouts, nor had we infringed on any patents as there were none. Nor had there ever been any legal cases brought by BBE, dbx or Drawmer as claimed by Mackie as part of their marketing campaign against us and later erroneously reported by Wikipedia.

Many years later I had the honor of spending time over a couple of dinners with Greg Mackie, for whom I have tremendous respect, and we both agreed that this dispute was a complete waste of time and money.

In our first two decades, most of our products were designed to follow market leaders with similar features and appearance, at a lower cost. This value proposition upset many of our competitors while at the same time earning us a huge fan base among customers.
I fully understand that many of those competitors would be frustrated by our ability to deliver equivalent or better products at significantly lower prices and that is the source of much of the anger directed at us by them.

There is an often referenced dispute with Roland over their claim on stomp boxes. A little-known fact in that case is that I had personally met the founder of Roland, the esteemed Mr. Kakehashi, and visited his house in Hamamatsu. I shared with him the plans to build low-cost stomp boxes and he even gave me advice on how to introduce them into the market.
Once we had our designs ready, I asked the head of our Japan sales office to visit him, share the drawings and ask for his opinion. I was told that Mr. Kakehashi raised no objections and hence we proceeded.
The Roland US office however had a different view and filed a suit over trade dress, but not over patents which is often claimed. The slight change of the overall appearance resolved the dispute, however we regret this misunderstanding.

In the 20 years since the Aphex case we have been sued several times by competitors. However, to be clear, we have not lost a single IP case in that time. We are committed to never engage in any activity that willfully infringes on the intellectual property rights of any company or individual. However, we are also aware that legal wrangling will continue as we press on with our philosophy of delivering the best products at the lowest possible cost. Some competitors will view lawsuits as a good marketing tactic and use it to discredit our company - we will simply have to live with this.


What is our future direction?

When you look back to the first decade of our Company, we clearly focused on “me too” products, however adding features in line with our philosophy “double the features at half the price”.
But at the same time we also released revolutionary products such as the digital equalizers DSP8000 and DEQ2496, the digital mixer DDX3216 and the DJ mixer DDM4000 etc. which are truly unique and sophisticated products.

However several years ago, we decided to depart from low-tech products and instead strongly focus on value-added technology and IP creation.

With the acquisition of Midas and Klark Teknik, we acquired not only two historic brands but also a large team of the finest PHD’s, Scientists and engineers in the world. Who else knows how to design a digital mixing console with 30 Linux processors running in parallel?
We also have a world-class digital R&D team in Germany who has been designing hardware and software for the past 15 years. Since then, we added around 20 more engineers in the UK to support Midas and the Music Group and over 30 more are planned.

Since the Midas acquisition we opened two research centers in the UK as well as in China where the focus is not product development but true technology research. We already achieved a technology breakthrough by successfully integrating a switch mode power supply with an amplifier to combine both into a single stage. A patent has been applied for and hence we can talk about it now.
We are convinced that we will be able to design and produce power amplifiers at a staggering 94% overall efficiency all in line with the approach of saving energy and reducing carbon footprint.

While we will always remain true to the principle of offering more for less, our product focus has shifted considerably over the past few years. Employing over 250 engineers worldwide, we now have the ability to design cutting-edge products that lead the industry, not merely follow. Our new Eurocom series garnered around 17 patent applications and resulted in the most energy-efficient line of products in the industry.
The new X32 Digital Mixer has already earned the praise of users and reviewers alike as it puts a $20,000 console in users’ hands for less than $3,000.

And this is truly exciting.
 
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Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Uli Behringer said:
Dear John,

Thank you for your open question and apologies for my late and lengthy reply. Since much is of these topics go way back, it took me a while to gather the facts.
Click to expand...

Thank you for addressing my question, "Q: Do you feel your corporate philosophy regarding intellectual property has been consistent since day one, or has that philosophy changed over the decades you have been running your business? while it was a soft ball question, you seem to be offering a far more expansive response.

The issue of Intellectual Property is an important one to us; especially because we have been accused of not honoring the IP of other manufacturers. I have heard and read over the years many accounts of lawsuits, judgments and sanctions against our company that are frankly based in fiction and not fact.
Click to expand...
There seems to be enough of a public record that speaks for itself.
I welcome this opportunity to set the record straight not only on past cases but to also clarify our view on IP and what constitutes fair competition as well.
Click to expand...

About 20 years ago, as a small garage operation, we became involved in a patent dispute with Aphex over a processor we were building. At that time there were several companies who produced those exciters, such Akai, SPL, D&R, etc. Our patent attorney advised us that the Aphex patent was invalid and I also applied for my own patent (DE3904425), with sponsorship from the acclaimed Fraunhofer Institute, the inventors of MP3. Despite assurances and our own beliefs, we ended up in court where the judge ruled in Aphex’s favor and we lost the case. We paid damages and moved on.
Click to expand...
I will resist rehashing this, it appears your lawyer was incorrect.

This case illustrates very clearly what I came to understand over the ensuing 20 years about patents and IP. Disputes over intellectual property are commonplace in many industries and especially so in the technology industry. IP is a grey area, as it deals with patents, trade dress, copyrights, designs etc. where not much is black and white.
Click to expand...

Lawyers live and prosper in the grey area between the black and white, of IP law. The law seems clear enough, but the practice of it is often influenced by the golden rule (he with the most gold makes the rules).
Just look at cases with Gibson versus PRS, Microsoft, Blackberry, Yahoo, Google, Samsung, Apple etc. Lawsuits are often used as “guerilla tactics” and especially common in the US where legal fees are sky high and each party has to pay its own fees regardless of the outcome of the case.
This, along with the fact that IP litigation is often used as a tool to push a competitor out of business, are reasons why there are so many cases in this area of law.
Click to expand...
Not to change the subject, and my focus is mainly on utility patents, not design patents, it might be worth a brief revisit of the intent of IP or more specifically patent law. Granting limited protection to inventors in exchange for publishing their inventions increases our (the public's) knowledge. After that limited time protection expires, everybody is free to use that innovation.

Misconceptions around IP

One needs to be clear about the distinction between blatantly copying someone else’s product and the principle of reverse engineering. Copying a product 1:1 is clearly illegal, however reverse engineering is something that takes place every day and is accepted as part of a product development process known as benchmarking.
Often one company will establish a new market opportunity for a unique product and others will follow with their versions of that pioneering product. Think iPhone followed by Samsung Galaxy. This is the principle of competition.

The following article from Berkley gives a great read and provides valuable background information. A quick excerpt demonstrates why public opinion often differs from the law.

“Reverse engineering has a long history as an accepted practice. Lawyers and economists have endorsed reverse engineering as an appropriate way for firms to obtain information about another firm’s product, even if the intended result is to make a directly competing product that will draw away customers from the maker of the first product.”
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Reverse engineering has nothing to do with patented technology. Patents publish the preferred embodiment for anybody and everybody to read and learn how to use. The "deal" in exchange for this publication is exclusive use by the inventor for a limited time.

Reverse engineering is more about parsing out trade secrets and that is fair game, to learn whatever you can "honestly" from taking gear apart. As you note, this is widely done.

One of the cases that endures in people’s memories is when we were sued by Mackie over alleged infringement of their alleged IP. After a series of very costly and bitter court cases which we all won, Mackie reached out to us for a settlement which did not involve any money.
It was proven in court that we had not copied their schematics or PCB layouts, nor had we infringed on any patents as there were none. Nor had there ever been any legal cases brought by BBE, dbx or Drawmer as claimed by Mackie and later erroneously reported byWikipedia.
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There was a remarkable resemblance between Mackie's very popular 8-bus and your offering. I was at the Messe the year you introduced yours. I won't recite the legal back and forth, you surely know it better than I. No Mackie didn't have a design patent in force and I recall some significance with the meter bridge.

It is rather difficult to separate form from function with mixers/consoles so trade dress and design patents offer limited IP protection.
Many years later I had the honor of spending time over a couple of dinners with Greg Mackie, for whom I have tremendous respect, and we both agreed that this dispute was a complete waste of time and money.
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Far be it for me to put words in Greg's mouth, but who knows maybe he will chime in here. :) and straighten me out.

I recall one private conversation i had with him at a NAMM show back around then, and he was far from calm or gracious about your mixer. His comments were kind of humorous but I am uncomfortable paraphrasing him for public consumption so I won't.

At least the lawyers made a pile of money.

In our first two decades, most of our products were designed to follow market leaders with similar features and appearance, at a lower cost. This value proposition upset many of our competitors while at the same time earning us a huge fan base among customers.
I fully understand that many of those competitors would be frustrated by our ability to deliver equivalent or better products at significantly lower prices and that is the source of much of the anger directed at us by them.
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Yes, it is irritating to the large competitors, and far more than frustrating to very small companies who are no longer competitive.

On one level I considered it a left handed compliment when you copied one of my small mixers almost verbatim (RQ200), but I can live without such compliments.

There is an often referenced dispute with Roland over their claim on stomp boxes. A little-known fact in that case is that I had personally met the founder of Roland, the esteemed Mr. Kakehashi, and visited his house in Hamamatsu. I shared with him the plans to build low-cost stomp boxes and he even gave me advice on how to introduce them into the market.
Once we had our designs ready, I asked the head of our Japan sales office to visit him, share the drawings and ask for his opinion. I was told that Mr. Kakehashi raised no objections and hence we proceeded.
The Roland US office however had a different view and filed a suit over trade dress, however not over patents which is often claimed. The change of the overall appearance resolved the dispute, however we regret this misunderstanding.

In the 20 years since the Aphex case we have been sued several times by competitors. However, to be clear, we have not lost a single IP case in that time.We are committed to never engage in any activity that willfully infringes on the intellectual property rights of any company or individual. However, we are also aware that legal wrangling will continue as we press on with our philosophy of delivering the best products at the lowest possible cost. Some competitors will view lawsuits as a good marketing tactic and use it to discredit our company - we will simply have to live with this.
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I only have first hand experience, about one IP lawsuit related to one of my old patents assigned to Peavey (FLS) back when I worked there. i am pretty confident it was not a marketing smear tactic and speaking for myself, I believe my original invention was infringed. I haven't followed the lawsuits progress through the courts. From a quick google it looks like you may have already won that case too. I am just a layman, so remain unclear about how a court can adjudicate what is essentially a circuit design question. Circuit design I do understand.

It appears since then the legal wrangling between you guys has devolved to very high priced legal mud slinging. Have fun with that.


I can't be very objective about my inventions, so i will just leave it there.

What is our future direction?

When you look back to the first decade of our Company, we clearly focused on “me too” products, however adding features in line with our philosophy “double the features at half the price”.
But at the same time we also released revolutionary products such as the digital equalizers DSP8000 and DEQ2496, the digital mixer DDX3216 and the DJ mixer DDM4000 etc. which are truly unique and sophisticated products.

However several years ago, we decided to depart from low-tech products and instead strongly focus on value-added technology and IP creation.

With the acquisition of Midas and Klark Teknik, we acquired not only two historic brands but also a large team of the finest PHD’s, Scientists and engineers in the world. Who else knows how to design a digital mixing console with 30 Linux processors running in parallel?
We also have a world-class digital R&D team in Germany who has been designing hardware and software for the past 15 years. Since then, we added around 20 more engineers in the UK to support Midas and the Music Group and over 30 more are planned.
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i wouldn't expect the rest of the console industry to fold up camp just yet. Not to veer off topic, i think even a digital console with a hundred linux processors is just the another evolutionary step along the same path. IMO it's time for paradigm shift wrt consoles, but that discussion is not for here and now.

Since the Midas acquisition we opened two research centers in the UK as well as in China where the focus is not product development but true technology research. We already achieved a technology breakthrough by successfully integrating a switch mode power supply with an amplifier to combine both into a single stage. A patent has been applied for and hence we can talk about it now.
We are convinced that we will be able to design and produce power amplifiers at a staggering 94% overall efficiency all in line with the approach of saving energy and reducing carbon footprint.
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We have seen dramatic improvements in amplifier efficiency over the last several decades. At 94% for amps it may be time to begin looking at loudspeaker efficiency?

While we will always remain true to the principle of offering more for less, our product focus has shifted considerably over the past few years. Employing over 250 engineers worldwide, we now have the ability to design cutting-edge products that lead the industry, not merely follow. Our new Eurocom series garnered 17 patent applications and resulted in the most energy-efficient line of products in the industry.
The new X32 Digital Mixer has already earned the praise of users and reviewers alike as it puts a $20,000 console in users’ hands for less than $3,000.

And this is truly exciting.
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I appreciate your willingness to adress this touchy subject. Winners get to write their history and so far you have won most of your IP lawsuits.

Here's hoping you never get sued again.... but I know how it goes in those trenches.


JR
 
I appreciate the candid responses. I would like to suggest that the X32 would be a good candidate for a road test, if one could be made available to the community through Bennett.
 
Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Dear Uli,

First, I must say that I sincerely respect your willingness to come onto this forum and personally answer questions in such a candid manner.

One hot spot I have often thought about is environmental standards for manufacturing and/or the potential lack thereof. Though I am not an expert in environmental law and economics, I have perceived that one reason for moving operations to places like China is a lower standard of environmental law, and thus, one less area of expense during manufacturing. How involved is your company in reducing your environmental impact? What yardsticks are you comparing your efforts to?

Best,

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

Dear Jordan,

thank you for your comment.

None of our products are designed with a short lifespan in mind as this would not be sensible from a commercial point of view. The cost associated with development, tooling, certification, marketing etc. is substantial and hence why replacing a product if it is doing well? On the contrary, many of our products have been selling for up to ten years and more as you can easily verify.

However every product has a lifespan as technology advances and customers demand better features.

I can only imagine that you have been buying a product at the end of its lifecycle. However, in order to accurately answer your question, I would need to know the exact model names and codes.

I can assure you that we fully support all our products and certainly way beyond their active lifecycle.
 
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Re: Uli Behringer of The Music Group Q&A

Rafi Singer said:
Dear Uli,

First, I must say that I sincerely respect your willingness to come onto this forum and personally answer questions in such a candid manner.

One hot spot I have often thought about is environmental standards for manufacturing and/or the potential lack thereof. Though I am not an expert in environmental law and economics, I have perceived that one reason for moving operations to places like China is a lower standard of environmental law, and thus, one less area of expense during manufacturing. How involved is your company in reducing your environmental impact? What yardsticks are you comparing your efforts to?

Best,

Rafi Singer
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