Re: X32 discussion
I am also taken aback by some of the expectations from users, too.... someone recently asked, "What do you expect for US$3,000?" It's apparent that some users expect $50,000+ feature sets.
The X32 is a digital mixer, and the really, really important thing about digital mixers is the software bit. Anything done in the digital domain is all software, and all software is free. Ok, it costs man-hours to write the stuff, but there is no cost per each manufactured thing, so it doesn't matter cost-wise if there is useless software in the thing, or stellar software. So the tall foreheads can continue to enhance the X32 with features until they run out of somehard resource like memory or DSP power.
Or compare with Yamaha - there are good reasons the LS9 and M7 lack certain features like input delay, called the PM5D and CL5.
This is, as I don't need to explain to anyone round here, market segmentation. There is no reason at all why the LS9 can't have DCAs, other than it differentiates the LS9 from other more expensive mixers.
Behringer don't have this problem. Next up from the X32 is the Pro series from Midas, and no-one is going to confuse the two brands, leastways for a while yet. So Behringer can continue to incrementally improve the the X32 (and
miX16, and X16r) software creating the features that the users want. Features that Yamaha (for example) deny users for market segmentation reasons.
The problem with that is that it kills the Midas brand. After spending at least $15m on buying and expanding Midas, it's unreasonable to think Uli will kill that golden goose that provided much of the advance pedigree behind the X32 marketing.
Uli will have killed and buried the mid-range products from Yamaha and A&H and all the other "next rung up" companies completely before the X32 represents a threat to Midas and DiGiCo etc.
The Music Group have, as someone has already pointed out hundreds of not thousands of posts ago, the full range of mixers. From low cost analogue, low cost digital, moderately expensive digital, and very expensive digital. Three of the four of that lot can (it appears) be interconnected!!!
How will we know the X32 has won: when A&H discontinue the GL2400s. The GLs is where decent mixing begins, where no feature on the desk sucks. The GL2400-32 is in the same order of price as the X32. The GL was the natural choice once you got past Mackies, Behringers etc. Now there is a new choice. And that, to me, is what "game changer" means. Because the next generation of sound engineers will have learned their trade on X32s, the future of analogue desks is now more certain than ever.
~;-)~:wink: