On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 07:24:33PM +0200, Arnold Krille wrote:
On Monday 14 June 2010 18:37:40 Jonathan Gazeley
wrote:
Behringer not highly thought of, then?
I first bought their mics because they were cheap and I was a student. I
was impressed, and kept going back and I've never failed to be impressed.
Behringer might have one or two products that are good and kind of an industry
standard. Other then that you get what you pay for. And not only their price
is cheap... Most of their products are just copies of good devices which they
'improved' by crippling usage and audio properties.
That's a fairly accurate description. A good example is the
ADA8000 8-ch AD/DA with mic preamps. Behringer is often said
to be noisy (not without reason). But at _full gain_ the ADA8000
has a _very_ good noise figure, better than some more expensive
products. Problem is that as soon as you turn the gain down
this is completely lost - a result of the way the gain control
circuit works. It would have been fairly simple to improve on
this without extra cost. Also, the gain controls have mechanical
detents, and the first click below max can be anything between
-3 and -12 dB. The line input is just an attenuator feeding the
mic inputs, so you get the same problems there.
I converted two of them to fixed gain (for multichannel sonar
use) by physically removing the gain pots and replacing them
with two fixed resistors, giving exactly -6dB below max gain.
They perform well like that.
Unless you start to measure mains harmonics, which increase
dramatically going from ch 1 to ch 8 (to the right, were the
power supply is).
The power supplies are another story, I've seen some of them
produce smoke, and unless you provide ample space for passive
cooling they will burn out.
Ciao,
--
FA
O tu, che porte, correndo si ?
E guerra e morte !