Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 28, 2024, 08:00:41 PM

Login with username, password and session length

We need to talk about Behringer...

Started by ArtParrott, November 26, 2019, 11:49:30 AM

Previous topic - Next topic
I used a TB-303 a lot back when you could get them for £100 second hand and they're great fun, people with no interest in synths/samplers/studios world sit there for hours twisting the pots.

The Behringer TD-3 looks really good, I don't notice any difference in the sound - even if there is a slight difference then so what? Also having onboard distortion makes it 50% better than a standard 303 and for £130 that's crazy.

NoSleep

Quote from: Better Midlands on April 24, 2020, 12:21:38 PM
I used a TB-303 a lot back when you could get them for £100 second hand...

I bought one for £65 about 6 months before acid house showed the world what they were for. A cheap and cheesy bass synth/sequencer that suddenly became the essential sound.

grainger

Behringer's synth clones are largely excellent. However, it's worth having a read about the Behringer "cork sniffer" debacle.

Captain Z

I was just thinking about these again yesterday. I would really like to start getting into analogue kit, but I already make good use of the Audiorealism Bass Line 2 softsynth and I'm not really sure the results would be different enough to justify the cost.

popcorn

Quote from: grainger on April 24, 2020, 12:34:03 PM
Behringer's synth clones are largely excellent. However, it's worth having a read about the Behringer "cork sniffer" debacle.

Yes they are a fucking bizarre company.

popcorn

Quote from: Captain Z on April 24, 2020, 12:39:00 PM
I was just thinking about these again yesterday. I would really like to start getting into analogue kit, but I already make good use of the Audiorealism Bass Line 2 softsynth and I'm not really sure the results would be different enough to justify the cost.

I think at this point there's no realistic difference in audio between hardware and software. All that changes is your means of interaction, but that is profound. Just doing things on physical objects changes what you come up with. It's quantum.

ArtParrott

This video for a Korg Mono/Poly clone popped up on my YouTube earlier, it sounds great...

https://youtu.be/zoohp8UrxcE

Rich Uncle Skeleton

Bloody hell! Borrowed a mates mono poly for a few months a decade ago and I still miss it.

NoSleep

One of these on its way to my address tomorrow, £263 inclusive:


momatt

Nice, I'd love one of these.  Hope it sounds as good as it's predecessor.

Abnormal Palm

I have very fond memories of the chunky little Behringer mixer I lugged around central China DJing off two bootleg iPods way back when. Just reading the name Behringer gave me a Proustian rush, unfurling two copies of Moodymann's I Can't Kick This Feeling When It Hits for about twenty minutes, big French house low-pass breakdown on the filters. Haha. What a nob. Great times.

My old band used to use a spare Behringer amp in a practice room rather than lug a Fender Twin in. It had a sort of charm in that it sounded absolutely awful and was unreliable. But it was always there. We nicknamed it Johnny Behringer. The trick was to run an amp sim pedal in front of it, and to only use it for practice, never live.

Are their guitar amps still awful, or are they stealing circuits from better manufacturers these days?

the

I kind of wish the 808's ticky little hi-hats and snares would fuck off forever. Or maybe just for about 40 years or so. The sound felt rinsed about 10 years ago, been truly fucked to death now.

NoSleep

Quote from: drummersaredeaf on May 19, 2020, 11:29:24 AM
My old band used to use a spare Behringer amp in a practice room rather than lug a Fender Twin in. It had a sort of charm in that it sounded absolutely awful and was unreliable. But it was always there. We nicknamed it Johnny Behringer. The trick was to run an amp sim pedal in front of it, and to only use it for practice, never live.

Are their guitar amps still awful, or are they stealing circuits from better manufacturers these days?

I used to bump into Behringer rack effects in some of the studios I worked in back in the early 90's and they always sounded cheap (which they were) and plastic; never quite up to the job and I'd prefer not to use them at all rather than do the job half heartedly. But they've moved on from those days. I found this video where the boss of JHS Pedals compares a bunch of Behringer guitar pedals with the vintage pedals they're emulating, which is interesting. Early in the video he explains that Behringer now manufacture all their own parts and supply circuits to other manufacturers (including JHS Pedals) and are massive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApJZa8yCMCQ

buzby

Quote from: NoSleep on May 19, 2020, 12:03:30 PM
Early in the video he explains that Behringer now manufacture all their own parts and supply circuits to other manufacturers (including JHS Pedals) and are massive.
As I mentioned on the previous page, Behringer bought the Chinese IC cloning and fab company who were recreating the out-of-production transistors and chips for companies who were making the modern recreations, so they have no other option but to buy from them. That Behringer then went and made clones of the same pedals using those same components to undercut their existing customers tells you a lot about Ulli's ethics and business practices.

Quote from: NoSleep on May 19, 2020, 12:03:30 PM
I used to bump into Behringer rack effects in some of the studios I worked in back in the early 90's and they always sounded cheap (which they were) and plastic; never quite up to the job and I'd prefer not to use them at all rather than do the job half heartedly. But they've moved on from those days. I found this video where the boss of JHS Pedals compares a bunch of Behringer guitar pedals with the vintage pedals they're emulating, which is interesting. Early in the video he explains that Behringer now manufacture all their own parts and supply circuits to other manufacturers (including JHS Pedals) and are massive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApJZa8yCMCQ

I think I've seen that video or similar before. I was aware some of their pedals were meant to be decent and probably suffered from the reverse snobbery thing. I was of the understanding they were perhaps like Danelectro - some great value pedals, but not necessarily best build quality

I realise we named Johnny different to how everyone else says it - Johnny Be-ringer. Hard G.

Here's the actual Johnny in action  - https://soundcloud.com/belimawr/fixed-penalty-charge#t=1:51

Doing a bit of googling it seems to be a GMX 212. Lots of things on it didn't work, and you had to find the one workable sound on there and just go with it. The knob that seemed to link to FX was completely redundant as far as I recall.

In defence of Johnny - any crackling on that little recording was the guitar, not the amp. And my back is thankful of Johnny's existence.

NoSleep

Quote from: NoSleep on May 19, 2020, 07:50:54 AM
One of these on its way to my address tomorrow, £263 inclusive:



This arrived yesterday, and it's pretty decent; apart from one fairly crucial bug; the bass drum is not monophonic. If you open out the decay to get those big huge hiphop booms the bass drum overlaps the following one if they are close to one another. What this means, because the 808 bass drum sound is such a simple waveform, is that you can hear either a noticeable increase or decrease in the volume of the following bass drum as it either accumulates or cancels out with the preceding one. It's dependent on tuning and tempo.

On the original 808 the bass drum was monophonic so this could never happen. For some reason they have opted for the bass drum channel to be operated polyphonically. I've requested a firmware upgrade to address this but don't know if this is possible to remedy. It's possible to avoid the problem but that's no fun, is it?

Here's a couple of audio examples, one where the 2nd bass drum goes up in volume and another where it goes down in volume. I played just two bass drums 1/16th note apart and the tuning is the same on both. The only difference between the first and second example is that one is played at 86 bpm and the other is 88 bpm. Images for each included, too, making it clear what's going on.

86 BPM



88 BPM




NoSleep

Quote from: the on May 19, 2020, 11:43:30 AM
I kind of wish the 808's ticky little hi-hats and snares would fuck off forever. Or maybe just for about 40 years or so. The sound felt rinsed about 10 years ago, been truly fucked to death now.

They both have scope to sound much chunkier on the RD-8 , whilst retain the option to get the more authentic chiffiness of the originals. I'm particularly loving the new incarnation of the hi-hat. Aside from the polyphonic issue the bass drum is more versatile too.

popcorn

That polyphonic bass drum thing is really surprising and annoying.

the

Re. my complaining about the 808, was more about its 21st Century voguish ubiquity than anything. You feel like slapping people and pointing out that there are other drum machines.

Quote from: NoSleep on May 21, 2020, 09:53:33 AMThis arrived yesterday, and it's pretty decent; apart from one fairly crucial bug; the bass drum is not monophonic.

Fuck me, that's a boo-boo.

If you open the decay on an OH and put a CH after it, does it choke the open hat or does the same bug happen?

buzby

#50
Quote from: NoSleep on May 21, 2020, 09:53:33 AM
This arrived yesterday, and it's pretty decent; apart from one fairly crucial bug; the bass drum is not monophonic. If you open out the decay to get those big huge hiphop booms the bass drum overlaps the following one if they are close to one another. What this means, because the 808 bass drum sound is such a simple waveform, is that you can hear either a noticeable increase or decrease in the volume of the following bass drum as it either accumulates or cancels out with the preceding one. It's dependent on tuning and tempo.

On the original 808 the bass drum was monophonic so this could never happen. For some reason they have opted for the bass drum channel to be operated polyphonically. I've requested a firmware upgrade to address this but don't know if this is possible to remedy. It's possible to avoid the problem but that's no fun, is it?

Here's a couple of audio examples, one where the 2nd bass drum goes up in volume and another where it goes down in volume. I played just two bass drums 1/16th note apart and the tuning is the same on both. The only difference between the first and second example is that one is played at 86 bpm and the other is 88 bpm. Images for each included, too, making it clear what's going on.
The RD8 copied the 808 bass drum circuit - it's not polyphonic, there's only one oscillator. This inconsistency does appear on original 808s when long decays are used on the bass drum. It does seme to affect some more than others though, and seems to be due to component tolerances in the decay portion of the envelope circuit - some had longer maximum decay times than others, so you would run into this 'overlap bounce' amplitude cancellation/addition when the oscillator circuit was re-excited before the decay had finished. It's discussed at length here:
https://www.gearslutz.com/board/electronic-music-instruments-and-electronic-music-production/585303-inconsistant-bass-drum-tr-808-a.html
Some people prefer that inconsistency, and have modded their 808s to extend the decay time even more.

It seems that Behinger may have gone more down that route, though last September in the RD8 thread on there people were complaining that it didn't do it so either the RD8 suffers from tolerance issues from machine to machine like the original did and some are worse than others, or Behringer have since changed the value of the decay resistor so that it is more likely to do it.

It's worth reading that thread starting from last September when the first units shipped - there have been plenty of other actual firmware bugs discovered, which haven't been fixed yet -  sync issues when running as MIDI clock slave device from a sequencer (which indicates it's copied off the Yocto, as that has the same problem), sounds triggering on MIDI notes with the volume set to 0, trigger output pulse is too low and short (5V 1ms vs 15V 20ms for a real 808), meaning it has to go though a trigger interface to trigger other analogue gear, timing issues when changing between patterns that have different time signatures etc.

Apparently R322 on the RD8 PCB is the one that controls the decay, if you fancy having a poke around.

NoSleep

Thanks for the explanation. I must have been lucky when I've used real 808s before now and just missed this peculiarity (or maybe the models I used weren't so badly affected; I liked this seemingly normal functioning). Ah well, it's authentically fucked.

the

Quote from: buzby on May 21, 2020, 11:23:20 AMSome people prefer that inconsistency, and have modded their 808s to extend the decay time even more.

Can't really work out why would people would like having an unpredictable amount of pressure on any given bass drum hit. Could be maddening in a recording situation.

NoSleep

Yup; I liked the lack of this "feature" on the 808s I've played with. Made it worth not being lazy and using samples.

the


NoSleep

I didn't have to pay for the 808, just had to dust it off and dig out the KMS-30 to sync Roland sync to MIDI.

buzby

Quote from: the on May 21, 2020, 12:07:18 PM
Can't really work out why would people would like having an unpredictable amount of pressure on any given bass drum hit. Could be maddening in a recording situation.
It's the difference between a drum machine that uses anlaogue oscillators as a sound source and one that plays back samples. You are never going to get two triggered sounds exactly alike in the analogue case. The effect was apparently popular in old-school electro and rap, but not for house, where it was mostly sampled drum hits anyway. It's more like having a real drummer I suppose, where you will never get two hits that are exactly the same.

There's an even more in-depth description of the 808 bass drum circuit and why this happens written by Robin Whittle of Real World Interfaces (the creator of the DevilFish mod for the 303) on the Analogue Heaven forums.

NoSleep

It only happens when two or more bass drums with long decay overlap, though. And as that Gearslutz thread eventually explains, many 808s didn't do this and the ones that did do it could be repaired. Analog isn't meant to be that inconsistent (otherwise these sounds would not be regarded as classic).

Sebastian Cobb

Quote from: buzby on May 21, 2020, 02:25:21 PM
It's the difference between a drum machine that uses anlaogue oscillators as a sound source and one that plays back samples. You are never going to get two triggered sounds exactly alike in the analogue case. The effect was apparently popular in old-school electro and rap, but not for house, where it was mostly sampled drum hits anyway. It's more like having a real drummer I suppose, where you will never get two hits that are exactly the same.


Just out of curiosity, did romplers like the MC-303 honour this quirk (for instance, blending samples) or just ignore it?

the

Quote from: Sebastian Cobb on May 21, 2020, 07:09:33 PMJust out of curiosity, did romplers like the MC-303 honour this quirk (for instance, blending samples) or just ignore it?

Massively doubt it. The MC-303 wasn't designed as an authentic recreation of anything, it was a 'groovebox' with some classic/in-vogue sounds in it, real-time control and a sequencer. A new product that was meant to evoke the spirit of the old analogue modules, but little in the way of being an authentic copy of anything.