The Behringer era

The Lounge General Discussion
#1009

Well it isn’t because people don’t like affordable gear, and it isn’t because people don’t like clones.

A lot of Behringer fans seem content to make assumptions that people who don’t like Behringer must be collectors somehow worried that their original vintage synth collection will be worth less because of Behringer. A pretty flawed conclusion to draw, if even a tiny bit of logical thought is applied.

No, Behringer has a long track record of not playing fairly, of being purely about driving prices down no matter the consequences: intellectual property, environmental, workers conditions, litigation against critics, the list goes on, and if you were remotely interested you could look into all of this for yourself. But you are not, and that is fine, in a free market we all get to choose where we spend our money, and we all get to say what we think.

I have no idea what you do for a living, but imagine a large corporation decided that the money you earned was too high, so through aggressive tactics put you out of a job by taking over the industry, would you be fine with that? I’m guessing not.

A lot of people demonise capitalism, but I don’t, however for capitalism to work better for everyone certain regulations and fair play by companies has to be adhered to, I think that not only does this drive innovation and create opportunities, it can also benefit everyone. By contrast a race to the bottom inevitably does not end up benefiting anyone over the longer term, only an arrogant egomaniac would believe that they could thrive under such a model, I guess time will tell if I am correct or not.

And just to be clear, I understand that you like cheap synths, but I don’t understand why you feel the need to defend Behringer, they don’t need you to, they have an army of youtube shills in their pocket making video promotions for them, money talk$.

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#1010

Which were designed by others :face_with_hand_over_mouth:

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#1011

40 years ago. They are not the first company to use these old designs, but they are the first to sell them at these prices. Not to mention, they did add stuff to all clones - more to some and less to others.

#1012

I don’t think there is actual evidence of this happening. Just rumors, many started by the large group of haters, competitors etc.

I just think they are treated unfairly by the hater mob. I think companies that keep prices high artificially by selling overpriced stuff are more evil than Behringer.

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#1013

I don’t think that many synth companies do this though, do they?

#1014

There is plenty of evidence though, probably the most notable being the widow of Doug Curtis, I’d hardly call her a hater or competitor wanting to protect her late husband’s life’s work from simply being stolen.

To give you a quick rundown the Curtis chips in many classic synths were available to buy from Curtis, but Behringer just decided rather than pay for them they would simply reverse engineer them.

Kind of like a record label just copying your demo rather than paying you any royalties for your original work. No?

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#1015

Actually, it’s not the same. Patents for Curtis chips have expired so anyone is allowed to make them. It’s the way the law works.

Also, DSI and Elektron are known to use Behringer (Coolaudio) chips so I guess they are evil too then?

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#1016

It’s not “artificial” because they pay for the RnD, design and fair labor. B skips on all of those.

#1017

I hope they do a…Buchla

Wait I’m not doing this right :man_facepalming:

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#1018

I might buy a Bynthi…used :wink:

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#1019

TBH I’d prefer that they did not, and I’d happily pay a little more for them not to, but I can’t control that, I can however choose not to buy Behringer synths, and you can choose to buy them if you want to.

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#1020

Interesting debate! Just wondering about the distribution side. Behringer’s success and large distributors such as Thomann go together. If there are true Walmarts in the musical instrument/device industry, I think they are on the distribution side. Their power over smaller retailers (and also over gear producers) is huge. So, criticizing B while happily ordering from T is inconsistent.

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#1021

Straw man. Can we stay on topic? Open a new thread about it if you want.

#1022

There’s this though: https://www.thephone.coop/personal/phones/fairphone3/

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#1023

The thread is on the “Behringer era”, I think it is important not just to focus on B, but also on the conditions that enable them to do what they do…

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#1024

What they’re accused of is to ride on other brand’s popularity by stealing name, design, and reverse engineering anything they can. They’ve lost lawsuits for that. And the reason they keep doing it is because the law isn’t perfect, the smaller manufacturers don’t have the ressources to file a lawsuit against Behringer and can’t risk being buried under legal fees. (which they tried to do to Sequential while at the same time cloning some of their synth).

The ones that keep being targeted by Behringer are the only ones who successfully protected their brand identity (a.k.a Roland/Boss).

Behringer’s official defense is “other’s did it so it’s ok” or when facing criticism “the law doesn’t prevent it so we’re gonna do it”, so what you’re saying isn’t exactly new.

It’s not because a lot of people are saying the same thing that it is necessarily unfair, or unfounded. They’re not even judging Behringer on a higher standard than other companies, it’s just that Behringer has a pretty damning track record and keeps on relying on the same tricks, they just shifted to a new market and communication.

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#1025

How do you know it is artificially overpriced? Pure assumption. Not every company has factory cities and the human resources like Bith Lord Uli.

#1026

Awesome! I want the phone only tho :frowning:

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#1027

It’s not when you have to pay for the effort to develop original ideas and fairly to make it.

I have no dog in the vintage fight. But when you rip off current products made by people with more creative integrity in their little toe…foh.

#1028

One good example is a Moog Model D reissue. There is no way 4000 is a fair price for that. Without patent laws and Behringer, that would still be what you need to pay for it.