Another perspective would be that Behringer entices people to get into hardware in the first place. Once you own a cheap B synth, gear lust sets in and you become easy prey for the vendors of higher-priced toys…
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Trump Synths
You know what they say about assuming things.
I don’t hate Behringer. I was simply asking for something more credible than Uli’s hyperbolic statement about the cost of the Minimoog.
As we have already established, the retail price of a synth is based on many factors beyond just the cost of the components. In addition to the cost of sales and profit for the manufacturer, distributors, retailers and the tax man make up a significant chunk of the retail price.
Ultimately if a company decides there is a market for a $4K synth and customers are prepared to pay for it, that is entirely their business.
For what it’s worth, I don’t own any Moogs and I’m definitely not against affordable music gear or competition. Music equipment was not accessible to me until the age of 40 when my family very kindly chipped in towards a copy of Ableton Live. Since then, the closest I’ve got to a $4K synth is my modular and it’s taken several years to fill a modest 6u case.
My issue with Behringer is what I consider to be a distinct lack of ethics. I just don’t believe that the ends justify the means. I’m not sorry for continuing a healthy, respectful debate as I think it is important to call out this kind of toxic behaviour.
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Are you sure? Sorry for the mistake. For someone who doesn’t hate Behringer you sure seem like it a lot. And there are a lot of haters.
To prevent companies getting too greedy, we have laws that make it possible for companies to compete. This is why a company asking 4000 for a synth that costs 200 to make will ultimately get a competitor that sells similar product for less.
As you probably know, eurorack is an expensive hobby and thus only accessible to people with money to spare.
Luckily many modules are based on decades old designs and open source. Since Behringer is entering the eurorack market, this means that soon it could be possible to get a similar modular as yours for fraction of the price. Isn’t this a good thing?
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The behringer bashing on ethics is in itself a strange thing. There simply are laws and they move within those. If one doesn’t like that, one can vote for a party that wants to mitigate those.
What behringer does is what has been going on for many decades in the guitar industry (amongst majy other industries). It’s an important part of pushing for innovation. It’s nothing new but somehow in the world of synthesizers this discussion keeps coming back as if it’s a special industry. It’s really not 
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And now you can to consider it as any other industry and start mesuring the impact of cheap mass production on societies, environnement etc…Cool ! We’re going forward !
That’s another discussion though and certainly doesn’t apply to just behringer but our entire way of living. Which is a discussion about politics, nature and our entire society. Not synthesizers.
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Most of this discussion is about price ! Even if some use the word ethic…In the end we are talking about prices, manufacturing costs and patend…
Which are, like I said above,like any other industry out there…
So we can talk about any industrial product here and get to the same conclusion… Synthesizers,cars,shampoos…
Whatever…
Scales are differents, logical processes are the same…
Having such a debate without considering its impact on the global system and only thru “synth nerds ethic” is a huge mistake I think…
Company like Behringer are a symptom of what plagues the world today, the fact that they sell 200$ synths whereas Moog sells exactly the same for 4000$ is the grain of salt hiding the tree hiding the forest hiding the mountain, all of this on the tip of an iceberg…
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…And we may come back to bashing the poors, as @Grumo said above.
You’all are talking about capitalism, not about cheap mass production or synth industry or Behringer or whatever.
I find the question of ethic itself quite strange, there’s no ethic involved! Capitalism has no eyes to see the pain and destruction he’s inflicting. And so there’s no such thing as ethical capitalism.
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Can’t agree with that…Cheap mass products especially, are build on the exploitation of “the poors”… Making choices, getting less, leaves more for those who have nothing…Those who have too much ( and that means even the one that are considered poors in western society, yes even them ) will need to share their part whith the ones who have nothing…And that will probably come faster than the majority hope/expect…( Some would say believe…)
Some will consider this out of topic, I consider this perfectly on point !
I’m not sure I can continue this discussion in English since I probably don’t get all the subtilities of what everyone says and I don’t know if I can express enough nuance in what I mean to be half relevant…
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I think some of us in this thread are just a bit tired about Behringer being singled out in this context - not questioning or taking side in terms of capitalism overall.
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Same here, I’d rather have this conversation in french, that’s why I’m not posting so much on a topic that really drives me.
So we kinda agree!
It’s not the point you’re making a fancy yatch or a cheap 303 clone, the production of good is based on the exploitation of the others anyway.
So if you (anybody) are focusing only on the cheap products, you can easily slide to bashing the poor consumers, who have bad behavior buy buying cheap products made by Chinese in bad conditions and everything… and if you’re wealthy, you’ll just consume fine, by buying “ethical” products and so on… And I think that’s not right.
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I understand, please tell me who else is copying hardware synths, their designs and register their names while claiming originality?
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Are we bashing because they’re leading this disruption or are we bashing only hardware synth production here? We’re disregarding their clones of Pultec, Mackie, Genelec, etc? If so, without being a complete hardware synth nerd, I would probably say that from the top of my head ARP, Arturia, SE Electronics would at least qualify there, not entirely sure about SE, though (you may know that better than me and I apologize if I’m wrong there).
Sure it does, just that people choose not to look, like for example when wanting to buy cheap synths from Behringer. Without customers this kind of capitalism that you hate cannot thrive.
Yes there is, and consumers can influence it, and demand it, if they really want to.
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You’re not responding to what I wrote.
I’m talking from a Marx/Durkheim/Polanyi/Bourdieu’s point of view. I’m talking about the society as whole, with its hidden rules and logics that goes beyond people, rules that are already here. You answer with talking about individuals.
So from the individuals perspective, you’re right, people can choose not to. But still, the production of goods in the world is based on capitalism. You may fantasize an “ethical” consumer, but yet, this doesn’t change that.
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Yes because we are individuals, we have the means to not support what we don’t like, that is exactly what I meant.
I would not trust or want a government to decide for me, or to remove choice, because that would be like a dictatorship, and all governments all the time are always corrupt, because they are humans, and human greed and power can’t be taken out of the equation, on any level, least of all at the government level as history has and continues to show us.
I don’t think so, that’s the brickwall
What about the condition of the choice? Where is the greed coming from?
I don’t think anybody is greedy. Or I would say, I don’t think it’s relevant at all. The social structure makes positions where greed (if you look it from the ethic perspective) is socially encouraged, where the outcome is better if you’re greedy.
This philosophy does not leave much room to individuals, I agree. That’s the brickwall between (our) two philosophies
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Well in this particular case I see it like this:
Behringer is free to do whatever they want, within the law even if they push to the limit.
People are free to decide to buy or not to buy their products.
you can buy cheap synths with plastic shafts and cheap housing or you can grab a Behringer twice, with absolutely authentic sounds and build structure.
I just love the ability to do so
all the haters realize that most of the big and expensive synths are mostly crap but they’ve paid the highest possible price.
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