Jun 19, 2007 04:14 pm it's a shame walmart dosn't sell their stuff.
Naughty Uli Behringer
Posted on Jun 19, 2007 04:04 pm
pjk
Prince CZAR-ming
Member Since: Apr 08, 2004
He's been naughty again:
www.podcastingnews.com/ne...inger_Fine.html
Here's a legal complaint, or similar:
hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_p...FCC-06-13A1.pdf
Seems he's not been testing his devices, but thumbing his nose, and selling them anyways.
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Jun 19, 2007 04:14 pm it's a shame walmart dosn't sell their stuff.
Jun 19, 2007 04:16 pm Actually, I'm surprised wally-world doesn't sell their stuff.
Seems like a match made in heaven =).
Jun 19, 2007 04:26 pm Ummm, hardly news... it's over a year old now... more like a year and a half.
Jun 19, 2007 04:43 pm oop, i guess so.
sorry bout that =/
Jun 19, 2007 04:54 pm Hang on though.... did some digging and there was some sort of confirmation done of sorts recently. I think it was along the lines of making the amount of fine "stick".
Apparently it may be a few years yet before an outcome.
BTW -lots of peeps complain about Behringer copying gear but this is about the FFC vs Behringer and not about copying gear. (Not saying that pjk was suggesting that).
Jun 19, 2007 04:57 pm I take generic prescription drugs when they are available, which are just copies, but still do the job.
Jun 19, 2007 04:59 pm That's funny BH - I used to call them the FFC when I was in radio. I'll let you guess what the acronym stood for.
Jun 19, 2007 05:04 pm i hate generic cereal...it's never the right texture.
Jun 19, 2007 05:16 pm Yeah, this could be about any company, it's just that Uli seems to get a lion's share of bad press.
I'd have thought it prudent if Yamaha had made this story instead of UB.
I just don't care for the 'heck with US laws, sell them anyways' mentality. Part of our society is to follow our established laws, and he didn't, and still didn't even after he knew he was in trouble.
I'm not perfect, but some of his choices rub me the wrong way, so I choose to buy something different.
Course, that's just my .02$us
Jun 19, 2007 05:24 pm Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending Behringer. On the other hand I would be a bit of a hypocrit since I do use some of their gear.
Behringer is certainly not the only one to copy gear though. One trip to the NAMM show will show you just how much copying is going on out there.
Jun 19, 2007 05:28 pm the last time i went to NAMM, i saw this 'just intonation' guitar that had a scalloped fingerboard, and no frets...and every string's "fret" was individual....when you bend the notes, it sucks though...strings scraping across wood just dosn't work....but it did play nice....OooOoo and Waves had their own room! schwweet! my dad bought the whole Peace Drums (CA) booth (well net 30 terms)...nut
Jun 19, 2007 05:31 pm Come to think of it, I've been wondering why my TV switches to channel 37 whenever I turn on my UB802...
Jun 19, 2007 05:40 pm Yeah that's kind of OFN. But this is just the type of thing I cite when I tell people how much I dislike Behringer.
Jun 20, 2007 09:24 am I can see why people dislike the practice. But everybody does it (which does not make it right), once there is a good technical breakthrough, everybody uses it at some point. Behringer does fill a market space well though. When somebody makes a good breakthrough, Berry takes the concept and does their own bits of research to make it a little less expensive sacrificing as little as they can and sells they stuff far cheaper...it's legitimate in my book. In many cases though, they could at least have the common f-in sense to make it at least look a little bit different.
Jun 20, 2007 09:55 am yeah, i don't knock Uli for working the capitalist angle. he makes product that more people can afford.
The quality may suffer, but it's a trade off. If people can get into recording, with UB stuff, then so be it.
It's not like there's no choice.
Jun 20, 2007 10:56 pm Yep, not like I would trade off my desk for a Mackie or anything. Behringer makes some great stuff. But as well some junk, but everyone make sjunk of one kind or another. The price of the Berry allows me to have other goodies which are more needed then some pristine over priced copy of something else, which includes Mackie gear. I just bought a Mackie Big Knob so I'm not prejiduced against Mackie by any means. They happened to have the best bang for the buck on that type of gear. My Berry desk on the other hand is something that works for me here. I"m not in need of some warm pre's built into my board, I'll take care of that by other means. I just need a good straight uncolored sound getting into the interface and the Berry does just that, no extra bells and whisltes.
Ya, UB has gotten in hot water and dealt with it. But name one company out there that hasn't swiped an idea from the competition and tried to do it better and cheaper. Or the ones that say they are better and try to charge more for some magic little bit of electronics they supposedly have. It is all a gimick so why pay a huge price for it.
Take mic's these days. I can honestly say I have heard some very cheap mic's that sound very near to some extremely expensive mic's. How do they do it, by finding a way to do it differently and more efficiently the other guy.
And ya, generic drugs rock, saves me a ton of money every year.
Jun 23, 2007 06:43 am www.gearslutz.com/board/l...inger-evil.html
thought it was an interesting read relative to the subject...
Jun 23, 2007 01:00 pm Yeah, every company takes inspiration and ideas from others. I'm sure that several products that I proudly own around the house are born of this method. So I can't stand on much of a high horse when it comes to these things.
But the majority of Behringer's product line is blatantly reverse-engineered from other companies' ideas. That's what bugs me. I mean, they obviously make their living off of stealing other peoples' ideas. And they're not even trying to be sneaky about it. I think that their line of stomp boxes drives that point home.
Any one of their missteps might not be enough to hang a company by. But when you put them all together and realize that they're all done by the same company, you get a pretty scuzzy picture of the way they do business.
Jun 23, 2007 01:08 pm Stealing ideas is certainly not something Behringer invented. If you look around you, just about everything you own was invented by someone other than the manufacturer.
What exactly did Behringer "steal", anyway? If it's patent infringement of some kind, then they should be taken to court for it. If not, it's free enterprise.
Jun 23, 2007 01:43 pm Hell, HRC is an idea I stole from homerecording.com cuz he was/is totally wasting a great idea.
...does that make me suck?
...don't answer that...
Jun 23, 2007 03:03 pm Yeah but you didn't go copy and paste his website into your domain and rename it HRC. You independantly developed your own vision with your own research and development. And to a good end, I might add. (read: you dont suck!)
And Herb, they have been taken to court over patent infringement by at least 2 major companies, and maybe others that I don't know about. It was their blatant rip off of Roland/Boss' stomp boxes that they had to redesign at the last minute because they were identical, down to the colors of the paint and font of the print on the pedals. Same with their obvious rip off of Mackie's mixers, although I don't know exactly which ones they ripped.
Jun 23, 2007 06:04 pm I see your point, stealing an exact product and stealing a concept are two pretty different things.
Jun 23, 2007 06:32 pm I think the biggest problem is that they are trying to confuse the consumer. I'm not sure why they wouldn't just change the form factor and colors.
One think I don't quite understand is that people say that behringer stuff sounds crappy. How can it sound crappy if it is a direct copy?
Jun 23, 2007 06:38 pm I don't think it's all direct copies, a lot of their stuff I believe, steals ideas, Behringer finds out which parts they can change to cheaper versions and such...which is how they meet the better price points.
Jun 25, 2007 10:56 pm I'll just jump in to say I do agree that Berry did indeed make a major f-up with the Boss pedal copies, that is not even debatable. But the simple fact is that even Mackie the beast of small format mixers for years copied a lot of their early inards from a few other places, sound craft is one and Allen and Heath is another. That was however the early days. Go back even further to look into the Tapco line of mixer's, which was indeed our little buddy Greg Mackie. He blatantly ripped off a small company making small format multi-channel mixers right down to the exact knobs. No one ever jumped on his back about it then. It is simply today has a huge market and way too many companies filling in the entire spectrum with copies of someone else's original ideas, only cheaper or better. Take my Mackie Big Knob I just purchased. In doing some research to find out how to bypass an amp circuit he has in there which seems to color things a bit I found some interesting info. The main portions are more then similar to a much more expensive piece of gear the does the exact same thing. And I do mean exact! They simply added in this stinking amp circuit that I now want to rid the box of.
Competition is good for the most part. Mackie has had to drop some prices on gear which I feel is way over priced for what it really is. And don't think for a minute that he didn't outsource some of the stuff to an offshore factory. Which means cheaper parts and cheaper labor. Nothing that Uli isn't already doing to compete. So it goes full circle really.
Jun 25, 2007 11:42 pm Quote:
How can it sound crappy if it is a direct copy?
They do that by using the same component value, like a 100k resistor, but they find the absolute cheapest parts they can find.
Or caps, good audio caps can be .10$ or 2.00$, depending on make. But, you can put in ceramic disk caps for .005$ each, because ceramic disk caps are very cheap, but not great for audio. This is places that the bottom line can be cut.
Pots are another quality dive, as is gauge and quality of wire, and chips / opamps / fets, etc.
Jun 26, 2007 12:15 am good pot makes good music...er pots.
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