#448

4.5 years and this topic’s not cloned (sorry I meant closed) yet?

Hopefully not 4 more years more … (No hate, never owned a single B product though)

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#449

You can mute threads you do not want to appear on your feed.

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#450

What’s fascinating about this Behringer discussion is that no one ever gave two shits about Behringer, ie had the moral dilemma regarding using their products, until they started cloning vintage synths and making a few other ‘cool’ products in the last five years or so. They’ve been around since the 90’s and they’ve been pretty much been unchanged since then in terms of quality and ethics. They have been cloning other manufacturers since the start: Mackie, Boss, etc etc etc… Their quality has always been suspect, I used to work at a call center for zZounds about 15 years ago, and people would call in a lot to return defective Behringer stuff. The joke was always that if it didn’t blow up in the first hour you’d be good to go. Lol. I actually still have a Behringer mixer from the late 90’s that still works, so take that for a what it is. When you bought a Behringer product you sorta knew you were getting what you paid for, they were the big precursor to all of those asian knock-off companies that are on Amazon, for example Animoon, etc etc.

What’s changed is that they made a conscious effort to try to improve their image and quality, they did things like purchase Midas, which was a real headscratcher when that happened… But mostly, because of internet forums and the like, they were able to really hone in on niche subgroups, like the synth enthusiasts and start making stuff that made them appear ‘hip’. It’s interesting how anyone who has been around the scene for a while was just able to ‘forget’ that Behringer was pretty much uncool because they made a Mini Moog clone. What I’m trying to say here is that really Behringer has not changed, but people’s perceptions of the company have. My approach towards them is going to remain the same, if there’s something I really need for cheap, or that is just too out of touch to purchase as a vintage version, I’ll buy it, otherwise I’ll support the vendor… ie… Arturia for example. Why would I buy a Behringer version of an Arturia midi controller, it just makes no sense. Another example is pedals, they pretty much cloned the whole Boss pedal line, but everyone knows they are just cheaper, less good versions of those. I needed a really cheap analog delay and bought the Behringer version a few years ago for a use that wasn’t very important, it wasn’t my main delay or even second delay but it did the trick for it’s need. I also support boutique manufacturers as well. I bought tons of pedals from all sorts of small makers. So each purchase has its function.

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#451

I would disagree with this, via search you can find articles / forum posts complaining about the morality of Behringer for 20 years or more, via their copying of Mackie mixers, the Aphex Aural Exciter, Boss pedals, the Ebtech cable tester, etc.

I think it is more a matter of their synthesizer products being introduced to a new and perhaps younger segment of the audio gear market that isn’t familiar with what they have produced before. For example people seemed to be surprised at their copying of the Keystep as some sort of “new low” as if this isn’t the classic Behringer business model - replicate an existing popular product as closely as possible at a lower price point.

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#452

That’s my experience. I think I’ve had one pedal that just never worked in the first place, and the midi controller where the only 3 knobs I’d even assigned all snapped off in my bag on my way to it’s first gig. Everything else has survived decades of no input mixing and table-flip live sets as well as could be expected really.

the whole Boss pedal line, but everyone knows they are just cheaper, less good versions of those.

the Super Fuzz actually sounds better than the original by all accounts. (i’ve never used the original, but use the B version in almost every setup, usually in it’s Boost mode tho the fuzz is great too) The only really ‘bad’ behringer pedal I’ve used was the FX600 which I could never tell if I had a defective one or not, it was so weird/wrong sounding. + even then it only died when I did some fairly reckless circuitbending on it

Speaking of which I kind of which they’d stop trying to troll people over midi controllers and just photocopy some more pedals. I mean by now they should have run out of ideas and have to resort to noise scene legends like the DOD Buzz Box and Corrosion

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#453

Yea, unfortunately this isn’t something new, and B has a long history of poking the bear like this. I’m not on the hate train and have owned a decent number of their products… but at least for myself, this behavior really makes me keep their brand at arms distance, even when there is proof that the quality issues have been significantly addressed.

The music tech industry isn’t so large that it can easily just absorb having companies causing drama like this, we’re arguably in another golden age of tech, and it’d be a shame to see this be a factor in another contraction like in the late 80’s and 90’s.

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#454

all i can say about this topic today is that i have (i think) 1 B piece. the sh101 clone (as sh101 is my most used synth). it is not a good clone as clones go. it does work (or it did when i last used it. the second i got it i struggled with how i could cover up the B name. stickers seemed like a good idea. a blue synth with pink stickers. as it sat i felt i needed not to see it. it now literally sits in the like new packaging in a closet. only the death of my sh101 will summon the fake. its a sad backup (at best). frankly i’d probably try and find a superlative sb1 clone if i actually lost my lovely trusted sh101. sorry for aside as this is maybe not on topic. i feel sure i don’t ever want to support this company again.

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#455

I don’t have anything constructive (or destructive) to add to the thread, just a true story:

About a decade and a half ago ago, we were at my friend’s band’s practise room. It contained, among all the other instruments and amplification, an old tube bass amp head (Sound City I think) that the band’s bass player always used in both practise sessions and gigs. Before the session started, someone found a Behringer sticker, and thought it would be super funny to slap it in to the amp to cover the amp maker’s logo.

With the obvious result, that the amplifier, which had been working fine for ages, since last major repair years ago up to that point, actually broke down during the very practise session.

That’s all, folks.

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#456

I thought the whole point was the contrast between “crappy mixer” behringer and their surprisingly high-quality (at least initially) clones of boutique gear at ultra low prices. If you know a bit about how information spreads, ironies/contrasts such as this are often the reason that stories seem memorable and true (look at the large number of urban legends based on this king of contrast). I don’t know if behringer was ever cool, it was just the ultimate capitalist denouement to vintage synth fetishization.

I still find the “ethics” argument to be super tacky. People who should know better are writing critiques of the ethics of copying a synth on computers made from materials manufactured and extracted using slave/child labor, and (irony of ironies) comparing it to their lovingly hand-crafted free-range organic synths filled with PCBs manufactured in China and populated with Behringer-produced ICs. I am not saying it makes what behringer does OK, I’m just saying that of all the things to care about, the ethics or corporations ripping each other’s IP should be much farther down the list than it is for people on synth forums. I think people want to carve out parts of the economy that they can pretend are not effected by the endogenous problems of capitalism. It’s a pretty thin argument, but one that people are emotionally invested in. I get it, I don’t like that I have some culpability in how bad the lives of some people are (and the continuing destruction of the environment). It would be awesome if there were good guys and bad guys and all I had to do was spend the extra 300 dollars for Moog. Unfortunately I find it impossible to ignore the contradictions there, and remain deeply pessimistic. Ultimately I try not to buy behringer products new (caved on the VC-340), but I don’t think that really has any effect. I find all of this interesting from a psychological perspective, but when it comes to capitalism, I view activism as the only useful mechanism for change.

Boutique consumption and the obvious display of that consumption only helps behringer. I think it feeds the fantasy that someone has when buying a moog knockoff to talk about how special and irreplaceable the moog is.

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#458

I agree with your disagreement of my orig statement. This is really what I meant here.

I think in general the last handful of posts here are probably the most rational posts I’ve read on this B subject to be honest. It really runs deeper than than B itself but this current state we are in with consumption and capitalism, the ironies it brings up when we try to make ethical standpoints about our choices. You’d have to live completely off the grid in order to not be a part of the system we are now so embedded in. For me it’s about being knowledgeable of your choices and making the most responsible choice at the moment you are at. Our family uses Amazon, we have a 3 year old and sometimes we just need something, and don’t have the time or energy to be running around in a lockdown to grab stuff. But, when I can, I support local businesses as well. I just believe you have to do the best you can at the time.

Btw, I also have a B SuperFuzz, it sounds great!

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#459

I don’t think that being able to tell the difference from a simulation and an analog clone is snobbery. As far as buying Moog or whatever; of course, it’s better than the alternative, but let’s not pretend it’s “ethical” consumption.

To put it as simply as possible: buying a synth is not the least important ethical decision you will make in your life, but it’s close. Patting yourself on the back for your consumption (which, again almost definitely relies on questionable environmental labor/environmental practices), is, for lack of a better word, stupid.

In fact, I’d say saving up for a mother 32, saving $400 on buying a Crave and a donating that money to a mutal aid fund or AOC, or whatever is probably more ethical than buying a Moog, and it’s probably more ethical than that to donate the full 600 and just take up whistling.

I prefer real political action to virtue signalling through consumption. I feel like if you’re at least honest about your consumerism you can weigh the actual ethical decisions you need to make more reasonably.

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#461

umm… you are really opening a somewhat related but very big can of worms here and I’d really encourage you to think very carefully about what you have said here. poverty pay jobs are not real jobs - there are many many articles discussing how abusive and unfair Amazon’s labor practices are. modern wage slavery doesn’t involve literally pointing a gun at someone forcing them to work, it is done in other ways. oh and yes, it is Bezos who also owns Whole Foods now.

I don’t know about B’s factory conditions specifically so I won’t comment on that, but using Foxconn as some sort of good starting position for making comparisons isn’t such a good one. theres plenty that could be said regarding sketchy labor practices and straight up slavery in China (and keep in mind I’m not saying all companies do this either), the environmental costs, so on, but if we are going to say ‘well, I haven’t heard an expose about employees killing themselves at work, so it can’t be that bad’ as some sort of moral standard we’re starting at such a low point that I don’t see how any sort of productive discussion could be had.

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#462

I’ve heard this mentioned more often, but never understood. What’s democratic about selling replica’s of old synths?

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#464

I hope it is clear that what I wrote was not a defense of Behringer or an attempt to insult people for buying instruments they genuinely want to be made in better conditions. What I was attempting to do was critique the idea that this technique had any real efficacy and advocate for what I believe to be more substantial forms of political intervention. I was not attempting to say we should be cynical, but that we should acknowledge the reality of what capitalist machinofacture looks like in 2020. Too often this gets interpreted as “there are no good choices so do nothing”, which is the reactionary right uses as a cudgel against the left. Instead I think we should be advocating for specific interventions outside of the system of consumption.

I guess the point is that liberal critiques are often framed in this pseudo-christian way where we assume they need to be addressed in terms of individual moral failings. The fact of the matter is Uli is able to do what he does because we have a system of international laws that make the techniques he is using extremely profitable. Pretending that Uli is some outside problem is just a way of ignoring the systemic problems that reward his immoral behavior. If we decided that we wanted to live in an economic system in which the values he is apparently violating were important, he would not be able to do what he does. Moreover, I was trying to draw attention to what I believe are more important issues, that often get papered over by the people who happen to find it vulgar that he is making cheap clones of revered instruments.

To that end, I don’t think the comparison to people opposing Amazon coming to New York (or the city heavily subsidizing their investment) is remotely similar. That was collective political action towards a specific material end and it was successful. That’s basically the opposite of assuming your individual purchasing decisions are going to lead to a friendlier capitalism.

I believe it was Rosa Luxembourg who once said “don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

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#465

I have the capacity to do both and choose to do so.

I think I almost entirely agree with you about about your perspective around systemic problems, but I don’t understand the conclusion. If you want to call attention to especially exploitative product design practices (not to mention labor practices), you do not first need to take down the entire economic system supporting it. linking every small issue to the biggest issue imaginable is more likely to lead to paralysis than revolution.

there are inherent and unavoidable issues that come with the production of physical goods, and this exploitation of the earth is something we are all responsible for. but even within that fact, I can look at this small community of electronic instrument makers and find particular fault in a member of that community, especially when that member’s behavior exploits and endangers the long term stability of that community.

I have many (many) issues with capitalism as a way of ordering the world, but the instrument maker community is a rare example of some positivity. many (not all) of the people in the community are there only because of their passion for the work they do, they regularly explore and introduce new ideas, and they produce tools that help others create art. I don’t think it’s odd that Behringers storming into that instrument space trying to start a race to the bottom causes a strong reaction or that people want to talk about it.

I agree that the work ahead of us is so much more complicated than “don’t buy Behringer”, but a community figuring out how to react to a potentially destabilizing force through discussion seems like a pretty normal and reasonable thing.

I suspect you might be reacting to the larger discussion around “cancelling” rather than what @slowsounds actually said, but nowhere in that response were you somehow disallowed the right to have an opinion.

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#466

Behringer produced tools are used to create art every day. You don’t need an artisan loaf synthesizer to make an art sandwich.

Supermarket bread and artisan bread coexist in the marketplace.

This sort of thinking is part of the demonization of Behringer. He has to be the villain, so that others can be heroes and be painted in idealistic shades, as only caring about their passion and so forth. There seems to be a lack of understanding of what these tools are for, which is making music, and not for sustaining a fantasy of a artisan collective somehow operating outside the normal rules of capitalism. If you want a collective mutual aid society, these sorts of rhetorical social media games will not create one.

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#467

putting an ethics discussion largely aside when I saw the announcement for this my first thought was about why/what the end goal really was for doing such a thing. maybe there was an antagonistic angle to it, but its not like what is basically a keyboard that has a mediocre seq in it is a signature product like the 'Brutes are, which to me would be much more obnoxious or confrontational to clone and probably not much harder. I’d imagine even at their manufacturing scale they don’t make much on that clone, and given their rep and that its not like its a major price bracket jump I think it won’t sell as well compared to a clone of something that is otherwise unavailable or for 2-5x as much. so I think the goal here really would be as @DMR basically said- to try and weasel further into a part of a market where there is a new younger generation of hungry gear buyers/users who may not know their reputation, care, or just straight up think that is how much synthesizer do/should/always have cost because within a few years you’ll have young people who knew nothing about the synth market prior to Berhinger’s arrival, or maybe after a while even that a lot of their products are clones, so its a foot in the door probably more than anything else.

as for the ongoing discussion of democratization… if you want to talk strictly hardware wise and people are interested in genuine democratization and/or actually just meaning affordability - DIY is the real democracy, going back to companies like Serge or Paia, Stanley Lunetta, or the now many small kit/project manufacturers. You can be broke as all hell and still build yourself a fantastic synth (speaking from experience). if you only have a few bucks to spare per month you can break up your purchases of picking up a PCB and panel one month, components the next, building bit by bit. sometimes its nice to have or you need special tools but most things can also be built with cheap components, a $20 iron, and almost zero electronics knowledge provided you are good at following instructions. maybe it isn’t the way everyone wants to do it- thats ok, but its there and nobody needs to wait for a company regardless of their debatable ethics to do it for them. to me that is democratic. I feel like the democratization of gear argument I see from a lot of people is actually ‘X-thing exists, it can theoretically exist cheaper, therefore I have the right to own it’.

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#468

I always felt very awkward seeing how many people perceive capitalism as a mean to establish democracy. Democratization and capitalization are not interchangeable terms: they are two very different concepts.

There is nothing democratic in the business model discussed on this topic: redesigning conceptual meaning of words is a tricky process that serves absolutely no good.

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#469

I can imagine the notion emerges from “voting with your wallet”. In capitalist democratic systems with large amounts of people who feel disenfranchised, it can often feel like your ability to spend money amounts to the most powerful voice you have - especially in the US where we have an, effectively, two party system. There is and isn’t truth there, depending on how you spin the prism.

In one sense, making a consumer product more available is akin to some kind of freedom-enabling. It’s not an idea I’d personally get behind, but I can see it if I spin the prism fast and squint. It’s extremely bound up in a number of complicated ethical and logical quandaries where your perspective on what is “effective politics and citizenship” gets murky very quickly when you try to take it apart, particularly in the inflexible discursive mode we’re living through.

This thread is a testament to that dance.

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#470

My point is that musical instrument construction is not an exception, at all. The bad stuff is just hidden below the surface. The behringer made cool audio chips hiding in nearly all boutique synthesizers including Mannequins are a perfect example of this. Using something where the parts where the parts are made from slave labor is not ethically better than buying something assembled with slave labor. In fact, it is more insidious because it is place in a warm and fuzzy veneer. So no, you can’t meaningfully critique the practices without first critiquing the system that enables them.

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