Behringer Studio XL Monitor Controller

[Jimster480]

The "REC SRC SEL" (record source select) button would be for selecting between an input source. Since it toggles between "2-TR" (e.g. a two track line level out device) and "IN 1/2" (what it labels the XLR input) this is the likely culprit. Behringer stuff is not great but usually not this bad. I think it's worth testing again.

I agree.
I've had a few different Behringer products and while they aren't the greatest by a stretch, they are usually not totally broken. Their documentation can definitely be trash though.

 

[amirm]

The "REC SRC SEL" (record source select) button would be for selecting between an input source. Since it toggles between "2-TR" (e.g. a two track line level out device) and "IN 1/2" (what it labels the XLR input) this is the likely culprit.

If that is an input selector, it would disable that input and not cause it to have severe distortion.

 

[amirm]

So there must be a fluke in the measurement setup or some configuration error.

That test is at 192khz. That aside, you are defending SINAD of less than 60 dB???

 

[kemmler3D]

Behringer used to represent mediocre-to-okay performance for very low money.

It now represents a wild assortment of features, typically ripped off from other brands to the absolute limit of intellectual property law, (let alone ethics) with performance apparently not considered at all.

If you look at the endless parade of synthesizers they're putting out over the past few years, all a direct copy of someone else's work, it really feels wrong to me to give them money for anything at this point, synth or otherwise. They have evolved into being plagiarists first, everything else a distant second.

 

[Rja4000]

let's test the ADC:

Oh come on now. Spec says +22 dBu and we are well below that yet there is clear clipping signature. Sweeping the analog input level shows us again that this device can't handle much input voltage:

We are really done here.

I think that behaviour is what they call "MIDAS preamps".
They deliberately simulate the supposed distortion of vintage preamps.
(Hopefully, real Midas vintage preamps weren't THAT bad!)

Marketing is seldom synonym with "good idea"

 

[anphex]

It’s surprising to see how many people are trying to find flaws in the measurement, simply because the result seems too bad to be true.

That said, the manual does appear poorly documented. In my experience, many Chinese gadgets come with incomplete or flawed instructions. So it’s entirely possible that Amir followed the manual exactly, but the device itself was designed differently than expected.

Given how dramatically poor the measurements are, I’d recommend Amir keep the test setups ready for a quick retest while making the usual review posts. It could help clear things up fast if needed.

 

[Scytales]

The user manual, with complete specifications on page 45 and 46, can be read here : https://mediadl.musictribe.com/media/PLM/data/docs/P0E86/STUDIO-XL-&-STUDIO-L_QSG_WW.pdf

To my mind, almost nothing seems to be properly documented for such a relatively complex device.

 

[Lambda]

Line Input is TRS. XLR is for Microphone.

 

[Pariah Zero]

Someone should take this box, throw out its guts and build a proper interface/controller. I think it could be sold for $500+ and still would be good value. As is, it is not worth anything.

I've built my own microphones from "donor" bodies as a hobby, and even used 'known good' circuits to design my own microphone PCB's. I've seen decent mixer designs at GroupDIY. If the encoders & connectors are half decent as Amir claims, it could save some cost as a donor case/controls.

I went into Computer Engineering specifically because I struggled somewhat with the math in the Analog domain (know thyself & all that). With the performance as-stated, it sounds like I could try (by using a "known good" design), fail "successfully" in that the circuit works, and possibly still improve on the performance. (You know - not knowin' what I'm doin')

 

[Casper]

Behringer used to represent mediocre-to-okay performance for very low money.

It now represents a wild assortment of features, typically ripped off from other brands to the absolute limit of intellectual property law, (let alone ethics) with performance apparently not considered at all.

If you look at the endless parade of synthesizers they're putting out over the past few years, all a direct copy of someone else's work, it really feels wrong to me to give them money for anything at this point, synth or otherwise. They have evolved into being plagiarists first, everything else a distant second.

The other side of the "absolute limit of intellectual property law" is the public domain, so I don't think we should fault them for that. There is nothing unethical about selling public domain designs at a lower price. For example, take a common piece of recording gear like Shure SM57 microphone--Shure has been selling this for 60 years and it was based on a design that was decades older. There are now knockoffs that sell for $20 or less. But if there is an ethical question, wouldn't that be about how Sure justifies selling the SM57 for $99 when they could be profitable selling it for $20? Are they price gouging? No, it's just the free market. They sell it for the most efficient price they can because enough people are willing to buy it at that price and the additional sales they would make from pricing it at a lower price would not make up for the lower profit margin.

Behringer makes products for people weighing price vs. features where absolute sound quality is not important. These products are for bedroom/dormroom studios and users on student budgets who otherwise might not make their music without these options. There is nothing wrong with copying public domain designs and selling them at a lower profit margin.

 

[Pariah Zero]

The other side of the "absolute limit of intellectual property law" is the public domain, so I don't think we should fault them for that. There is nothing unethical about selling public domain designs at a lower price. For example, take a common piece of recording gear like Shure SM57 microphone--Shure has been selling this for 60 years and it was based on a design that was decades older. There are now knockoffs that sell for $20 or less. But if there is an ethical question, wouldn't that be about how Sure justifies selling the SM57 for $99 when they could be profitable selling it for $20? Are they price gouging? No, it's just the free market. They sell it for the most efficient price they can because enough people are willing to buy it at that price and the additional sales they would make from pricing it at a lower price would not make up for the lower profit margin.

Behringer makes products for people weighing price vs. features where absolute sound quality is not important. These products are for bedroom/dormroom studios and users on student budgets who otherwise might not make their music without these options. There is nothing wrong with copying public domain designs and selling them at a lower profit margin.

Well, the thing about the SM57 & SM58 is that you still have to be able to manufacture the microphone capsule or audio transformers that perform well, and that's non-trivial.

I say this as a guy whose hobby is DIY'ing microphones.

I mean, you can make & get reasonable dynamic capsules for a reasonably low cost, and reasonably low cost audio transformers. (I literally have both on my desk in front of me).

Getting the coils to wind just so out of the right material to get the right magnetic flux and have the same sonic profile repeatably - that's another matter entirely. Especially on a mic where the most minor differences are then amplified 60-80 dB in a preamp, and then hundreds more dB by power amps.

 

[ayane]

LMAO at the meme first thing below the graph

But 0.5 Vrms is ridiculously low to saturation. The gradually rising distortion profile (from 0.5 to 3 V) is like a tape saturation simulator (but tape saturation has nicer/more predictable spectra than whatever's coming out of this )

 

[kemmler3D]

There is nothing wrong with copying public domain designs and selling them at a lower profit margin.

This is probably the most balanced take from someone with a vested interest in the question you could hope for: https://www.rogerlinndesign.com/more/lmdrum - he doesn't really like it but it doesn't bother him a whole lot either.

I think you can say there is (probably) nothing legally wrong with it, but I think the ethics are still questionable. They are not really re-creating merely functional designs, but also creative work by other people. They are giving the people what they want, but I take it they are not getting the permission of the original creators of these synths, either.

edit: I can see both sides. For someone who would never realistically have a chance to buy a real TR-909, a cheap-o clone is a nice offering. But I have a bad reaction to a company being so open about copying things so rampantly.

An example of cloning stuff while still being original can be seen in U-he's Diva synth (software). It clones some well-known modules at the circuit level just like Berhinger does, but combines them into a new format, adds the benefit of real (audible) technological improvement, and as a result it's a softsynth that costs $179 and basically never goes on sale for years now.

 

[Sokel]

This is probably the most balanced take from someone with a vested interest in the question you could hope for: https://www.rogerlinndesign.com/more/lmdrum - he doesn't really like it but it doesn't bother him a whole lot either.

I think you can say there is (probably) nothing legally wrong with it, but I think the ethics are still questionable. They are not really re-creating merely functional designs, but also creative work by other people. They are giving the people what they want, but I take it they are not getting the permission of the original creators of these synths, either.

It would be a thousand times better if they had a sense of humor:

 

[Scytales]

View attachment 440752
Line Input is TRS. XLR is for Microphone.

Possibly.

But, the above quoted specifications are subject to interpretation. Neither the specs sheet nor the serigraph next to the combined XLR/TRS input jacks or the connecting diagram page 15 and 16 clearly state that the XLR side of the combo input 1/2 is linked to a different input circuitry than the TRS side of said combo and that it is prohibited to plug line outputs in the XLR side of inputs 1/2.

To the contrary, as pointed out by Amirm in his post #18, input 1/2 is described under the number 52 attached to them in the connecting diagram as 'balanced or unbalanced mic or line level input'.

All the more than there isn't any specifications typical of a mic input (EIN noise, for example) anywhere in the user manual, whereas it is explicity stated that the maximum input level of the inputs is +22 dBu.

If there are restrictions to the use case or specifications of the XLR side of the combined XLR/TRS input jacks, they are not properly documented.

 

[Sir Sanders Zingmore]

View attachment 440752
Line Input is TRS. XLR is for Microphone.

I love the arguing about how to interpret the manual. Much more fun than just trying it for real to see what the device actually does….

 

[Pariah Zero]

This is probably the most balanced take from someone with a vested interest in the question you could hope for: https://www.rogerlinndesign.com/more/lmdrum - he doesn't really like it but it doesn't bother him a whole lot either.

I think you can say there is (probably) nothing legally wrong with it, but I think the ethics are still questionable. They are not really re-creating merely functional designs, but also creative work by other people. They are giving the people what they want, but I take it they are not getting the permission of the original creators of these synths, either.

I don't know... patents expire, etc. I really don't feel are at all wrong to reproduce as long as sufficient time has passed. I certainly don't see a problem with reproducing the 50+ year old circuits of a Neumann U47/U67/U87 microphones, or even the microphone capsules which are just as old. Or the RCA-44 ribbon mic.

 

[kemmler3D]

I don't know... patents expire, etc. I really don't feel are at all wrong to reproduce as long as sufficient time has passed. I certainly don't see a problem with reproducing the 50+ year old circuits of a Neumann U47/U67/U87 microphones, or even the microphone capsules which are just as old. Or the RCA-44 ribbon mic.

In the case of the LMdrum synth, they didn't just copy the design, they didn't stop with copying the circuits, they also copied the sounds (digital samples) from the original machine. It seems like Roger is not keen to assert copyright or anything, but even after much time has passed, I think that's a clone of a slightly different character from mics, amps, etc. They also copy the visual designs from the old synths, so for whatever reason the aggressive lack of originality in these clones rubs me the wrong way.

I can also see the POV in these being a sort of public service in making hardware versions of these synths realistic for regular musicians. From that POV they are doing god's work.

I personally don't care about buying hardware synths so I find it easier to criticize.

But on the OTHER other hand, you see them putting out hardware like what's reviewed by Amir here, and it sure looks like a greedy company grabbing money however they can by churning out whatever crap they can sell, with no regard except for what looks good on a box.

 

[Audionaut]

Typical Behri the way I see it, its cheap reflects the performance.

That's nonsense, because Behringer also has some excellent devices that offer very good value for relatively little money.
It's a pity that they occasionally have outliers in terms of quality, because this ruins their reputation in the long term and leads to comments like yours.

 

[Scytales]

By reading this old ASR thread, we learn that the Behringer Studio XL is some sort of an ersatz of the Mackie Big Knob Studio+.

The Mackie comes with a proper user manual, with explicit warnings, notably about the use case of the XLR side of the combined XLR/TRS input jacks (especially related to the fact that they can be phantom powered), as well as connector wiring schematics and an explicit block diagram: https://mackie.com/img/file_resources/Big_Knob_Series_OM.pdf

Considering the quality of the documentation alone, the Mackie seems to me a better offer for a slightly higher price point.