Behringer Synth

(last post should have said "Juno 106's" - 6/60 is still way too expensive and probably always will be, although they do sound great)

Juno's are nice enough but unless you're after that sound it's hard to take it anywhere new. Like you said, you just keep bumping into nostalgia.

It's the reason my JP4 does not feature prominently in my music as much as i'd like. It does sound lovely though.

  On 9/5/2016 at 2:59 AM, RSP said:

 

  On 9/4/2016 at 8:21 PM, Audioblysk said:

They are what you make them.

 

 

Just to be clear, that's what I was getting at.  Junos are great because they're straightforward and fun and seem to sit in a mix, but there's nothing particularly exotic about them, the current prices are too high and II bet the Behringer does a good job of getting in the ballpark.  A lot of what seemed cool about Junos when I had them around all the time (never did own one) was that they were a really nice starting point, they really worked well with outboard effects.

 

I'd love to see a really authentic, standalone clone of the chorus though, or better yet the chorus from the first version of the RS09.  I've got the second version and the chorus is great, but the first one's supposedly quite a bit lusher so it must be amazing.  A little desktop box with a Juno filter and chorus, with insert points so you could use them in series or separately, would be fantastic, I have a feeling almost any raw waveforms you put through that would come out sounding pretty Rolandy.

 

I've never heard this in real life but it's supposed to be pretty pretty good: http://effectivywonder.com/?product=juno-chorus 

After I posted that I actually discovered that there more or less was a pedal version in the 80s that sounds amazing and there's a current clone that's essentially indistinguishable from the side by side comparisons I've watched, I'll post specifics when the eBay auction I've got my eye on is over.

  On 9/5/2016 at 9:37 AM, Chesney said:

Juno's are nice enough but unless you're after that sound it's hard to take it anywhere new. Like you said, you just keep bumping into nostalgia.

It's the reason my JP4 does not feature prominently in my music as much as i'd like. It does sound lovely though.

Yeah, if I went for a vintage DCO poly I think I'd lean toward one of the rack versions of the Matrix 6 and a BCR2000 honestly.  Not quite as hands on but so much deeper and very classic sounding.

Honestly, with all the Juno comparisons I hadn't really paid much attention to the similarities between the Behringer and the Matrix 12 but from the few sound demos we've had and the feature set, that seems like a more meaningful comparison despite the Behringer's origins.  And when you look at it that way, $1000 starts to seem VERY cheap.

And I've got a healthy (borderline unhealthy) taste for cliches and cheese so it's not like I'd turn down a Juno or anything.

talking of nostalgia, dont you hate it when you come up with a perfect chord progression and its been done before.  

ha, everything has been done before. But yeah, That happens to me a lot. I end up scrapping music because some artist puts something out that is similar sounding.

  On 9/5/2016 at 5:35 PM, RSP said:

After I posted that I actually discovered that there more or less was a pedal version in the 80s that sounds amazing and there's a current clone that's essentially indistinguishable from the side by side comparisons I've watched, I'll post specifics when the eBay auction I've got my eye on is over.

So now that I've won that auction, what I settled on as a way to get close to the classic Roland chorus sound without having to was this lineage:

Roland Dimension D - Roland's big rack chorus in the late 70s, 4 presets (plus the 4th "no buttons" mode), no controls, sounds amazing, costs a lot. Supposedly all of the later Roland choruses in their polys were based on this to some degree or other.

Boss DC2 Dimension C - Pedal clone of the Dimension D from the mid 80s. According to reputation and what I could judge from Youtube demos it's supposed to be a little different but very close, and the differences aren't worse so much as just diferent.  Maybe a slight midrange boost.  Not as expensive but still usually in the $200-$300 USD range unless you get lucky.

And, of course, Behringer cloned it as the CC300 Space C,  and by all accounts they did a really good job, but it's also discontinued, and people usually try to get around $150, which is too much but I don't think people are actually willing to pay that - I just won one that looks very lightly used for under $70 shipped, and that seems like a very good price if it gets even 75% of the way there.  But the demos I've listened to sound really good, and it has something none of the others have - the preset buttons aren't radio buttons, they're just on-off toggles, so you can use more than one mode at the same time and get a LOT more sounds out of it than the originals.

This is the only really well done comparison I've seen but they sound basically identical to my ear:

The highs seem just slightly more clear and shimmery with the Boss but I'm only noticing when I listen through good headphones and it I don't actually watch to see which pedal is on when I can't tell one from the other.  The boss is definitely not 3-4 times better, I've heard bigger differences switching between different patch cables than I hear between these two.

When it arrives, just for a laugh I'll see how close I can get an old Casiotone string patch to a Juno pad by running it through a filter and this thing, and post anything interesting (bad or good) that results. Obviously it's not going to get very close but I bet it gets closer than it has a right to.

Rolled off highs are more obvious here but it's definitely nitpicky stuff that you wouldn't notice in a mix:

Ah yeah I really should have bought one of those when I saw them new in stores. I actually bought one for a fellow watmmer many years ago just because he couldn't find any in NZ; I should have bought one for myself! I'm pretty happy with my Behringer pedals; none of them have broken even after I've mistreated them onstage.

  On 9/7/2016 at 2:43 AM, modey said:

Ah yeah I really should have bought one of those when I saw them new in stores. I actually bought one for a fellow watmmer many years ago just because he couldn't find any in NZ; I should have bought one for myself! I'm pretty happy with my Behringer pedals; none of them have broken even after I've mistreated them onstage.

Is it a sign of the times that the eBay asking price for a $23 Behringer pedal from 3 years ago hovers around $130 and I feel like I got a good deal paying $61+shipping for a clean one with the packaging?

Somewhere I've got a completely dismantled and butchered Behringer octave pedal I bought about a decade ago when I was young and naive and thought I might enjoy circuit bending, and it still works if you kind of lay it out on a table.

Oh, and I might have been wrong about the Dimension D only having one button on at a time, I've never messed with one.

In that MS20 video you can really hear the difference in the decay of the note around in the Mode 1 part starting at 2:00.  The Behringer almost sounds like some of the dry signal's bleeding in as it decays, the two are almost identical when it's loud but you get a kind of a growling, midrangey quality that's really centered in the stereo field as the note fades, that the Boss doesn't have at all.  Not bad, but definitely different.  Mode 1 is also the one hwere I was noticing the highs being rolled off in the Behringer in the rest of the two videos, but I think I was actually hearing more mids or a bit of dry signal rather than a loss of highs.  It's kind of a cool sound, actually, less lush and wide but could sound really good in the right context.

Obviously the Dimension D is going to sound better than either because mains voltage almost always means those great old 15v BBD chips instead of 5v BBD chips, and usually more of them to achieve the same delay time, and that's almost always a good thing unless you're looking specifically for a slightly dirtier, less defined sound.

For anyone interested, the midrange stuff I was hearing in those demos was probably a known headroom issue with the behringer chorus when used with synths putting out a lot of high frequencies.  Which it can be easily modded to fix (although it doesn't really make it clear whether "remove" means just remove the caps in question or whether you should replace them with jumpers, but it's easy enough to figure out by rial and error I guess.

A video where it's played for a while, nobody talks, presets are changed.

Finally. 11 pages in. 

I like it. 

I really like the sound of this one, the unison sounds great, I dont own a Juno,  did we have a price yet?  im guessing its cheaper than the system-8 & all discrete electronics.... bit of a no-brainer for me..   Music group were very clever acquiring cool audio & Midas.  

I wonder what other synths behringer are going to copy be influenced by now?   

$999 usd apparently.

Pretty interesting decision for people looking to buy either the Deepmind or System 8. I think the Deepmind sounds richer and bigger than the System 8. The System 8 demo models at the moment are missing the plug out functionality.

I'm intrigued about the system-8 after hearing quite a nice 101 from the system-1.  Its something I really need to try in a shop to see if I gel with the sound though. Ive also always liked the performance aspect of the Roland polys, they do nail that part very well, plus a nice split mode & they could have something interesting.    I really dont want big airy smooth pad #93868792356 though

I agree with you that the dm sounds nicer.  $999 usd, thats RRP as well so can be had for cheaper - they have knocked it out of the park with this one havent they

  On 9/13/2016 at 7:57 PM, lala said:

I'm intrigued about the system-8 after hearing quite a nice 101 from the system-1.  Its something I really need to try in a shop to see if I gel with the sound though. Ive also always liked the performance aspect of the Roland polys, they do nail that part very well, plus a nice split mode & they could have something interesting.    I really dont want big airy smooth pad #93868792356 though

 

I agree with you that the dm sounds nicer.  $999 usd, thats RRP as well so can be had for cheaper - they have knocked it out of the park with this one havent they

Keep in mind that those Plug Out Synths like the SH-101 are probably going to be extra purchases once you own the unit. 

I also feel a bit cheated when you look at multitimbral digital synthsof the past (Q etc) & the  amount of polyphony they had compared to now.  Especially the boutiques & systems. How much extra ££ to make them 8 Voices?

bah

At least with the DM its 12 voices & thousands of components.    extra chips to  up the system voices or whatever & its $1499? Oh its got a better keybed & some extra sliders

Has anyone ever popped open a boutique to see what kind of chipset is driving it? I'm starting to think it's a raspberry or similar since their polyphony is so limited.

edit:

K, somebody has and it isn't.

Yeah its propriety iirc.  But c'mon, Roland buys those chips in the thousands, they cant be that expensive.     

I like the kinda breathy textures in those videos. The amount of delay and generally hollow character of the presets is kind of a red flag to me. Except for the patches with really sharp filter envelopes, the sonic character reminds me a lot of the Alesis Micron so far.

i get the feeling the system 8 could be really sweet but it's def out of my price range i reckon ..