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Comment by nkozyra | Hacker News Reader

Behringer has a very specific business model at the moment and it's the cheapest possible clones of classic synths.

To be honest, they're an incredible efficient company now and if you contrast that with their reputation for building unreliable junk it's a pretty impressive evolution.

Most of what they clone hasn't been in production in decades. Often the companies have changed hands or gone out of business. The clones are orders of magnitude cheaper than the real deal used and generally have more functionality (see: the new Poly D). In short, there's demand but not much realistic supply.

It's possible Devil Fish has some patentable novel concepts but the skeptic in me says probably not. He's trying to operate in a different business space than behringer is. That seems to be the dispute (beyond the very fair critique of the word murder and the color)

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I think my beef with behringer comes down to the copying of the look and feel. They made a clone of the moog mother 32 (the behringer neutron), but because it doesn’t copy the look of the original, it doesn’t bother me the way their minimoog clone does.

Edit: yes as people have pointed out I was thinking of the behringer crave not the neutron, whoops!

the crave is closer to the mother 32 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JexfJSNVQmM

This must be what they're thinking of. The Neutron is probably the most original design they have. Plus, it's using the 3340 oscillators, which sound nothing like the saw based one's that Moog uses, imo.

The neutron was pretty original as far as analogs nowaday go

It's the only one I own from Behringer. It's also ugly as hell :)

> there's demand

And oh boy, is there demand. I've been playing with VSTs for years but only recently started getting into hardware...and if it wasn't for Behringer and their clones, I'd be just dreaming.

Perhaps things are getting better now (because of Behringer's pricing) but taken from someone outside the "scene", the prices the traditional manufacturers charge just look insane. Are they worth it? Probably...I can appreciate good handiwork as much as anyone. But look at it from the point of view of someone who just thought "I'd like to make that sound, what do I need to do it?" and these clones are one of the few things that makes it possible for more people to get into the hobby.

> And oh boy, is there demand.

I remember wanting a DevilFish modded 303 as a teenager in the 90s. Behringer's business model has me very conflicted.

Are there electronic music producers out there who are going to be offended by the word murder? Seems like a weird addition to this story. Dark grey text labels on a black background is a horrible idea for the sorts of lighting conditions these instruments tend to be used in, so I get the argument against the color, but the word? Who is that upsetting?

Edit: this is odd to me because “murdered out” has been common parlance in the car scene for a good while now, and nobody seems to mind.

I think slapping the word murder on a product is a bad thing.

I'm sure there are plenty of electronic musicians who don't care. Behringer seems to know their audience, but I happen to think it's unnecessary and the wanton normalization of the idea of murder - particularly associated with music that generally appeals to younger people - is a bad choice.

Twitter bans people for mere words, so there's that.

That’s weird; which word did they ban you for?

If there are, there must be at least equally many who are offended at "devil".

I have a model that nothing in the world is offensive to us until it happens close to us. Right after my gf's mother died, we both noticed how many references to death there are in everyday conversation. "I was killing it in the gym." "I can't wait until $x dies a horrible death."

When i think of murder in music, I think of the dramatic Jamaican slang term. It used to kind of bother me, too, bc I also think of my neighbor's family who was senselessly slain when I was 18 years old. so it's kind of upsetting, but I also own trying to get over it.

Perhaps some religious people are offended by Whittle's reference to "Devil"?

Aesthetically, I don't think it's very tasteful, although I'm based in favor of Whittle and against Behringer. It's just drama and more drama. Especially so, bc elecmusic is entering mainstream, so more parents will look at buying instruments like this for their kids and say, "wtf."

Behringer's secret sauce is a team of Chinese engineers, which copy, in the style of (though how is one to know if they were trained there?) Huawei, which is famous for an office park laid out as a (strangely hideous, yet captivating) clone of Versailles.

Behringer synth engineers are in UK and Italy. chinese only manufacture the synths. iirc the italians do the TD-3 and the other clones are uk designs

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/electronic-music-instruments...

I don't understand the color part. Black is standard for devices. I get that it's somewhat boring, but really, that's big enough to even get mentioned, let alone as a dealbreaker?

Literally every 303 clone ever made (and there are hundreds of these) looks like a 303 in some regard. And the 303 is an ugly synthesizer. Black, white, rainbow, transparent, the thing is ugly.

if you are sound-oriented, when you hear the sounds coming out of it your view of the thing changes to seeing it as one of the most beautiful things that humans are able to see

Most musicians should be "sound-oriented" ;)

My point was the complaint tacked on here about aesthetics seems not only unnecessary but in the context of 303 clones kind of, uh, tone-deaf.

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