
Our critique of Behringer's proposed TD-3 variant with Devil Fish functions - pgreenwood
http://www.firstpr.com.au/rwi/dfish/behringer-unauthorised/
======
nkozyra
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)

~~~
luma
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.

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

~~~
iron0013
That’s weird; which word did they ban you for?

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S_A_P
Ive had the pleasure of interacting with Robin via email a few times over the
years. He is _the_ expert when it comes to modifying your Roland X0X machine.
I paid him for a few hours of consulting time to modify my TR-808. This guy
was more than fair about what he shared with me, and gave me extremely
detailed notes beyond the scope of what I asked for.

I've been following the Behringer "synth wave", and Ive purchased quite a few
of them(RD-8, TD-3, K2, and WASP). I purchased the RD-8 as the platform to try
the 808 mods since I didnt want to really tear up my 808. The other things I
purchased were all out of print synths, and I think it makes total sense for
Behringer to revive these models. They have the scale and tooling to make it
happen at low cost, and I generally support that mission.

However, Uli has a cloud over him regarding his business practices that never
really goes away. In this case, I cant support Behringer at all. Boutique gear
is always going to cost more, and if you want to use his designs (patented or
not) you need to compensate the responsible party. He may not be legally
entitled to, but ethically and morally its the right thing to do. I dont have
a window of the economics of building the TD-3 or any Behringer synth, but I
would imagine that R&D is pretty low. Existing schematics are used and most of
the R&D would be around finding suitable replacements for the circuits if the
original parts are not available.(or in Music Tribes case, they can reproduce
ICs)

I may reconsider future purchases from Behringer in light of these events...

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jccalhoun
Just in case anyone is wondering, "murdered out" is slang for all black. The
oldest definition for it on Urban Dictionary is from 2006
[https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=murdered%20o...](https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=murdered%20out)

~~~
ptah
i'm pretty sure it means "modded out" in this case

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dmschulman
After Robin Whittle wrote this piece, Behringer's president Uli Behringer
decided to publicly air his entire private email exchange with Robin in order
to tell "their" side of the story.

I believe this was done to show they offered Robin some (abet paltry)
compensation of $15k, but publishing their entire private correspondence seems
like more of a bullying tactic than anything else. Behringer has very little
to lose here and they know it, but the conduct is unbecoming.

Should we allow large hardware manufacturers to bully and push around small
businesses and DIY hardware hackers like this?

~~~
nkozyra
I'm not seeing the bullying here. Two companies engaged on a partnership, it
didn't work out and now they're both airing the laundry.

The deal didn't make sense for either party. It happens.

What I find interesting is that none of the clone criticism seemed to impact
the excitement about working with behringer in the first place, assuming the
deal made sense.

~~~
kennywinker
“It didn’t work out”

But behringer went ahead and used all the devilfish ideas in their product. It
didn’t work out would be the deal collapsed and nobody made the clone.

~~~
cwzwarich
RWI doesn't own the Devilfish ideas (even if they were patented, they would've
expired by now since Robin's been doing this since 1993), so the business deal
was really over the Devilfish brand name and endorsement.

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somesortofsystm
The synthesizer world is a tempestuous, incestuous, hyperventilating hive of
wannabe and actual rock star
keyboarder/synthesis/tweaker/producer/dj/bedroomer barbarians.

We should expect no manners from an industry which has, for 40 years, been
copying itself.

Innovation is really happening in the synth space, but what happens - and
which is rarely accomodated for - is that these devices persist on into the
future _because they are musical instruments_.

If you attack ones right to copy, you may as well leave the music industries.

 _Musicians Copy_.

Its a vital and necessary aspect of the culture and art itself, and the
disallowing of it is a tragic attempt to thwart the art, itself.

Now, does this apply immediately to the commercial musical instrument
manufacturing industry?

Like I said, its incestuous.

Devil Fish are perfectly right to keep their ideas to themselves until they
are ready to commercial it themselves, and this seems to be a breach of that
trust. Tut tut, never talk to a bigger fish unless you've got a hook!

However, Behringer are not to be feared! They bring new blood to the market by
making the cheap stuff. Everyone knows, even if the kids buy the cheap stuff,
good music gets made until it doesn't.

And then, they buy the better stuff.

The DF guys should just gear up the mod, and make themselves a better machine.
Every single Behringer will be mod'able. My Neutron already has a firmware
update that turns it into a poly-synth, FFS.

Now .. Every 6 months or so, on average, the 'perfect musical instrument
consumer' spends a quarter of their regular monthly income, on gear. GAS is a
real thing, manufacturers know all about its harvest, and exploitation.

(Disclaimer: sitting in a room full of synthesizers, oldest one was built in
1972, been making them myself personally for decades, love the subject to
death, have a very strong opinion on the subject, see above.)

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llcoolv
My experience with Behringer guitar effects pedals is that they are 1:1 clones
of more popular ones (mostly by Boss). Here is an example list:
[https://www.tonestart.com/ultimate-behringer-guitar-pedal-
cl...](https://www.tonestart.com/ultimate-behringer-guitar-pedal-clone-list/)

Basically, the components in a 80-250 EUR guitar pedal are worth around 5-15
EUR and the rest is intellectual property. So it is possible to pirate
hardware as well.

~~~
motogpjimbo
Just waiting for that 50 EUR Strymon BigSky clone...

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lazersharkman
I had to stop reading when there was some moral tinge that Berhringer is
somehow doing something wrong by producing technology for cheap that is out of
patent, namely that somehow it's wrong for Berhinger to produce the Model D
when Moog produces one as well. Author claims these "compete". Maybe.
Different price points and different quality of builds.

Moreover, this guy is a modifier not a manufacturer. Having his name on a
product is a huge marketing scheme, probably providing him with more business
than he could keep up with. I didn't know Studio Electronics until Roland.
This just reads like he let something fall through, and he wants to blame
berhinger somehow. It's not even as if his tech was patented, so, what's the
point of writing this? IP is an abstract philosophical farce and no one really
owns ideas.

~~~
tlb
Customers care. Musicians are particularly sensitive to what's a value-adding
improvement vs. a blatant ripoff.

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jwildeboer
When you think that doubling the price is a reasonable thing to ask from a
manufacturer that is known to focus on exactly the opposite (low price) - you
might be in for disappointment.

When you add to that a demand for some running royalties per sold device that
goes up when more devices are sold (thus making end price calculations
unpredictable) AND ask for the final word on component selection - you just
might be a bit too confident in what you think is the power you have in
negotiations. To put it mildly.

[Edit typos/formatting]

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vortico
As with nearly all of the Behringer clones, there is nothing the legal system
can do to provide what is "fair" to the original designers of their cloned
circuits and interface likeness. In my opinion, there is no way to solve this
problem. Perhaps design trademarks? This happens in every hardware industry,
and China is usually the country that can provide the lowest prices for
manufacturing a product.

~~~
EamonnMR
The companies that own the original designs have abdicated their
responsibility to produce them. It's sort of like abandonware. People have
been making software clones of these machines for years, the only difference
is Behringer is actually making them in hardware (and thus adding the much
sought after premium analog halo.)

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dep_b
It’s super questionable what they did to Moog since creating an authentic
enough version of the MiniMoog with modern parts takes quite a bit of
research. This was not a 40 years old abandoned design like many of their
other recreations.

~~~
yeutterg
I have mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, the original Moog company
went through bankruptcy and a lot of changing-of-hands. So the current company
is only vaguely related to the original.

But on the other hand, they did come back to life, not only to recreate
originals but to create new, interesting designs. So even though the Minimoog
hasn't been in continuous production since the original, they do still sell it
today.

Plus, the new company is mostly employee-owned. If you're ever in Asheville,
definitely check out the factory for a free tour as well as the Moogseum.

On to Behringer. What they are doing is questionable, especially around the
Minimoog and ARP, two models that are currently in production by the original
manufacturers.

However, I think there's an easier case to be made for the old designs that
are no longer in production (e.g. the Juno 106, 808, 303, etc.).

Even though Roland makes some modern products that include the
functionality/sounds of the originals or mimic the look and feel, they are
still generally based on virtual engines instead of analog circuits. Argue all
day long about the sound differences, but synth heads tend to love analog.
Korg has done a better job at cranking out desirable analog designs.

What Behringer and Korg are doing, that Moog arguably isn't, is creating
desirable analog synths that hobbyists can afford. Yes, they were never this
cheap back in the 70s/80s. But it drastically lowers the cost of entry for
people just wanting to get started and not wanting to use a DAW for
everything.

I'm excited for the 909 clone as that has the best pads to my ears. I'm
considering getting a DeepMind, which is inspired by the Juno 106 but
different in many ways. I could see a TD-3 in my future. I'm less excited
about the Poly D and ARP, but that could be my own musical taste as well.

Related note: why didn't Behringer include a batteries option in the 303 and
606 clones? I see these as almost perfect competition to Volcas, but Volcas
have battery options and are way more portable. I know the originals were only
hardwired, but still.

~~~
dep_b
Right I'll be all over the vanilla 101, 303 and 909 Behringers, probably I'll
get the Pro 1 too. And honestly: probably the MiniMoog too. Never could afford
them in their original form and Roland is not making them. The TR8 from Roland
is nice since you can pick and mix sounds from all machines but it isn't
analog, which is what people have been asking for all the time.

The MonoTribe to me already is a classic. I'm kind of hoarding them. I do have
some older Rolands and something like a 606 is really magic to play with. You
can destroy it completely through the ESP of an MS-20 and it still sounds
good.

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Heinakroon
For those interested, here's Uli Behringer's response in full:
[https://textuploader.com/16l0e](https://textuploader.com/16l0e)

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dintech
There are plenty of other mod designers for the original 303. I'm sure there
will be a bunch of non-Devil Fish mods anyway.

~~~
ptah
there are, eh devilfish mods are complicated but i've seen some simpler ones
in facebook groups using 1EUR parts

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ptah
just waiting to get my yellow limited edition td-3 and then i will look at
modding the blue one i have now. the df mods are quite extensive, i would look
to keep the machine simple. i've seen some diy td-3 mods floating around

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blattimwind
tl;dr Behringer did not want to double the price point of the product. The
rest follows. The post mostly discusses royalty schemes.

~~~
SN76477
I would love to have a $300 devil fish clone myself.

That is where I want to see Behringer, making modern variants of classic
synths. The poly D is the best example. A heavily modified 303 would just be
insane as well.

