Behringer X32 Compact Reviews

For the money, you can't beat it

You really can't beat this console when it comes down to it. It's very easy to use and sounds very good for the price range. Very user friendly and you can hand anyone an iPad and they can easily mix a show with it.

Very good mixer

Very good/excillent mixer. Somewhat miss only input to footswitch to stop effects. But this is possible via midi input.

Trusted console

fantastic

X32 Compact best live mixer!

Six months ago, I became the owner of this mixer. First impressions are very positive at work. Build quality is good, all fader control is accessible and understandable, very pleased with the small screen (you can sign each channel and select a color image). Software mixer did a great and growing, during concerts mixer does not hang with the tablet control over the wireless network is good and comfortable. Drivers for PC - stable. Sometimes made multi-channel recording of live concerts by the mixer, all 16 channels were recorded on a computer without failures and problems. Quality microphone preamps built-in mixer is great for the price!

Very impressive

I have been incredibly surprised by this unit, like many others I have had my fair share of Behringer kit that broke just out of warranty and was always in the category of "ok for the money". The overall sound quality of this unit is really very good indeed. I have the latest firmware installed and the quality of the hall and plate reverbs is very good. The graphic EQs are also very smooth and do not seem to cause the degradation in phase response that some other low end digital mixers do.

The channel and bus dynamics are also notably better than the ones I have used on other entry level digital desks, even above this price point. The inclusion of variable hold as well as attack and release is extremely useful, especially on the gate where it can greatly reduce chatter when the threshold and background noise level are close together.

With the X32 range Behringer has moved from "ok for the money" to "excellent for the money". There are better desks out there but nothing even remotely close in overall price/features/performance.

Nothing else in this price range can touch it

Like other reviews say, leave all your previous hangups about Behringer at the door, they have really changed their game with the X32 line of products. The build quality is excellent: the dials, sliders and buttons seem very hard wearing. Once you get the whole feel about the flexible mix bus workflow this desk uses (and a lot of higher-end digital consoles use), it is an absolute joy to use.

The preamps are absolutely worlds apart from Behringer's previous offerings, big and bold sounding without going dull. They have a tendency to start to sound a little thin if you need to crank the gain, but I've been assured this is a typical quirk of Midas designed preamps. Digital scribble-strips at this price point is just plain unheard of!

Bought this with two S16 digital snake modules, effectively doubling the analogue I/O. I silly cannot believe that this system was purchased for relatively little money and the quality is retained. Fantastic. If Behringer can shake off their historical 'cheap&nasty' stigma, this will be the product line that completely obliterates the competition at this price range, although it's doing a pretty good job already.

Oh, and be very careful with the latched XLR inputs on the X32 and S16s. There have been reports of XLR connectors (with the little latch 'window') getting stuck in there. I have had other equipment suffer this issue and I have avoided this by using Switchcraft or Neutrik XX series XLR connectors (or ones without the 'window').

Awesome

Nothing in the price range touches this desk!

Fabulous but flawed

Firstly Don't be out off this product because of previous opinions and biases about Behringer this is a completely new ball game. As soon as I unpacked and saw it I thought wow !!! this is different, it ouses quality and sophistication.There is no in depth manual available yet but frankly I got it going without even looking at the instructions, to go through all it's features would be beyond a simple review but I particularly liked the effects section which really does have eight full effects racks that are divided into 4 send and return types and 4 insert types. On the down side and I suspect this is because I do a lot of very simple shows with simple setups you can only control the first eight inputs with the first eight sliders so if you want to control input nine you have to start layer hopping. For me the most basic of all basic setups would be sixteen inputs controlled by sixteen sliders and I can't understand why it can't do this (although Joe Sanborn of Behringer has said he will ask if there can be a firmware update to change it) I'm sending mine back for this reason alone, everything else is fantastic. I suspect that sound engineers who have worked on digital desks a lot will have no problem with this but to me potentially having to control forty inputs with eight faders and having to hop through nine layers to do it is too much.

----> The firmware has been updated and you can now use all 16 faders as input if you so choose.