Behringer X Air XR18 Reviews

The Best!!

One of the best Stage Box Mixer that you can grab for an awesome price, small gigs with big band sound!

The best "cheap" mixer there is!

Saved many of my gigs and great for recording demos during band practice!

Very impressed!

I am very impressed with this device. It is truly a professional digital mixed only without the knobs. The app on Android and Windows 10 is working fine so far. Took a bit of time to hook up on LAN. However, now it is detectable and works great. I would say it is an extremely good quality and price ratio mixer!!

Good to have

pros:

price - performance = excellent

easy to use

cons:

very weak wi-fi signal, should think of an extra router

everything is a box

what can i say. it is everything in a box. NO, REALLY, it is!!!

just dont use the buildin WIFI.

Use the APP to control the mix. Use an APP to control your monitor mix. Use a PC/Mac to track all 18 channels

do everything. IN A BOX.

Incredible value for money

I use the XR18 and MR18 which are basically the same products for my livestreaming and rehearsals with a band. Everyone has their own in ear monitor mix and the sound quality of the preamps and FX are crazy good even when compared to much more expensive gear.

The only downside is the useless built in router but with an external one it works flawless.

All that I am looking for

We use this in our rehearsal space, connecting our equipment to XR18 which connects to active speakers and for recording. We are using guitar, bass, keyboard, vocals and drums and it is working flawlessly.

Using this was very easy, we had no trouble getting the sound out (and adding some effects to it) to recording to our PC (recording each channel separately was not an issue). Also wireless connection either with phone or laptop worked great.

We are using 6 aux channels for in ear monitoring (with headphone amp). Everybody can have their own mix with this (choose levels for each instrument individually). Also if connecting with the phone you can change this on the fly.

Pros:

Easy to use.

Cheap (relative to other stuff you can buy with this functionality)

Small and sturdy.

Sounds great.

Cons:

Can't connect with ethernet cable and have it work wirelessly as well (we would like to have our PC connected to it with cable so that we can connect our wireless to mobile hotspot but then we can't connect our phones/laptop to it).

I was looking for a cheap way to turn our rehearsal space into small studio and with XR18 I got what I wanted.

The best in their category. Does exactly what it promises.

Featured loaded, value for money mixer for home/live use

I bought this mostly for home recording with a small amount of live work. The 18 channels weren't strictly necessary, however the appeal was the ability to record multiple channels at once which the XR12/16 won't do.

This is my first time at using a digital/software mixing desk and the range of options around Aux, FX, patching is quite awesome allowing just about any setup to be made. I tried the Android, Linux and Windows apps and all worked well enabling me to get the settings I wanted quickly. The WiFi client and Access Point options were tried, both were easy to set up although they do like "line of sight" and no interfering devices near them, to avoid drops.

There are four built in effect slots which emulate a large number of effects, the ones I listened to were of high quality and good enough for my needs. In the rare case of these not being enough, I can't see any way to add new effects to the software yourself, however you can always send out on one of the Aux buses and return on an unused channel for external FX.

In summary, this is a very versatile unit with a price point (and size) that makes it attractive even for home use. However, given 6 AUX channels, I'm guessing this is aimed very much at live bands. For live use, I would want to team it up with a decent quality external Wireless Access Point or Ethernet cable for a 100% reliable connection. A 19" rack mounting kit already comes with the unit allowing integration with existing equipment.

Simply fantastic value for a great product!

I use this as a live mixing desk for my acoustic band, and also have used it as an interface for doing live recordings and studio recordings. This desk can handle everything I have thrown at it with ease, with a very easy to use interface, and the capabilities you would normally expect to find of a product at a much higher price point. Its compact size make transporting and storing it much easier than an analogue 18 channel desk, and of course it has so much power that it also replaces any outboard gear I may have thought to use.

Cons - The built in WiFi is not very powerful, if you plan to use it in a venue were the person controlling the desk is far away, I would recommend using an external router that has better range.

Pros - 16 great mic preamps, built in EQ, compressors and effects, dedicated monitor outputs via XLR that can all have an individual monitor mix, the ability to multi track record over USB, can connect more than one device at a time to control the desk, expandability with Behringer monitoring products.

Behringer used to be known for making cheap not very good products, not any more. They're making some of the best products in the industry, to a great standard, for a great price. Could not recommend this product enough!

Best value for the money

I'm quite happy with my mixer, I know that there are many audio engineers that are better than me in describing it's pros and cons in normal application, so I will focus on atypical ones as described by a musician:

PROS:

-I run mine in home rehearsal setup 24/7 for last 3 months and it just works! I did not have to reboot it all that time.

-While playing with a small band I control my XR18 via midi footwsitch on stage to engage fx, mute channels etc, it's great

-The included FX are nice, the amp simulators are decent

-The usb connection allows you to use it as 18/18 audio interface, I use it with a laptop as a digital fx rack / playback / ableton live and for recording rehearsals.

-There are 2 hi gain inputs for direct guitars, no di-boxes needed

-There is a cheap alternative ipad app called mixing station that is even better than the original one.

-It's small, lightweight and there is a perfect gator bag for it for the travellers

-The connection is way more stable than with the soundcraft UI mixers that I used before.

-The network setup are changed by a switch in the front, it remembers the config with passwords, ip/dhcp setup so I have a "home" and "stage" setting.

CONS:

-Behringer promised a firmware update with new FX, that never came.

-The internal wifi is good if you are on stage next to it, if you plan on using it as a foh mixer invest in an external wifi solution.

My favourite piece of audio tech. Its a mixer, its a multi-track capture device. Easy to use, easy to integrate with other devices, like Elgato Streamdeck etc. Love this

The best mixing console!

Many functions, convenience and portability - this is xr18 !!! The product arrived quickly to Russia) Thank you Tomann!

Amazing

I love this! I have owned it for several years now and used it for recording and live bands. Really easy to use and love that I don't need a multi-core to the back anymore! The only downside: Don't rely on the wireless connection - when the mixer gets bombarded with lots of connection requests from all the phones in the audience you can loose your connection to the mixer (even if it is password secured) and cannot reconnect! As long as you use the CAT5 connection I would say this is flawless and a brilliant investment.

Love it

I already have a x32 this is just great for gigging and to sub mix if I dep on the drums!

User friendly and pro quality.

I switched to the Behringer digital mixer from another make that I was finding difficult to negotiate and I’m very pleased that I did. This mixer is much easier to get to grips with, plus there are numerous tutorials on line should you be stuck. I have a hard wired, cheap laptop sitting on top of the rack case for 100% secure connection ( via a router ) but mainly set everything up using my iPad remotely ( use a 5g router if you can ). Fully satisfied with this mixer. Thumbs up! 👍

great box

awesome box for live performance, recording or home recordingg cause i use it every day for my desktop . Quite good sound quality in recording. easy to handle app even from mobile phone

More than i thinked

It's small mixer with big heart.. ❤️

Very good for live and for studio recording

Small mixer with lots of great feutures. Good for live gigs and also for studio recordings. It has 6 AUX outputs, that is more than enough. Totolly controllable via computer, tablet, phone.

This kit is a power house

I use this for live and studio work, works brilliant for both. Can’t say enough good things about it, especially for the price! It’s a power house of a bit of kit. The only thing I’d say is to get an external router as the built in one dose work but not as well as having a duel band external one. I like this so much I bought 2 one for live and one for studio