Opinions on Behringer XR18 & X32 Rack

[GalacticDeath]

Hey guys I'm looking to buy a monitor mixer for my band that's about to start gigging soon. Originally I was going to buy an analog mixer like the Crest Audio X18RM (about $850). But now I've noticed some new digital, wireless mixers have come out at a very decent price. The XR18 is about $700 and the X32 Rack is $1200.

Does anybody have any experience with these mixers that can give me advice? The main problem I have read is that the wifi on the Behringer XR18 is not very consistent.

I'm still unsure if I should go for one of these cool new mixers or go with an analog mixer which I know how to handle.

 

[mr coffee]

I've only used one Behringer mixer, that was some years ago. I eventually got rid of it because it was too noisy for home studio applications, but for live use it would have been fine. It was pretty flexible and well thought out. I don't know anything about their more recent offerings.

-m

 

[mr coffee]

Hmm...went and looked at the specs and features. If it is everything it claims to be, it could be pretty cool, and probably worth the learning curve.

-m

 

[GalacticDeath]

Hmm...went and looked at the specs and features. If it is everything it claims to be, it could be pretty cool, and probably worth the learning curve.

-m

Yeah that's what I'm thinking. But at the same time I've been reading that some people are having trouble with the wifi on the XR18, so I'm looking to see if anyone has any experience with them.

 

[Foranamo]

I bought the X32 Rack last year to use for monitors and FOH. I find it amazing, to be able to place a small rack on stage and get clearer sound than I've ever gotten. FOH is mixed with a 21" touch screen (HP Slate 21 Pro) and every musician can control their own mix with iPads or Android devices. We run in-ears, I wouldn't trust a musician to run his/her own wedge

The X32 Rack of course doesn't come with wifi out-of-the-box, so I use a TP-Link router/AP at the moment. It has proved to be reliable, at least in the venues I have used it in. A better access point and an S16 channel extender are currently on my shopping list.

If you have any questions about the X32 Rack I'd be happy to answer.

 

[eyeswide]

I called Sweetwater.com asking about a Motu Monitor 8 and I ended up just chatting with the rep for about an hour or so haha. One of the things that came up was Behringer and their mixers. Behringer bought out Midas, which was a really good company, and now they use all of Midas' tech and stuff for their mixers. So, Behringer quality has been increased immensely.

Beyond that, I actually thought that Crest board was discontinued. If you can get your hands on one, I don't think it's a bad idea. My band uses a very similar board - The Allen & Heath Mix Wizard 12 M (which is now discontinued). What I really like about it, and something that the Crest has too, is that there's a built in splitter. We have all of our gear, IEMs, mixer, etc. in one rack unit, and we just hand the sound guy a snake labelled with all of our outputs and we're good to go! Very simple and quick set up.

It's nice to have a physical board that you can just walk up to and make tweaks for IEM mixes. Although I have no experience mixing on an iPad or anything like that.

For cons, there aren't too many. It's not the lightest thing, and you will need to get a big rack to fit it, and I would recommend it being big enough to fit everything in. If you had a digital mixer, you could save a ton on rack space, which makes moving things easier, as well as more room for transportation. I am eventually going to buy the Motu Monitor 8 and put it in our rack so we can record our live shows very easily, and if our mixer ever has issues, I can just sub in the Monitor 8 to handle mixing.

Check out my band's Facebook page (link in signature) - I wrote up a short run down of our rig with some pictures.

 

[GalacticDeath]

I bought the X32 Rack last year to use for monitors and FOH. I find it amazing, to be able to place a small rack on stage and get clearer sound than I've ever gotten. FOH is mixed with a 21" touch screen (HP Slate 21 Pro) and every musician can control their own mix with iPads or Android devices. We run in-ears, I wouldn't trust a musician to run his/her own wedge

The X32 Rack of course doesn't come with wifi out-of-the-box, so I use a TP-Link router/AP at the moment. It has proved to be reliable, at least in the venues I have used it in. A better access point and an S16 channel extender are currently on my shopping list.

If you have any questions about the X32 Rack I'd be happy to answer.

Awesome man. I actually just bought an X32 Rack, but have yet to open it and play with it yet.

So apart from running monitors you're also running FOH with it? What is that like? Do you record part of your set and then play it back through FOH and mix? I'm guessing at shows you're basically telling the sound guy to scram for a bit

 

[GalacticDeath]

Beyond that, I actually thought that Crest board was discontinued. If you can get your hands on one, I don't think it's a bad idea. My band uses a very similar board - The Allen & Heath Mix Wizard 12 M (which is now discontinued). What I really like about it, and something that the Crest has too, is that there's a built in splitter. We have all of our gear, IEMs, mixer, etc. in one rack unit, and we just hand the sound guy a snake labelled with all of our outputs and we're good to go! Very simple and quick set up.

Yeah man that's initially why I wanted the Crest mixer is because of the splitter so we can feed all channels to our monitors as well as FOH. But with the Behringer we have enough outputs that we can mix our own monitors and FOH ourselves. It was not something I had thought of but this new technology seems to allow for it. We'll see how that works. If we finally decide not to mix FOH ourselves we could always buy a splitter snake and still feed the channels to the sound guy.

 

[Foranamo]

Awesome man. I actually just bought an X32 Rack, but have yet to open it and play with it yet.

So apart from running monitors you're also running FOH with it? What is that like? Do you record part of your set and then play it back through FOH and mix? I'm guessing at shows you're basically telling the sound guy to scram for a bit

We have a regular sound guy so he usually handles most things after sound check (which is always on me). When he is unavailable I set sound for everything else and leave a spot in the mix for me. Then we all play together with me playing outside the stage (I'm a keyboardist so that involves a wireless keytar) and doing final adjustments to the mix. With the amount of processing I can do with the X32 suddenly starting to play too loud is rarely an issue.

Also Dante is somewhat widely used around here so if we go to a bigger venue with expensive desks and everything we can ask for a split of our channels through Dante and have the same monitor settings we use everywhere. It's great.

 

[GalacticDeath]

We have a regular sound guy so he usually handles most things after sound check (which is always on me). When he is unavailable I set sound for everything else and leave a spot in the mix for me. Then we all play together with me playing outside the stage (I'm a keyboardist so that involves a wireless keytar) and doing final adjustments to the mix. With the amount of processing I can do with the X32 suddenly starting to play too loud is rarely an issue.

Also Dante is somewhat widely used around here so if we go to a bigger venue with expensive desks and everything we can ask for a split of our channels through Dante and have the same monitor settings we use everywhere. It's great.

Nice dude. I had never even thought about using Dante. That's some next level stuff. I'll have to look more into that. Thanks man

 

[TonyFlyingSquirrel]

Look on Premier Guitar's video rig rundown of Periphery and their use of it. Pretty cool.

 

[GalacticDeath]

Look on Premier Guitar's video rig rundown of Periphery and their use of it. Pretty cool.

Nice. I had seen that video before but never noticed the part where they mention the X32 Rack. That's funny because I actually was going to get a Crest Audio X18RM because that's what they used to use, I had no idea they ran an X32 now. I guess I made the right choice