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> The Switzerland-based Behringer’s business model involves cloning famous pieces of music gear, with precisely enough design changes to evade trademark dispute

> The Switzerland-based Behringer’s business model involves cloning famous pieces of music gear, with precisely enough design changes to evade trademark disputes, at a fraction of the original price. It is arguably a form of cultural and intellectual appropriation that parallels colonialism’s appropriation of Indigenous technologies and instruments, and forcing them out of the market with cheap, Fordist modes of production. I'm overall sympathetic with the concerns from the article about risks of monopolization of the audio production space, but Behringer and others making cheap gear is not that. The commoditization of previously out-of-reach capabilities only serves to broaden music's reach and diversity. If auto-mix plugins are pushing in a direction of homogeneity, widespread distribution of cheap gear counteracts that homogeneity by giving many more musicians the ability to stay relevant.

klodolph 5y ago
Yeah. “Oh no, here comes Behringer, they’ll make a cheap clone of your synthesizer.” Or something like that. Most of what they make copies of is stuff that’s 40 years out of date, but “classic” for whatever reason. The Minimoog came out in 1970, and you can buy a new one for about $3500 today. Or you can buy a Behringer Model D for about $350. It’s not going to have the same level of performance, but it still puts that sound in the hands of way more people. If you can’t compete with an imitation of something you made 50 years ago, selling for 90% less, then you’re not innovating.
- Slow_Hand 5y ago
  I agree with you, but Behringer are not limited to recreating only vintage gear. This week they unveiled a cheap clone of Moog's DFAM drum synthesizer. A model that's roughly 4 years old. Behringer are particularly shameless about copying the work of others in this space. It's not illegal, but it's widely considered to be a shameful practice among those in the industry.
  - klodolph 5y ago
    The DFAM is a boring, conservative design to begin with. Not like synths need to be interesting anyway. Eurorack and semi-modular stuff is getting more and more popular these days. If you design another semi-modular sound module out of a slightly different combination of the same underlying modules we’ve had since the the 1960s, you’re not innovating. DFAM is kinda cool in that, if you like that sound, you can get it for a bit less money than it costs to buy the individual modules in Eurorack form. Or maybe you like normalled signal paths. But I can’t see why Behringer should be ashamed of copying it. There’s just not much substance to copy.
    - Slow_Hand 5y ago
      Yeah. I don't care for DFAM either, but the content of DFAM isn't really the point. My point is that Behringer are letting other companies do all of the hard work of designing and branding their products, and once they're proven to be successful Behringer churn out a cheap copy and piggyback off of their hard work. Nowadays it feels like that is all that Behringer do. We don't have recourse to stop them from doing so, but it feel fundamentally dishonorable and pathetic and it is a type of behavior that should not be rewarded.
      - klodolph 5y ago
        Designing and branding is not all the hard work. It is just the sexy, cool work. It is the work of engineers and creatives, which is valued because it is associated with cultural capital here. Meanwhile, Behringer is good at supply chain management and vertical integration, and that is uncool, unsexy work. It is not valued because it is the domain of MBAs, and MBAs are not cool. This kind of judgment about what is cool and not cool is not my scene. These analog modules are so damn cookie-cutter to begin with. I don’t care if you invented them, or if you got them out of a cookbook, or if you just bought an IC. (You might have bought that IC from Behringer, though! Who else makes BBDs?) I mostly care about making music, and the idea that people should spend $700 on a DFAM instead of, like, $220 for a Behringer Edge just seems cartoonish at face value. Incidentally, the $480 price difference between the Behringer Edge and the Moog DFAM is exactly the price I paid for a block of one-on-one voice lessons. I feel way better about spending the money that way.
ageitgey 5y ago
> I'm overall sympathetic with the concerns from the article about risks of monopolization of the audio production space, but Behringer and others making cheap gear is not that. I agree, and it actually goes further than that in our complex global economy which there's no such thing as simple "good guys" and "bad guys". Love them or hate them, Behringer is the only one producing the replica chips used in all sorts of guitar pedals, synths, etc. Tons of boutique guitar pedal/synth/effects shops only can exist because they can source the core chips they need from Behringer to base their custom designs around. Behringer may have started as a leech on the industry, but they are now enabling large parts of the industry.

klodolph 5y ago

Yeah. “Oh no, here comes Behringer, they’ll make a cheap clone of your synthesizer.” Or something like that. Most of what they make copies of is stuff that’s 40 years out of date, but “classic” for whatever reason. The Minimoog came out in 1970, and you can buy a new one for about $3500 today. Or you can buy a Behringer Model D for about $350. It’s not going to have the same level of performance, but it still puts that sound in the hands of way more people. If you can’t compete with an imitation of something you made 50 years ago, selling for 90% less, then you’re not innovating.

Slow_Hand 5y ago
I agree with you, but Behringer are not limited to recreating only vintage gear. This week they unveiled a cheap clone of Moog's DFAM drum synthesizer. A model that's roughly 4 years old. Behringer are particularly shameless about copying the work of others in this space. It's not illegal, but it's widely considered to be a shameful practice among those in the industry.
- klodolph 5y ago
  The DFAM is a boring, conservative design to begin with. Not like synths need to be interesting anyway. Eurorack and semi-modular stuff is getting more and more popular these days. If you design another semi-modular sound module out of a slightly different combination of the same underlying modules we’ve had since the the 1960s, you’re not innovating. DFAM is kinda cool in that, if you like that sound, you can get it for a bit less money than it costs to buy the individual modules in Eurorack form. Or maybe you like normalled signal paths. But I can’t see why Behringer should be ashamed of copying it. There’s just not much substance to copy.
  - Slow_Hand 5y ago
    Yeah. I don't care for DFAM either, but the content of DFAM isn't really the point. My point is that Behringer are letting other companies do all of the hard work of designing and branding their products, and once they're proven to be successful Behringer churn out a cheap copy and piggyback off of their hard work. Nowadays it feels like that is all that Behringer do. We don't have recourse to stop them from doing so, but it feel fundamentally dishonorable and pathetic and it is a type of behavior that should not be rewarded.
    - klodolph 5y ago
      Designing and branding is not all the hard work. It is just the sexy, cool work. It is the work of engineers and creatives, which is valued because it is associated with cultural capital here. Meanwhile, Behringer is good at supply chain management and vertical integration, and that is uncool, unsexy work. It is not valued because it is the domain of MBAs, and MBAs are not cool. This kind of judgment about what is cool and not cool is not my scene. These analog modules are so damn cookie-cutter to begin with. I don’t care if you invented them, or if you got them out of a cookbook, or if you just bought an IC. (You might have bought that IC from Behringer, though! Who else makes BBDs?) I mostly care about making music, and the idea that people should spend $700 on a DFAM instead of, like, $220 for a Behringer Edge just seems cartoonish at face value. Incidentally, the $480 price difference between the Behringer Edge and the Moog DFAM is exactly the price I paid for a block of one-on-one voice lessons. I feel way better about spending the money that way.

ageitgey 5y ago

> I'm overall sympathetic with the concerns from the article about risks of monopolization of the audio production space, but Behringer and others making cheap gear is not that. I agree, and it actually goes further than that in our complex global economy which there's no such thing as simple "good guys" and "bad guys". Love them or hate them, Behringer is the only one producing the replica chips used in all sorts of guitar pedals, synths, etc. Tons of boutique guitar pedal/synth/effects shops only can exist because they can source the core chips they need from Behringer to base their custom designs around. Behringer may have started as a leech on the industry, but they are now enabling large parts of the industry.