Mail Day Thread

My cupboard of shame :slight_smile:

My M1 did a lot of miles. The joystick is missing, the keys are pocked with fag burns and it’s currently brain dead. Hated the menu system but now have a PC interface so I’ll fix it one day.

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Sorry. Misread ms-1 as M1. I loved the ms-1 but I wonder how long you can claim ownership and title to such ubiquitous circuits. All my 3340s are AS. Based on a classic design but engineered in a modern and much cheaper way. Leave it to the lawyers and soak up the affordable kit while the sun shines

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I think it’s worth bearing in mind that patents expire for a reason and Uli&Co. are very careful about what they do and don’t copy. I like @Farabide 's line about putting more of your own soul into music if it’s lacking soul (though I wouldn’t want to be the man tasked inventingh a unit of measure for that.) Picasso wasn’t a great artist because he used a better kind of paintbrush than Rousseau.
I’d go so far as to say that I think the perception of ā€œsoulā€ in an instrument is imbued into the instrument completely by the player as a function of familiarity and fondness, so the harder you work with any synth the more you’re not only going go get out of it, but also see in it. If you don’t give a Neutron a chance then you’ll never be able to see the beauty of it.

Neither do I mean to imply that we should let Sam or Stephen make buying choices for us (except I did only buy a couple of Arturia pieces after seeing Sam’s reviews so I hope he got a percentage. :grin:) I don’t know whether Hainbach meant they were morally bankrupt or that he thought the instruments lacked warmth and experience-I think the first time I heard him say it was before the whole cork sniffer thing. I respect his opinion and his musicianship immensely, and take great comfort in the sound of his voice. More than once I’ve watched a video of his about a piece of equipment or process I had no interest in not because of what he was saying but the sound of his saying it!

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Many of Hainbach’s posts have soul…or is it just ASMR? I don’t know (or care). Now an ASMR patch would be interesting. (He said to hopefully steer the conversation away from less lmnc DIY stuff - my bad)

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True. And the patent system is broken anyway.

I’ve been on MuffWiggler and seen all the precious handwringing about people daring to copy great designs. This isn’t how things work. Great ideas need to be free. Moog’s innovation isn’t a lot of use to me if the Moog devices that inspired the Behringer Model D, say, or the Crave are pitched at a level I cannot countenance. I wouldn’t buy them at Moog prices for the same reason I won’t buy a new ThinkPad when I can get a highly capable ThinkPad on the refurbished market at a tenth of the price for the new model. The quality I seek is far down the price point/quality gradient, and inflated prices are the reason for this.

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Well related to the idea of an ASMR patch, does anyone have strong feelings about Solfeggio tones and binaural beats? I’ve had a couple of guided meditation sessions that used them which have resulted in a sensation that I’ve only ever experienced previously while recovering from surgery high off my ass from morphine or vicodin or the like. I don’t know what to think about them other than that I keep meditating hoping to ride that horse again.

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Are these guided sessions you mentioned available anywhere as audio? (Asking for a friend :grin:)
That said I did have a pal with degrees in Neuroscience, maths and physics who was always sceptical about binaurial rhythms, lumping them in with whale song and playing motzart to the unborn. Stereo sound like vision is an easy thing to trick or trip. I think the jury is still out as to any real benefits. Bit hey, don’t be scared to try it!

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In fact they’re all over youTube. I like ā€œThe Honest Guysā€ ones because they’re in a nice, baritone RP. Right now I’d recommend the ones that are intended for anxiety! :wink:

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Thanks. Now has anyone got a prayer bowl patch to go with them (maybe some Vicodin too)?

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Behringer makes good inexpensive clones that a lot of the time are not even being made by the original company anymore. Recent distasteful social media shits are representative of the marketing dept, and should be noted and watched carefully in the future. If that was commonplace, i wouldnt consider buying from them. A knee-jerk cancel culture in response to this does not seem measured.

With these sorts of things, its about ethics and morals. In my camp, you just gotta do what lets you sleep at night. If you cannot realize your dream because you can only afford a behringer synth, but you want to stick to your guns because they use designs in a perfectly legal (admittedly kinda scummy) way, are you going to lay your head on the pillow at night and think: ā€œI am so happy that i didnt give money to that company that had a social media campaign that was distasteful and a bit racist. Im glad i cannot make music with the means i can give myself.ā€ Its a competing feeling, and if you cant sleep knowing that this social media thing happened, or that their practices of producing hardware that is a ā€œcloneā€ (but is clearly newly engineered), then thats fine, you can always use software with a midi keyboard or DIY your stuff instead.

I dont blame anyone for either feeling. Either you feel scummy buying their stuff, or you want their product because it enables you. Both are valid feelings.

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You know that’s a good point. I don’t recall ever seeing the level of vitriol against Arturia for their software emulations that it seems fashionable to unleash on Behringer. I use and love products by both, but I don’t pretend I’m using vintage gear, and don’t care that I’m not. I don’t think any poor soul who was unfortunate enough to hear my music could tell the difference though (because even with my most modern analog hardware I’m super lazy about tuning…)

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I’d have an easier time blaming the marketing dept. and letting it go if Uli had done anything like make a sincere apology and repudiation of the video, preferably rolling a few marketing dept. heads for good measure.

As for their cloning activity, it’s fine with me.

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I think the problem some people have with Behringer is that their clones are blatantly obvious without actually paying homage to the original hardware (or licensing the original name). The Arturia emulations were licenced, and had the proper names, but Uli and the gang are just knocking out cheap replicas with slightly different names at mass production scales which, in theory, might hurt the original manufacturers. And this, in my mind at least, is where the perceived lack of ā€˜soul’ comes in. The originals would have been hand produced by skilled engineers, whereas the new ones are being run off of production lines. At least they have fixed their QA problems.

Personally I don’t mind the clones, especially since most of them are of hardware that is either no longer being produced or so insanely expensive that most normal people would never be able to afford the real thing. In a way they seem to be democratising the whole process of producing electronic music with actual hardware. Hell, had the Neutron (granted not technically a clone) been out when I started in Eurorack I would have snapped one up in a heartbeat! The price to functionality just cannot be beaten. Sure, if you can afford the real deal go and buy one, and treat it like the piece of art that it is, but these clones are awesome sounding little boxes that pretty much everyone can afford.

And I totally agree, the amount of soul in your music is exactly the amount of your soul that you poured into creating it.

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I don’t know about the advertising as I’m not the kind of person who is ever likely to see Behringer’s ads. I don’t find anything at all unethical about Behringer copying good ideas. In fact I think more companies should do that, just as they do in other fields.

Asking permission to use a ladder filter? The Moog 904 filter was covered by a patent filed in 1969! Patents are intended to bring good ideas to the public, which is why they grant the holder a very limited licence term to profit from exclusive use of their invention, in return for putting the design into the public domain. If companies like Behringer are using this legendary filter, they’re doing us all a service by following best practice in the production of analogue resonant low pass filters.

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Alright, you’ve convinced me. Well put. As for the advertising, I think we were all referring to the recent Cork Sniffer hubbub:

And here’s Peter Kirn’s response, which I only just saw when looking for a video link:

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Today’s loot is a Rings clone with surface mount components already on the board and some pots from AliExpress:

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That video’s title i think is a bit misleading. At best it is unintentionally racist or derivative of a racist meme (not pictured here obviously, just look up the happy merchant if you must know). The resemblance is far from uncanny, but it certainly resembles it. This is absolutely something that could just be a coincidence. The ā€œfrenchā€ accent does tend to help me think that it was unintentional. That said, even at face value given the principle of charity, its still quite distasteful to make this kind of response to a critic.

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Completely agree. It’s pretty awful and Uli’s non-apology just gives me a bad taste in my mouth.

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Can you share your link to the Ali shop you use for your pots and also the link to the Rings with SMD already on the board? I’m terrified of SMD but I am interested in some of the Mutable stuff if I can get around the SMD.

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