This might be the first time that I actually really praise Behringer and came to conclusion, that within the seaload of shitty/average products it has a small selection of VERY good products that can compete in price with almost anything many times more expensive products. These are the good products that I've had the positive experiences from:
- ADA8000 - 8 channel adat preamp
- 2030A(?) TRUTH - studio monitors
- BG412 - guitar cabinet
- and this
INTRODUCTION:
I paid 150€ for it, which is about 200$, so its very affordably priced. T1952 is a very basic transistor gate/compressor/limiter just like dbx 166XL, but what makes it interesting is that it has a very gentle tube colorizer/exciter (a.k.a. warmth -knob). Also the the vintage-look with oldschool knobs and VU-meters is a plus. The best thing is that it works well both live and in studio.
LIVE:
You can't really hear it why its good, unless you compare. The difference was really drastic live (atleast in the bassdrum and vocals) when I compared it to the normal Behringer Composer and dbx 266XL. I inputted exactly the same settings to the kick (slow gate, 4:1 ratio, automatic attack/release) and switched the compressors to test which sounded best. I added full warmth to the Tube Composer and it just crushed those two. I came to the conclusion that it works beautifully live.
STUDIO:
But what about studio? Well atleast it works with 22" maple ludwig kick like a charm. I used AKG D112 and Yamaha O1V2 to Cubase for capturing the kick. After removing the hum near ~200-250hz, I added a small boosts (~+4db) to 50hz and somewhere between 2-6khz (cant remember) and I didn't have to do any eq'ing in Cubase and it still just KILLED. I never had that experience with any previous compressors that I used. Listen to the 25 second sample of this non mixed song (~850kb). I don't know about you, but I like it. I have this really bad habit to sacrifice individual instrument sounds to make the whole mix sound better, so if any instrument plays alone/solo it usually sounds like shit unless its the vocals or guitars, so thats why I didn't put a clip of just the kick
SUMMA SUMMARUM:
It looks cool, sounds warm and is dirt cheap, what more could I ask? Only bad sides are that it takes two rackunits and weights like a ton (~10kg?). What about the most feared "feature" of behringer products, the extranoise? I didn't notice that it did any more hiss than the Joemeek SC2.2 or Furman LC that I use at the studio, I heard the noise live only when I boosted the gain from the channel like ~15db more from what I would ever do, so it was pretty low. Wouldn't use it as a master compressor/limiter tho.
MY RATING:
Ease to use: 9/10 - you really have to read the manual for the weird SC thingy, otherwise pretty simple
Sound quality: 9/10 - couldn't get much better unless you add one zero to the pricetag
Reliability: 8/10 - I think one of the VU-meters was broken from the beginning, but I don't really need to look at it as there is the led indicating if its compressing, so that it doesn't really matter.
Overall: 8.5/10 - for 150€ compressor it really kicks ass
