Are you an Audiophile?

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Yeah, that's pretty much it. I'll have to check into those Behringers when I have a chance - I've heard lots about their mixing boards already.

Yamaha MG series mixers are WAY better than the Behringers and there are MANY monitors out there that are better than Behringers. DON'T ever buy monitors without hearing and comparing them first. AT LEAST go to a nearby Guitar Center and listen to what they have there and then decide. Take your favorite CDs with you and avoid the KRK Rokit series also. Trust me, for the price of the Berry's, there are better.

Look up the Yorkville YSM1p's and Wharfdale Diamond 8.2a's and the Yamaha MG mixers if you want to save money without sacrificing quality.

I agree that Behringer Mixers suck. I was doing Live Audio on a 20x8 Ramsa, that wasn't the greatest in the world, but when I baught it, it was MUCH better than the PV crap that I had at my disposal. That being said, Behringer's self Powered nearfields are a pretty good buy for $250. Personally I like the smaller Genelec's but then again, I don't have $1K-$3K to spend on that type of gear.

Plus, another thing that you can do with Behringers is upgrade the drivers to something decent. A freind of mine runs all his audio through a CEDAR system into a pair of nearfields that he built himself for about $200, after you discount the very pricy BPA Xovers that were more or less given to him. --I've heard them many times, and they are very accurate

Tech makes his own music, so I believe that he does nearly all of his mixdowns on his computer. Oh yeah, for what it's worth, GC is the biggest ripoff that I know of for ANY form of Musical gear. If you have to go to GC, Look, but don't buy

Well, directly off one piece of hardware, my Yamaha RS7000, so I actually have less to worry about in terms of magnetics and data safety. On the other hand though I may end up going to software one of these days soon just because I'm seeing where some of the biggest names in the scene are doing that and getting arround tens of thousands of dollars in investment.

Oh, absolutely. The reason I ended up with these dj monitors was that my friend ended up buying them for dj monitoring, he bought some new ones, and he sold em to me for like $30 or $40.

Behringer, from what I read, makes mostly copies of others' stuff. It's gotten them sued several times.
Fogman: I love my AKGs too. Have a pair of 240Ms I use on-air. Nut'm like 'em, although I'd happily consider the 240 Studio, which has a replaceable cable and much lower impedance - MUCH, much louder now.

I do tend to be a geek about my audio (and video), but I'm kinda midline. Here's my stuff:
Denon AVR-1604 home theater receiver
Boston Acoustics Speakers: CR95s up front, CRC center, CR65s in back
Technics SL-B2 turntable
Pioneer cassette deck
Panasonic RP-62 DVD player
RCA 38" HDTV
JVC S-VHS VCR

I like retro too, especially video. I just got a brand new TV that's over 20 years old. Picture's amazingly sharp, plus it's got a thing called Space Phone - you can dial the number on the remote and talk through the TV!

I've been looking at these for an upgrade/ replacement. They're a bit pricy though. I'd like to hear them, or at least get a graph on them before I spend the cash. Thanks for the info on the current K-240's though.

http://www.mercenary.com/ulpr25.html

What you say about Behringer is true. They do copy other peoples gear, and make it on the cheap in China. They a decent, (but parts incompatible) copy of a Shure SM58, as well as DI box thats a BSS copy. Their Reveal Monitors appear to be Genelc copies, but they don't weigh as much, which can be important for absolutely critical monitoring applications. Their floor wedges appear to be copies of Clair Bros, 12 and 15AM's , but I wouldn't want to use them for outdoor gigs where they could get soaked.

OMG - thisis hillarious. I was just on Drum&Bass Arena looking at the production forum and guess what; they had a section on the best flat-response headphones - they all said my Sony MDR's were the best wtf?

I have a set of Sony MDR-7506 that I use when tracking and a set of Sennheiser HD600's that I use for referencing. They cost $350.00 and offer the most accuracy you can get in headphones for less than $500.00. They are a favorite in many professional mastering studios, where accuracy is extremely important. The MDR-7506 are very good and very popular in the industry, but certainly not the best at everything. Many people (amateurs and professionals) consider them excellent for certain tasks such as studio monitoring during recording sessions and are even common in radio, however, someone simply saying they are the best may be a good indicator that they haven't heard anything better.

If MDR's are half way decent I'm thinking maybe I just shouldn't be wearing headphones at all. I say that because I really wonder if it might be me - I feel like I'm losing my bearing on volumes and frequencies a little when I have em on and for some reason almost everything sounds good (untill I put it to a pair of normal off-head). Then again maybe with the synth/sequencer I have I'm thinking I can get great sounds out of something when I don't have all the limitation, compression, and all those other wonderful effects. Lol, I can't lie, I may have been at this for almost 7 years on and off now with wel over $1000 wrapped up at all times but I'm still disgustingly amateur with all this.

It depends on what you are wearing headphones for. If it is mixing, then certainly you should not be wearing headphones, they can be very deceptive, as you seem to be experiencing. Headphones in general are highly inadequate for mixing, although the Sennheisers are very close to my main monitors (I still don't completely trust them for mixing though). I would never even try to mix through the MDR's (without even trying I know the bass and treble ends would be all wrong when listening to the mix on anything else).

If it's just to monitor while recording tracks then the MDR's are hard to beat and you should not even be worried about EQ, or effects at that time. I never add effects to keyboard parts until the mixing process. I trust the MDR-7506's when setting up tones and tracking, but I will sometimes reference the tones in my monitors before I start recording if I have any doubts (usually with guitar parts). For most sounds the 7506's are accurate enough and besides it is easier to set the tones up with the headphones on instead of toggling back and forth between monitors and headphones.

The studio setup I have is better than many small professional ones (a very humbling concept for me to try to grasp), which is one thing that intrigues me about the Sennheiser HD600's. They are like a miniature version of my monitoring system that I can wear on my head. When I got them I thought I would be really impressed, but they sound almost identical to my monitors and even helped me pinoint some high frequency trim that my monitors needed. When my companion tried them she immediately said "they sound like the monitors." I guess my point is, it is hard to beat a nice set of monitors in well treated room.

With that said, I will babble a little more. I started out with far less than I have available to me now. I did the best I could with what I had and tried to be content with the results, but they were always worse than any commercial recording. I guess if someone can't afford to invest in really high quality stuff, or can't get access to any then they have to spend more time getting to know the gear they do have and how well things translate from it to other systems.

Hope all of that made some sense.

It is harder to set adequate monitoring levels when using headphones, this can make the results even more unpredictable.

The Behringer monitors seem to only be copies as far as appearance goes, at least to me (ever comapred them to Genelecs? If the Berry's were actually as good then studios everywhere would be using them, but as of yet I have not heard of a single (real) studio that does and I perseverate on studio setups and gear quite often at times).

Look at the Sennheiser HD600's before you spend $400.00 on headphones. They are very good and cheaper than the high-end Grado's that offer similar quality. If you want to spend a little more, get the Sennheiser HD650's. From what I have heard they are a little better then the 600's. Both are considered to be among the best headphones you can get. When we got the 600's my companion had called all over town to try to find them locally. When she asked Guitar Center if a cheaper set they were trying to sell us sounded as good as the 600's they said "they don't come close to the 600's, but we don't stock them because no one around here seems to be interested in that kind of quality."

I'm thinking about possibly just getting some good producing software - that would at least save me from buying tens of thousands of dollars worth of hardware. I may one of these days buy something like an Access Virus C or a used Waldorf Pulse Plus and then run it through a distortion pedal and a filter bank or two for some properly sickened, grimey, and swung-out basslines but aside from that it seems like the people who come out with the best tracks are the ones who still end up cutting and pasting the drum beats and using a more visual on-screen sequencer than what I use. I used to feel like that was cheating but then again drum&bass/jungle is so particular when it comes to drum character that you can know exactly how to make the beats and if you can't consistently find the right drum sounds than you might as well not break a sweat over it - even when many of the pro's maybe just make a few of their own drum loop samples to splice in and leave it at that.

I never actually A/B'ed them for a Side by side comparison, which is the most important test. However I remember the Genelecs had absolutely pristine HF with no coloration.--You heard EXACTLY what was recorded.

I've only heard Behrings playing back pre-recorded music for a breif time. They didn't sound HORRIBLE, but at the same time the accuacy just wasn't there.

For what it's worth, I also did a weight comparison with the Behringer, and found that even with the amp on the back of it, it was only a little heavier that cheap bookshelf speaker. --Not insanely good because that indicates cabinet resonance which will color sound.

The Genelec on the other hand (1029) felt like it wieghed about 25-30 pounds, which indicated that there would be no unwanted cabinet resonance. I'd definately go with a set of Genelecs, if I had the cash to shell out. If I was in a pinch, though I suppose I could live with the Reveals until I could scrape up the cash to get something better. --After all, people made do with Yamaha NS-10M's for a LONG time, and they sounded horrible.

Behringer gear to me is like PV gear for PA and musicians. Good enough until you can afford to get something better. --About the only place you'll see PV amps in a decent PA system is throwing LF to the floor wedges. Conversely, with PV guitar Ampification, even though some big name musicians have PV gear made for them, I doubt highly that they're using off the shelf PV gear. They're most likely using hand P2P wired prototypes. One Southern Rock band in particular had a PV backline that was given to them, but if you looked closely, the guitar players were using Plexi panel Marshalls and Hiwatts.

techstepgenr8tion,

Have you ever tried Reason, or Cakewalk Project 5?