Ponderings On Audio Equipment, Music, and Whatever Else I Feel Like
Line 6 has a new entry in their POD lineup, the Floor POD Plus. Based on the POD 2.0, with some added extra effects, and built into a foot controller chassis, the Floor POD Plus fills the gap between the Floor POD and the POD XT Live. It’s priced at a reasonable $300.00 USD.
Buy the Shure E4 at zZounds for $299.99 (Jan. 14, 2007)
I wrote a short mini-review on the Shure E4 headphones a while back, but I wanted to do a more thorough review and haven’t gotten around to it until now. To start, the Shure E4’s are a well-regarded set of in-ear monitors priced around the middle of the in-ear market ($200-$300). As good quality in-ears they are appropriate for stage monitor use, shutting out the noise when you’re in a plane, or just for regular use with your iPod. You could even just use them as your regular headphones, though I find in-ears in general are not ideal for that application.
Shure has announced a new line of in-ear monitors. As with the old E-line, it targets both professionals and discerning consumers. The SE210, SE310, SE420, and SE530 range from a set of single driver in-ears at around $150 MSRP to triple drivers with an internal crossover at $450 MSRP. No word on how these stack up to the existing E-series yet. Apparently they are being marketed with the Push-To-Hear (PTH) accessory from the E500 available but optional.
For those of you who don’t know, Behringer is a German company that does their manufacturing in China. They’re an audio equipment company that seems to specialize in copying existing designs from other manufacturers. While I believe they do have some original equipment, many of their products are “ripoffs” sold at a much lower price than the original. It’s always obvious that they’re Behringer products, and there’s no attempt to fool the customer, but sometimes even the names are not so subtle hints as to which products they’re emulating (Xenyx vs. Onyx anyone?).
If you lurk around various internet forums involving pro audio equipment, you’ll quickly find that people are usually pretty polarized about Behringer. Some people love the great value, and the fact that equipment formerly only available to the pro is made available (through a lower price) to the amateur. Others are upset at the blatant copying, and go as far as to advocate and practice boycott of the company. Still others are merely leery, citing poor build quality.
Buy it at zZounds for $999.95/pair (Dec. 6, 2006)
It’s been a long wait getting these speakers setup. OK, actually it’s only been a week or two, but it sure feels like a long time. First of course I had to wait for all my new equipment to arrive. The speakers themselves really didn’t take all that long and arrived earlier this week, but the cables and audio interface (Echo Layla3G, I’ll write more about it in another post some other day) took a little longer to arrive. I then found that the TRS plugs on my cables were too thick to fit into Layla3G one above the other which is necessary seeing as the outputs are linked in left/right pairs. Sigh. Anyway, I got around that by using unbalanced cables with smaller connectors to my mixer, and then outputting a balanced signal to the speakers. I am actually starting to feel like it’d be nice to have one of those control centers like the Mackie Big Knob Control Center, but it just seems like a lot of money just for essentially a mixer with a big volume control, so I think I’ll live with my mixer for now. Anyway, onto the review…
I remember hearing about the revolution of digital guitars a few years back and that Gibson was going to convert 100% to digital guitars or something of the like. I never really heard much about it after that though… till now! Take a look here, Gibson is finally coming out with their digital guitars, though it’s quite expensive ($4000). Don’t think I’ll pick one up quite yet… If you’re interested in this sort of thing you might also take a look at Line 6’s Variax lineup. Gibson’s looks way more polished, though really they’re quite a different product. Though both have digital outs, the Variax is a pure digital guitar with a focus on modelling where Gibson’s is more just a analog/digital guitar hybrid, where the focus is on… well, just being a guitar.
We just got new desktops at work this past week that happen to have the new(ish) SoundMAX audio chipset. It’s excellent quality, and is probably the best built-in audio I’ve ever heard. (I haven’t heard the nForce SurroundStorm chipset, so unfortunately I can’t compare with that well-regarded built-in chipset.) I have a pair of Sony MDR-V600’s that I use for casual listening, and in the past it’s always sounded mediocre at best. Now I wouldn’t say they sound amazing now, and I’m sure that part of it is that with these headphones I’ve been mostly listening off of laptops which tend not to power large headphones very well, but the sound is much crisper and more detailed than it was before. I haven’t bothered to do extensive tests (I’m working when I’m at work :)), but let’s just say it was an obvious enough difference that it surprised me immediately when I started listening.
Buy the Shure E4 at zZounds for $299.99 (Dec. 3, 2006)
Although not cheap, the Shure E4’s are a great set of in-ears. I use mine on a regular basis on stage as in-ear monitors. It blocks out stage noise quite well, and sounds great! These are also an excellent replacement for whatever earbuds came with your iPod or other digital audio player…
(Reposted from old site)
Buy it at zZounds for $99.99 (Dec. 4, 2006)
The Behringer V-AMP 2 is a budget amp modeler, quite similar to Line 6’s POD 2.0, but aimed to undercut it. I purchased this modeler because while our band usually has only one electric guitar (me), we wanted to try something different on a song or two. Although we had a good experience with Line 6’s POD 2.0, the V-AMP 2 seemed to be reasonably well-regarded, so at half the price I decided to give it a shot.
Buy it at zZounds for $44.95 (Dec. 3, 2006)
The Behringer UB802 is a great little mixer for a low cost. I’ve used mine regularly for about a year now for my in-ear monitor mix (with my trusty Shure E4 in-ears) on stage without any problems. I’m quite careful with my equipment though.(Update: 12/3/2006. I’ve run into a problem. 
My left out on the main outputs seems to be broken, sigh. Along with what seems to be broken DI at church and some other complaints from friends with UB-series mixers, I’m starting to have some misgivings about Behringer. I have a post in queue about them that I’ll finish sometime.)
I also use another UB802 (not mine) on a regular basis that has taken a bit more abuse and the XLR jacks or underlying connections seem to be slightly loose, which is problematic. I may open it up and try to repair it myself sometime. (Note: It seems that the problem may have been with the mic cable I was using and not the mixer, though the jacks are slightly loose…) The quality of these mixers don’t match up to the quality of higher end mixers, but then again the price doesn’t get anywhere close either!
The UB802 has two microphone preamps which are a nice touch for something this cheap. As with pretty much all mixers, it’s advertised as more channels than the way a normal non-marketing person would count it. There are two channels with preamps which can take XLR or 1/4″. Two stereo 1/4″ channels (2 x 2 makes four, right? heh), a tape channel, and an FX send/return.
It uses an inline power supply, so while there’s no wall wart, the proprietary power is still a slight annoyance. Why can’t we all just use IEC connectors? Sigh, but I can live with that. It’d probably be too expensive to fit a power supply into that small of a board anyway.
Bottom line, it’s a great cheap little mixer if you’re willing to deal with some possible quality issues…
