Midas M32 Vs Behringer X32 Sonic Differences (Public)

All right I'm Dave Rat and today I'm going to  be looking at the Midas m32 and Behringer x32   which is super interesting because Behringer also  makes the Midas m32 so it's a Behringer Midas m32   versus a Behringer Behringer x32 because Behringer  bought Midas a premium console manufacturer out of   England and has put out two competing consoles  at different price points this is in the   "under $3000" range $2500 or so  $2600 and this is the $4000 range so   almost fifty percent ish more for this one but  they have exactly the same interface same software   different knob qualities little stuff is different  the form factor is different the screen is more   kind of tilted this one I can see while  I'm sitting down it's kind of nice   there's a lot of smart people out there that  are really good at testing stuff with high   quality expensive equipment and creating  all kinds of specifications charts graphs   distortion phase all kinds of measurements now  I can do some of that stuff I don't consider   myself a super skilled expert at it but I  can do it but that's not what I'm going to do   there are also a lot of people out there that  have very strong opinions and they will put out   information and make strong statements like there  are differences between them and these are those   differences and they make a huge difference  and the sound is this the sound is that   but no real backup either just kind of these   strong opinions based on something they read  or looking at maybe a picture of the inside I believe the preamps are different I've  seen pictures that show they're different but   how different are they so I'm going to  approach this from a different angle   somewhere in between those two  I'm not going to go super spec'y   and I'm not going to do super opinion I'm just  going to test it out and see what is audible what   we can hear and then you can determine whether or  not that's relevant for your application now the   other video i did when i took a first look I  did notice the XLR connectors were different   uh these have all nitric connectors you can tell  by a little circle with an n and a t on the metal   push tab of the female connectors and you can look  down inside the male connectors you see they're   all Neutrik branded this has neutral connectors  maybe four of them the ethercon's in the back   the lamp four pin lamp connector and maybe  another one or two back there all the rest   are an imitation they actually have a logo  that looks similar to a nitric but not a trick   i believe the same goes true for the quarter  inches there's definitely a difference between   the quarter inches i haven't opened it up and  look to make sure they're nitric on this one   but there is a difference whether that matters  for you i don't know it definitely raises the cost   uh to build it um so i've got the two consoles set  up here test rig i've got a pink noise generator   here my handy dandy sound bullet awesome piece um  i've got a tone generator here um frequency scent   that i can just go like 100 millivolts at 500  hertz and um there we have it although it put   5500 hertz in um and i've got this cool Dorroughs  meter here which has got uh 1 db accuracy   and i've got a music player here that  i can play music on and i'm recording   everything on this little tech recorder here  for the video so you'll be able to hear what   the consoles are actually doing now  right now i've got the console set up   for a what i call the cancel cancel noise  test and oh let me preface this by saying   um some of these differences were surprisingly  less than i expected and i found at least one that   was surprisingly more than expected things were  not quite what i thought they were going to be   okay so i've got this um those three noise  sources running into a sound tools mic   switcher an A-B-C switcher so this should be  tone that's pink noise and that's music and i   can send it to both consoles it's going a bunch  of y adapters so that both consoles are seeing   two versions of the same signal all four  versions same two instances of the same signal um   channel faders one two eight are seeing they're  all digitally linked together single input drives   the eight first eight faders and nine through  sixteen is coming out the other side of the Y and   one through eight and nine through sixteen  identical everything all every db every 10th   of a db is set identically on both consoles  and so that one signal hits those four places   now what i can do is these null tests i can  start to use the consoles against each other   and against themselves so i've got channel  one taking that signal with a very high gain   and let me move that underneath that and we should  hear the pink very high gain and a low fader   and i've got channel nine with a low gain and a  high fader so channel one we should be getting   up into or we can get up into the um preamp   uh overdrive and the preamp so when i set this up  generator here at -30 we're just we're flashing   just below clip there the last led before  clip so we're driving the preamp pretty hard   on the first eight channels i've only got one  of them turned up and then i've got this here   let's see what i've got here and that one there  yes i've got um channel 9 with a polarity reverse   with a very low gain and a high fader so we can  look at the preamp driven hard versus the preamp   not driven hard and take those signals sum them  together for a null so they're cancelling each   other out and hear what's left over what we  should hear would be the difference between   the two it should be preamp coloration i'll  put my headphones on let's give this a shot   so whoa dad that's loud so let's  go ahead and turn that down and there's our signal and a bite that is  the signal of the pink noise with the pre   amp driven hard and the fader down low this is the  amp low fader high and i'm gonna go back and forth high fader locator now i'm gonna believe  it's hard to hear much difference let's go ahead and turn them both on  out of polarity and see what happens   and we get cancellation so now we  can check that cancellation if i go   here and i go here i can this fader  is at minus 20. i can change the fader oops i went the wrong way okay there we go  i'm altering so if i bring the fader down you can hear the cancellation goes away so  let's go ahead and gain that up and that's   what we hear that's the part that's not being  canceled out so let's go ahead and try it here you can hear the cancellations  just a bit off there   so that's the effect of driving the preamp  hard now what i'm going to do now is drive   it really hard into clipping and we'll hear  what the clipping of the preamp sounds like turn it down and you can hear this crunching sound  um now that's the preamp clipping if   i turn off uh it's going to blast  if i get rid of the cancellation all right so there's the midas preamp  clipping with the initial signal canceled   out using pink noise let's go ahead and  do the same thing on the other console and i've got this exact same thing  set up here i can try and picture it there is the sound of the um x32 with  the signal no doubt with pink noise   so there's the clipping sound and  then they'll go back to the midas okay so you should be able to hear it the actual  crackling that the digital distortion is um   quite similar between the two so running  these um consoles in the clip on the mic pre   is an audible crackle that um is very  undesirable and that's not going to   sound good at all but you might have also  noticed that there is a background hiss   that is higher in level on the x 32 than  there is on the minus let's try it again minus okay let's make sure that's not  um my cancellation setup okay um i found that to be a little  puzzling um for two reasons one first   of all i expected there to be much  more coloration caused by the mic pre driven hard i was expecting this midas mike  pre to even though they say they both have   midas mike p the minus pro mic pre to  be warmer or introduce some sort of um delightful coloration that didn't happen on the  behringer or maybe not digitally clipped the same   but that's not what i found i found that they both  have this crappy clip sound that is the same don't   overdrive these into the red but what i did find  is there's more noise in the x32 so the difference   in preamp at least with the pink noise test  doesn't seem to be in the warmth or coloration   of the overdriven preamp but it has it there's  something to do with a lower noise floor so i want   to investigate that further but before we do let's  go ahead and try some music and some other signals   with the same test so let's go to music here  and i'm gonna put this on this one my friends um uh gave me this to play Riarosa Better Than  Nothing thank you let's do crank this up so now   this is the behringer with music in the null mode and we're driving the preamps just below clip   and this is the residual sound that  can't be cancelled out through the null and we'll do the midas on this same thing okay i so like the level changes a  bit but the the actual coloration minus oh that's kind of interesting we're able to get a better no on the midas so what we are seeing here at least in  this test and it's not a super accurate   i'm seeing that maybe there's a bit more  coloration in the behringer mic pre run hard   and the midas pro preamp is a little more linear  we hear a lot of low end so there's some warmth   coming out now it's either the preamp getting thin  or the ramp getting thick i don't know the two   let's try something else let's try um something kind of fun now taking this further um i can actually take the two consoles and cancel  them again against each other so if i mute here   and if i mute here and then if i  take these two out we should now hear the difference between console 1 and console 2. i'm actually  driving out of polarity signal from the x32   and an in polarity signal from the m32 into two  channels here and i'm summing them nulling them and what we're hearing there is the difference  between the two console mike priest driven hard   we can also go through and mute that and listen  to the differences of the mic pre-driven soft um i don't know how useful that test is other than showing that there is a  difference in the sound of the two consoles   and maybe not even a difference in the sound of  the two consoles but at least the difference in   phase or timing that causes that a slight shift  in time coming out would cause that brightness   to show up more than the low end which  requires a larger shift to cancel   let's get back to that hiss or  noise so i messed around with this and i kept looking for that i tried  driving consoles up preamps up i do   i started um doing everything they could to  find that hiss and turns out i was able to   find it let's go ahead and take a look at  this noise issue that we ran into earlier   now we heard more noise coming from the x32 in  the no mode and theoretically if the noise was   the same on both channels the noise should null  out and actually it did i was actually not able to   find the noise in the knowing or the preamp yet  but what i did find was i took the output cable   that's going into this console the little console  and i hooked it up to this duros meter here and   plugged it into one console and plugged  it into the other and what i noticed was let's listen to it so i'm going to do a kind of an  off speed set on that where instead of me getting   up and plugging them into the console right now  i'm just i've got the gain set on this console at   three quarter and i will bring up one console and  then the other console so let's bring up the midas   this is with the output muted and now bring up the behringer and as you can tell there's a  significant difference in level now   just to show you that it's not even  if these gains are a little off i'll move that gain a little bit i mean it's not um there's more noise   and what's fascinating is it has nothing to do  with the outputs being on you can take an xlr   cable i can take an xlr cable and plug it into any  single output on the back and it makes that same   hiss and i can plug it into any output on the back  of the minus and it makes less hit so they're just   inherently noise floor output level so i was like  okay this is puzzling um what does it say in the   spec and that's where it even got more interesting  so i've got the specs printed out here for the   midas and the behringer this is the minus one  and this is the behringer one and let's go to   the noise spec here where it says output impedance  is 75 ohms on the x32 and 50 ohms on the lightest   okay so what does it make much of a difference  the mac non-clip output level is plus 21 here dbu   then oh that's for the trs and the trs max output  we'll test that let's get into this noise okay   residual noise level residual noise level on the  xlr and trs on the x32 is minus 87 dbu a weighted   on the midas the residual noise level  on the trs monitor out xlr connectors oh wait no residual noise level output  1 through 16 xlr connectors is minus 85   at 22 hertz to 22k unweighted so all the specs  the residual noise specs on the midas are rated at   minus 85 dbu 22 to 20k unweighted and on the  x32 they only give one spec which is xlr and   heroes which is minus 87 dbu A weighted so  this actually minus 87 is quieter than -83 4db quieter so if you just glanced at the two  specs you would think this console was 4 db   quieter but this is unweighted and this is a  weighted and if you're familiar with waiting   a weighted rolls off all the low end it focuses  right around the speech it's a speech based sound   so a measurement system so  if something went shh and unweighted the would be louder and a weighted  the would be quieter and the one that goes would be louder so what that's saying is that  they're filtering out in that spec all of the low   and in the noise spec and printing something that  looks like it's quieter when it's actually noisier   um fascinating to see how spec sheets how  specs can be buried and manipulated by   changing unweighted just two letters to a single  letter on to a and give the impression that   this board is of the same output noise um haven't  found any other little gems like that i did see   some in there but none that i've tested yet um  cool cool that's it for today and um i will dive   in to some more let me know any questions and  um stuff you'd like me to look at i don't want   to do a bunch of tech spec stuff but um if there's  something you think you hear and um maybe relevant   let me know and i'll see if i can find a way to  test it and see if we can listen to it cool cool

Channel: Dave Rat

Views: 112,319

Keywords: Dave Rat, Pro Audio, Rat Sound., Mixing Tips, Pro Audio Mixing, Pro Sound, Live Sound, SoundTools, Rat Sound Systems, Audio Engineer, Sound Engineer

Id: aKfhsPhZPmM

Length: 23min 50sec (1430 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 30 2021