Behringer

Mini Reviews | Reviews
107
Rhythm Organism | £60
timespace.com
A DVD devoted to didgeridoo
grooves. Wow. Just consider
it for a moment: someone,
somewhere, has decided that
there is a big enough
Electronic didgeridoo music
production scene to justify releasing a
sixty quid sample disc catered for it. A
recent Australian book, The Daring Book
for Girls, incurred the wrath of Aboriginal
leaders, who believe that the didgeridoo is
strictly a male instrument which must not
be played by women. The perfect timing of
this DVD is surely not coincidental. If you
are a female didgeridoo-based Electronic
musician who doesn’t wish to offend
indigenous Australians, there is absolutely
no doubt that this is the ideal product for
you. Greg Scarth
9/10
Tony Franklin – Not Just
Another Pretty Bass |
£50
scvlondon.co.uk
Fretless bass master Tony
Franklin presents this pack
of 1051 bass samples, most
of them with a distinct
Rocky flavour. Samples from
the Sony Sound Series are
provided in Acidized 24-bit WAV format
only, which may be a turnoff to some but
overall, this is a solid double-CD package
which never quite offers anything to get
too excited about. Take note, purveyors of
blandly titled discs: even the clumsiest
pun earns you an extra point in the FM
rating system. Moog River, Hammond
Cheese, Sax on the Beats, Wuthering
Hihats – just a few ideas to get you
started. Don’t disappoint us. Greg Scarth
6/10
T
his budget offering from
Behringer is a phantom-
powered omnidirectional
cardioid mic with a flat
frequency response from 15Hz to
20kHz, designed purely as a
measurement mic.
Behringer suggest that you use
the ECM8000 with their EQs to
create an custom equalisation curve
for your room, levelling the frequency
response of your monitoring setup.
You can, of course, use software or
other manufacturers’ hardware to do
the same job – I measured the
response of my studio monitors using
FuzzMeasure Pro, which plays a sine
wave sweep through the speakers and
measures the resulting sound. Even
straight out of the box the ECM8000
produced revealing results.
For most of us, the price of the
Behringer’s more accurate rivals is
prohibitive, but the ECM (which
comes bundled with a mic stand clip,
foam wind shield and plastic case)
provides usable results for a fraction
of the price of most of the
competition. It’s difficult to argue
with the ECM8000 as a useful tool to
get the most out of your monitoring
setup. Greg Scarth
8/10
Behringer
ECM8000 |
£46
behringer.com
D
esktop speakers are
somewhat overlooked by
the studio connoisseur in
all of us. But what is also
overlooked is that fact that a huge
number of potential listeners do so on
standard multimedia speakers. A
good pair of desktop speakers could
reveal horrors in your mix – not always
for the best reasons, but your
potential fans won’t care about that.
Altec Lansing have long-fronted
the PC-speaker market, churning out
a bunch of computer-audio products
for the past 70 years, so no surprises
that they’re the first to offer
consumer’s 2.2 desktop speakers in
the form of the FX3022s. Shaped like
two tiny traffic cones, the FX3022s
house a subwoofer at the base of
each cone. I do find that most
multimedia speakers hype the
bottom-end to impress the consumer,
wiping out any low-frequency
subtleties the producer had in mind,
so I was sceptical of two sub bad boys
grabbing hold of my DAW or iTunes.
At first, they sound very rounded
– a little too rounded. The high-mid is
relatively dull until you are perfectly
sat in the sweet spot, where the high
suddenly appears and everything
sounds great. The rubber feet on the
base are designed to give the subs
some breathing room, but, because of
their flat nature, tend to just vibrate
the whole surface they’re sat on.
There’s no headphone socket either,
although there are two ins, Input and
Aux. The volume control is in a ‘+’
and ‘-‘ form, which can be annoying
when you want to turn down in a
hurry. Altec seem to have gone for
design over practicality.
For the price, you would expect a
wider sweet spot and an even
frequency spread, however, if you
want to make your iTunes or your
mixes sound over-hyped to impress
your mates, they’re perfect.
Otherwise, I’d look elsewhere.
Declan McGlynn
6/10
Altec Lansing
FX3022 | £100
alteclansing.com
FMU207.rev_mini 107 14/10/08 3:47:51 pm