Behringer X32 - Compact or Producer?

[Rik (ESA)]

Hi all, looking for some general guidance...

I have an opportunity to buy one of the above second hand, but I’m struggling to decide which to go for. Is there anything beyond the scribble strip that makes the Compact more appealing? I must say that this feature looks terrific, however the footprint and rack-mount-ability of the producer, and indeed lower price makes it a tough choice...

I’d welcome the views of anyone with any experience / knowledge of these mixers please!

Thanks in advance.

Rick

[SubsonicSimpleton]

Check the prices of new units at gear4music - Behringer have been making some very aggressive price cuts recently.

Might be worth investigating the remote control apps for the X32 which are freely available - if using the remote app would work for you, and 16 inputs is sufficient, the rack version might be worth consideration.

[Rik (ESA)]

Thanks very much for the reply. My band currently use a Soundcraft UI16, which has been great in truth, however there are concerns with the reliance on wireless mixing only, which was why we were looking at the physical fader option again. I must say, the rack version of the X32 looks a great price!

Thanks again.

[SubsonicSimpleton]

I think you need to use an external router on the X32 rack for wireless remote control, so I don't think the same anxiety about poor quality built in wireless applies in this case. Given the price cuts even if you are set on having physical faders it's worth looking at the cost/risk/benefits of used vs new (producer version is under a grand).

[Rik (ESA)]

Agreed, I’ll certainly look into that! Thanks again for the help.

[SubsonicSimpleton]

One other point worth mentioning is that Behringer doesn't seem to put much effort into iOS developement, and their track record on bugfixing and timely updates for new iterations of iOS is pretty poor - might be worth giving this thread a read

https://forum.musictribe.com/showthread.php?11342-Best-App-Platform-for-remote-control-of-X32-mixers

Hopefully someone else will weigh in when they see this thread, I'm pretty sure that we have a couple of X32 owners on here - just to be clear, I thought that it was worth mentioning the big price drops as @EBS_freak noticed this a couple of weeks ago and we were speculating why in another thread. I don't own an X32 myself, so I'm not suggesting that you make a buying decision based on my advice - the extra expense of the producer/compact version isn't necessarily a negative, when you look at some of the solutions that other people are suggesting for remote control.

[Count Bassy]

Generally big price drops means that they're trying to cl;ear stock before launching a new product. (assuming that the company is not in trouble)

[EBS_freak]

3 hours ago, Count Bassy said:

Generally big price drops means that they're trying to cl;ear stock before launching a new product. (assuming that the company is not in trouble)

Price drops only seem to be in Europe though.