Keeping up with low-end audio gear maker Behringer is getting harder, with their “87 products in 2005” promise. Here’s the latest:
The B-Control Nano BCN44 is a box with four knobs and four buttons, plus an LED. That’s it. It’s just a simple, programmable MIDI box, but it’s dirt cheap: US$64.99 /39 GBP, available now in Europe. (US availability soon.)
More interesting, though also infinitely more ugly, is the new Tweakalizer DFX69 DJ effects box. Aside from real-time scratch capabilities, the box has a BPM counter, transposition, full filter and EQ sections, and even LFO-driven delay and flanger effects. My personal favorite copy writing moment: “you can adjust track speed using the virtually inaudible Pitch Transposer.” Wow — did you say inaudible effects? Is it more like the digital silence of the Dead Quietenator, or the analog warmth of the Moogerfooger silence effect. (Sarcasm mode off)
Anyway, I have no idea what this thing sounds like as it’s also Europe-only at the moment, but it’s got that Behringer-low price: US$149.99 / 86 GBP. Behringer’s been awfully hit-or-miss, with some great kit (fantastic foot pedal box and motorized control surface) and some crap (mixers ranging from so-so to lousy), as readers have discussed at length here on CDM. We’ll wait and see. In the meantime, do you have a preferred real-time scratch system? Let us know.
Hold on! Thanks to the fact that I don’t reprint press releases, we’ve gotten through this whole story without any breathless PR prose! Here goes, in regards to the BCN44. Sure, it’s a box with four knobs on it, but remember, its “miniscule size doesn’t stop it from being a formidable contender for both studio and pure controller applications.” Its ability to run on a power adapter OR a battery gives you “the ultimate in ease of operation and mobility.” (This new “battery” thing is exciting, no?) Why, I’d say it’s “compact to the max and a price that simply blows you away!”
There, don’t you feel better now? Tune in tomorrow, same hype time, same hype channel.
The new product from Behringer in the 87,265,236 new produts rollout extravaganza that I'm really looking forward to is B-CONTROL DEEJAY BCD2000. If that thing actually works and they sell it for $150. I'll mess myself.
Yeah I posted about the BCD2000 a bit back on a blog about some of the other controllers coming out. For $150 if it really acts as a 4/4 sound card, an analogue mixer, and a midi/usb controller, I'm going to be ecstatic.