Behringer 3242X Eurorack Mixer

This mixer has a ton of routing options. I sat and stared at it for a couple of days while trying to figure out how to get everything I need connected to it. Now it works perfectly.

I use this mixer mostly for live gigs and it sounds great. I have Mackie, Soundcraft and Yamaha mixers also and it sounds as good as any of them.

I run three stereo keyboard feeds, five vocal mics, bass direct, lead guitar mic, sax mic, and three drum mics into the mixer and run sound from stage. Two monitor systems. I only use the internal effects on one mic channel since I have outboard efx units. It is just a fine mixer for a killer price.

I have been using it at live gigs nearly every weekend for a year with no problems whatsoever. It simply has not failed.

I own four other Behringer mixers and some Behringer outboard stuff..feedback destroyer, mic pre, etc. and never had any of it fail.

I have no idea. I did have my Behringer feedback destroyer pop the transformer. I sent it in and recieved the repaired unit, still under warranty, within two weeks.

But not one of my Behringer mixers has ever failed.

I play classic rock, blues, disco, funk, old rock and roll, R & B, etc. in a show band. I also use it in my studio as a sub mixer for my eight bus board and as a sub mixer for my keyboards.

It simply has features no other mixer has at any price. 16 mic inputs and and additional 16 line inputs, plus routing that is more extensive than any rack mount mixer made.

I am not a big fan of the massive power supply, but since it seems to keep the board clean and quiet, what's another six pounds of weight?

I suggest anyone who is afraid to take this mixer to a gig is wrong. Mine has never failed in over a year of weekend gigs.

If it was stolen I would replace it..Unless I had the bucks for an Allen & Heath PA 20. But I can buy THREE of these mixers for the cost of the A & H board, and that board doesn't have anywhere near the features of the Behringer.

Easy. Pretty straightforward. Having 32 directs is why I bought it for my home studio.

Sounds pretty clean.clean enough that only the nit pickers will notice the headroom issues. "Breathes nicely" meaning it seems to be bright. The EQ is very good for this price range.

Absolutely not!!!! The first one I bought, the FX died two days later. The local service rep replaced the whole board. Pretty cool. Then, exactly 15 months into a 12 month warranty, the whole board dies! Just tanks on me. After a dozen calls, I finally get a guy @ Behringer who helps me out. I call the servie rep back, he warranties my power supply (Which is what all the service people said it was). Nope! The entire board and PSU have to go back to a repair facility (out of state, none within 200 miles, and I live in Pittsburgh!) All they cared about when I first called was that I had to pay for it! The product, issue, & reliability be damned.

Mostly sucks. The customer is always wrong, the product is always perfect, YOu must be the problem. Total attitude from the get go, and I was a service department manager at two motorcycle dealerships, so I know how to talk on the phone! Finally, ONE GUY @ HQ helped, he offered to sell me a PSU at his price out the door. THat makes one out of nine that I spoke to over 11 months. They suck, they want your money, and except for one or two people, they just don't care.it's YOUR problem!

If it was reliable, I'd give it a 9 for it's features, smooth 100mm faders, flexability and routing capabilities. Unfortunately, their customer service sucks, the lack of factory authorized repair facilities is a major issue. They don't like to sell parts to anyone, they are headquartered overseas (A major contributing factor-they have the european issue-they love our money, and they hate us) schematics are a trifle wrong(!) and the major issue is this. 0 for two! Two boards, both had major failures. Never again will I buy or recommend Behringer anything to any of my clients. It's too bad, too. This board was great when it worked. Probably will be again, when I get it fixed. But the poor, ignorant "cuss-tumor" service is absolutely inexcusable. PS> Anyone else who experienced problems, please email me, I need help with this!

I bought this mixer to integrate my home studio (DP/Mac/MOTU 828mkII, Oasys PCI, external synths, sampler, drum machines). It has all the features of a "real" board: 16 strips, each with dual inputs, 4 subgroups, 6 aux, and all the inserts and routing you could want. I like the layout a lot, for a rack mixer it's great and everything is visible from a distance.

Also, you can switch which input goes thru the channel strip, which can be handy. Each channel's suppementary input has only level and pan, so the flip switch can save you repatching sometimes.

If you've never run a setup like this it'll be a challenge getting used to the routings and wondering "why don't I hear it now?". But for this price it's a great education. The manual is very good, like all the Behringer manuals I've seen; except the English is sometimes awkward. Every notice the expression "you have the possibility to..." instead of "you can..."? Must be a German thing. Anyway, if you're a veteran you'll be right at home; novices should have patience. No rating because it's "easy" if you know what you're doing.

Okay, I didn't buy this for the preamps, I needed a line mixer for 32 sources; but it turns out to sound very good, even the preamps. Like any mixer of this type, you've got to look after your gain staging; but once your levels are right, what goes in is what comes out.

The mic pres are very clean, will take a pretty hot signal and give you a decent ammount of gain when needed. If you're not pushing too hard you get a pleasant clear sound; no coloring or warmth, but pretty true up into the high frequencies. There's a clipping edge that can be good for some uses, but generally it's not attractive. There's a ton of headroom before you reach that stage though.

The EQ surprised me. Very flexible, clean and useful. I really like it for drum sounds, but it's perfect for a slight tweak on anything. You wouldn't want to shape a bass sound with it, but you can get subtle shades of midrange.

Mind you, these strips are better suited to an already good input. For my purpose (basically a hyped up line mixer) they're great. I've used mics through it and it wasn't bad. If I wanted a clear bright sound I might go there first, but generally I like a tube stage on the way to disc.

Overall, it's a good clean sounding mixer. If you're just putting digitally produced output through it like me, it does the job really well. For the money it's definitely a 9. People like to trash cheap gear, and this isn't going to make anything sound "silky" or "smooth"; but your Moog will sound the same coming out as it did going in. If you're cranking all 16 preamps with SM57s I'm sure the mix would sound suitably trashy.

The FX section is nothing. Okay to put some reverb into the headphone mix for trackng, otherwise pretend it's not there.

Here's what you pay for. I won't swear to it, but I don't think this would last too many live gigs. The case is a little thinner than Mackie's. The hardware is all about the same with the exception of the faders which are much nicer; smooth, long-throw, and after 18 months they still stay where I put them.

The knobs and switches, again; smooth, no noise and still working after 18 months. However, I'm realistic. I don't treat it very roughly, I work the faders and knobs without pressing down on them, I push the buttons to the click, not down to the metal.

Rack mounted at home it's great; at a gig with a few drinks in me, I'm sure I could trash it in a night. I'm not sure on that since i haven't tried it but that's my impression. It might surprise me there as well! If you treat it like you wold an expensive piece of gear it should last.

One weak spot is the rear panel connector for the power supply. I'd heard this board was a dog from a friend who saw 3 of them short at the power connector. I got a good deal and decided to give it a (returnable) shot. When I first plugged it in there was a glitch when I knocked the connector, so it seems it could use a sturdier part there. But I leave it racked and I've immobilized the cable, so no troubles.

I think a 7 is an honest valid rating for "real" world general purposes. It might last 100 gigs worth of hard use, but my guess is that a 10 foot drop would kill it. For my uses at home, it's like new after 18 months moderate use (and I bought a B-stock). I haven't worn off any of the markings because I don't really touch them.

Here in NYC a well known shop handles Behringers service. I called them about an upgrade for a different piece of gear and they were helpful, but they didn't know what I was talking about. So I assume they'd do a good repair job, but Behringer service is just a small part of their business. You're likely to find the same elsewhere.

I emailed Behringer once and they were as good as any other big company with hundreds of products. I got a semi-answer in 2 days.

I don't expect much in support these days. The warranty is a legal document for a reason: that's all they give for the price you paid. What sucks is a $2000 piece of gear with a 1 year coverage.

I'm a player, recording at home since the Tascam Portastudio first came out. I've worked on other people's projects in real studios, but my engineering experience is mostly all in home setups. I've worked with numerous boards over 30 years and I'm pretty tech savvy for a guitar player. I lived with a 70's Soundcraftsman board for a while, one friend had a old Trident 32x8 and another actually had a weird thing hand built by Roger Mayer. So I'm no "pro engineer', but I've been around.

I was going to get the Mackie, then I saw the 32 inputs, and really a lot more features. I had a Mackie and wouldn't say it sounded better than this. This is almost subliminally "brighter"; not a sound, just a feeling like there's a little more air.

I would buy another one of these. They actually have some way of hooking two together for 64 inputs.

If you want to use it the way I do, it's a great buy. It's a lot of functionalty for the home studio, packed into a rack mounted package with pretty good ergonomics. I have it mounted with 4 screws in the top 8 spaces of an angled rack. If you've got thick fingers it might feel cramped.

I only wish we could make this kind of gear here in the US; but who can work for a dollar a day when it costs 100 to live?

I would give the overall a 9 if the power connector was better. I'd give it a 10 if it also seemed more roadworthy.

It is a dual mixer => 16 lines with all a mic line should have (gain, parametric EQ, auxes, subgroups), plus another 16 line level inputs in parallel. It is bit confusing at first, but there is a number of routing posibilities one can achieve. That's actually why I bought it => more routing, namely more AUXes for monitors

It could be bit easier, or say, more intuitive, though. Behringer tried to squeeze plenty of controls on a relatively small space, which makes especially the "shadow" 16-line mixer not as easy to understand. Being 32 line unit, it could have larger frame and slightly better layout of controls

The mixer is also somewhat clumsy for its triangular shape => takes a lot of space when transporting, while in real life you seldom need to rotate the connectors under the mixer. As for the mechanics, it could have been designed bit better.

A real ugly thing is the mandatory external power supply. It's not only noisy (because of the fan), heavy and taking almost three unit of the rack space, but the fan also blows for almost half of its size into the metalic frame of the power supply. Believe me or not, this whole thing feels like the fan being a lst minute addition to the design...

Sound as usual for Behringer mixers .... basically OK for the money paid, but still behind what a clear soud should be. It is good to remember that any noise itself decreases the mixer dynamic range and eats power wherever it goes.

If I remember right, the dual parametric EQ worked quite fine. But I sold the mixer away, due to quality and clarity reasons.

Built-in effect processor is quite OK for live gigs, but not for studio usage, in my opinion

It got partially broken three times before I sold it out. Two times some problem with signal level indicators, once an entire channel went off. I used the mixer exactly once on a life gig, and I was worried all the time what breaks next.

Secondly, it also looks that the power supply does not have enough headroom to run the mixer in all cases. After chaining all 16 inputs using direct outs (i.e. so that the very same signal ran through all channels), the mixer simply wouldn't keep up with the load anymore. Different things hapenned, like lines getting randomly mute, etc. Sure, this is not the way signal runs throuhg any console in real life, but then .... since there are so many LEDs there, I wanted to see them all work ;)

Anyway, three points as reliability rating, not because of the power headroom issue, but because sharing stage with that mixer got me worried right from the day zero...

BTW: Being curious, I also openned the box just to see what's inside. Sure, all boards made somewhere in Asia (as the local technician confirmed), some of them fixed by hand after dropping off the production line....

Didn't contact - got it fixed those broken bits locally

I'm glad I got rid off it, and I would never consider buying it again. May be useful in some home studio, but certainly not a tool for live gigs.

Just a word of caution when fitting the supplied rack ears.The middle screw beside the headphone jack needs to be shortened or it will the hit the jack.Come on Behringer PISS POOR!

If you have a reasonable knowledge of mixer operation then the 3242X is simple to use straight out of the box.The owners manual is there if you get into trouble,but generally you only should have to use the for reference

I was not expecting a Neve spec mixer but when i put a C.D through the desk and run the E.Qs very hard ,i could not believe how quiet the 3242X was!i then tried my old trusty SM57 and was astounded that this cheap mixer was so good,noise wise.The E.Q.section was clean,smooth and responsive.

The build quality of Behringer is on the cheap side.I would not like to take this on the road.I think for studio use,reliability wont be a problem

I play many styles and play few different instruments so i have bought tens of thousands of dollars of gear in that time.I buy things to get the job done,not to look at and talk about.I could have bought Yamaha,Mackie,Soundcraft etc.but for features,sound quality and bang for buck i am extremely happy wiyh my Eurorack3242X mixer