Behringer DSP1124 Feedback Destroyer

The manual is a tough read, but anyone with a middle school education should be able to handle it. It's dry and technical. Read it over a couple of times and refer to it when setting the unit up and you should be alright. As far as editing patches, the buttons and knobs do exactly what they are supposed to do. I get a noticable amount of extra volume using the 1124. We either use Bose PAS which are behind the band, begging to feedback, or at larger shows we use individual 12" monitor boxes with Eminence speakers and horns with 900 watts per channel. I use mine on a channel insert along with a decent compressor, and a Behringer effcts unit. The sound is excellent! I get no noticable change in my sound, and MUCH more gain before feedback. Just be sure that you are giving enough signal. It shows on the LEDs on the front. If there's not enough signal, it will whine, chirp, and hiss. But with just the right amount of gain it is un-noticable in your sound, other that can give you a substantial increase in volume. The fact that it is stereo gives you 2 mics with feedback reduction. At a $99 price tag, that's only about $50 per mic to really help you get your vocal mics to where you can hear them.

This unit is fantastic. I've been playing music since the 1960's, and I'm VERY sceptical when it comes to music gear. This unit helps me to actually get my vocal mic loud enough to be heard on stage. There is no distortion, and the only bad sounds it makes is if the input level is wrong. That would be whining or chirping if too low, or digital clipping if too high. It's really easy to find an acceptable level. Dedicate an hour or two to setting it up before you use it live. My band uses no stage amps, and we run a complete mix through both monitors and mains. If you set this thing up right, you can point your mic directly at the monitor speaker and hear it grabbing feedback. Buy one for every two vocal mics and you're set. I have had NO issues with this unit! It is super easy to use and gives instant results.

I have had No problems with mine. I bought it used off eBay. I downloaded a free manual from the Behringer website. I use it 2 or 3 times a week and it works flawlessly. I have no reason to expect to need a backup. I have gotten VERY good results with Behringer products.

I have had no reason to contact the company. Their products have given me no problems.

I play Blues/Rock, and have been for over 40 years now. I use this unit in a small rack with a compressor, and a multi effects processor. This unit helps me to get the vocals in the monitors up to an acceptable level. It has one use, as far as I'm concerned. That is reducing feedback. I haven't tried it for anything else. For me, it works SUPERBLY! Mind you, I use a Shure 87A, good speakers, and plenty of power. Don't give a bad review if you use a lousy mic, cheap speakers and crappy low powered amps. If it were lost or stolen, I would replace with another one of the same. It helps me to get vocal levels up to instrument stage levels. As far as value? For about $50 for each mic you can get WAY more volume. What more could you ask for?

Not brain surgery, but not intuitive either. Manual lacks some important technical details about the algorithms.

OK. This is where I need to comment... I used this unit on many occasions for several years. So believe me I know what I'm talking about. And I read the manual front to back several times. I'm the poster boy for trying to get this to work. I used it exclusively to ring-out feedback frequencies before a show using the single shot filters. For a long time I thought it worked pretty good in this respect - and was definitely worth the money but then something strange happened... My band was playing a CD before a show - gradually the sound quality started deteriorating. We were baffled, and then I disengaged the feedback supression and WALLA - the CD sounded crystal clear through the PA. I took the unit home and experimented with it. It turns out that in single shot mode (the one that does not release a filter after a period of time), the width & depth of the filters keep increasing (never decreasing) so after about a half hour or more of music the filters get so huge that it sucks all the life out of your sound. I tried every setting on the unit to keep this from happening - no luck. In the single shot mode, the filters will slowly (but surely) continually get bigger. I had to sell it - I couldn't use it. Maybe the other filter modes work OK in proper conditions, but I never trusted the real-time auto filter logic. If it can't figure out how to manage a static filter how is it going to manage an automatic filter?...

I think the unit is designed to be in the insert for a mic channel. In this configuration, it might work in the auto mode. But who has the luxury of buying one of these for every two mic channels on the board? Most working (mobile) bands are only looking to control room feedback in a mixed output (FOH or monitors) - and for this, the unit fails miserably.

It worked... as it was designed to...

Well, in my opinion, the only thing it's good for is to display the signal levels or to tranform 1/4" to/from XLR. Maybe at $100, that's worth it... Not for me.

Compared to finding and eliminating feedback frequencies by hand, unless you are a highly skilled and experienced professional audio engineer who has worked a lot of gigs and a lot of studios, this thing can find a frequency and notch it a lot quicker than you can. That said, it's not magic; you have to set it up right, and it's not easy to figure out how to set it up right.

But understanding what it does is by no means easy; the manual helps if you understand how to read a manual written by Germans and translated into English, but for some of us that is apparently a bit difficult.

Now, that said, if you have some idea how to use the thing, or take the time to figure it out, not only can you get some pretty effective feedback control and quite a bit of extra volume as a result, but you can also do some sound shaping with the parametric equalization. For those familiar with parametric EQs, this one works fine; you adjust width/Q, center freq, and boost/cut just as you would expect, with one exception: adjusting center freq requires two adjustments, first for a range and then a fine adjustment; and you should be aware that there is overlap, in other words you can crank the fine far enough that you are into the range of the next higher or lower coarse setting. Also, if you're working by the numbers, you'll need the manual, because the fine adjustment is in "60ths of an octave" :P . Again, easy to use it ain't.

As another poster said, the first key to using this thing is to set the feedback suppression sensitivity. If it's not picking up the feedback quick enough, you have it set too high. Crank it down to -9dB. OTOH, if all the automatics are locking up instantly, and swallowing your whole sound, crank it up to -3dB. Pay attention to this and the unit will work much better.

Another key is to remember to set the pushbutton switches on the back panel correctly for the input you are routing the unit's output to.

And the third key, and this should really be first, because the whole damn thing won't work until you get this right, is to make sure that the level of the signal to and from the unit is correct. It is absolutely essential that the sound be loud enough, and also absolutely essential that it not be too loud. You only have about a 4:1 range on the sensitivity control I mentioned above; if the thing you are calling "feedback" is below the threshold set above, first of all you aren't going to cancel it when it happens, and second of all you're going to be listening to the unit, not to the signal you want to hear. This is the origin of the problems people are describing of the following types:
1. "Hissing"
2. "Eerie whining" or "singing" or "high pitched whistling"
3. Taking many seconds to identify sounds that should be notched.
I repeat, it is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL that you get the levels correctly set. If you have one or more of these three problems, YOU HAVEN'T SET THE LEVELS CORRECTLY.

All of that said, items in this particular category are never going to be easy to use. But that's not the fault of the buyer; so it gets a 5.

I use this unit in two different ways.

First, I play an acoustic I retro-fitted with a Fishman, actually two of them, a coaxial and a bone bridge, and a piezo dot (actually more like the size of an American quarter dollar coin), which feeds back like a mad dog, and has a tooth-shattering resonance somewhere around A-220 or so, creating a whole sheaf of frequencies that not only make really pernicious feedback, but also make the guitar sound like a shoe-box. Letting a single-shot filter find that A and widen out for a while does a really nice job of not only making the feedback more manageable, but also taking what really is a POS (I bought it for $120 as a "beach guitar," you get the idea) and making it sound halfway decent.

Second, "bass, midrange, and treble" controls don't give quite the fine level of control you can get with a 12-band parametric EQ; I can get a lot more sounds out of my amp (an Ampeg SS-140C) and axes (a 335 copy with humbuckers and a 3-single-coil strat copy) by shaping the sound using it. It's not as easy to use as a graphic EQ, but it also fits in 2U of rack space and does the feedback control thing for my acoustic, so overall it's a pretty useful piece of equipment.

If you don't set the level correctly, it can be pretty noisy, but if you do set it right, it's unnoticeable. If you pump too small a signal through this thing and then try to crank the amplification up to compensate afterward, you'll get hiss, power hum, and a squeal from the digitization frequency; if you try to push too much sound through it, it will distort, and it's not friendly distortion, you won't like it. But if you keep the sound levels right, and use it as it was designed to be used, then you won't hear a thing. So I have to give it a 10 for sound quality, but remember: if your levels are wrong, you're going to think I'm crazy. If you do, FIX THE SOUND LEVEL.

The "Gain" button was defective when I received the unit. That gets it a 5. Other than that, no problems for nearly a year.

Never done anything about the defective button; it works most of the time, so I didn't bother. If I get around to it, I'll post more info in this category.

A bit hard to use, and a bad button, but for $99 simoleans you can't beat it with a baseball bat.

First impression after opening the box... "my god that is a huge user manual for a feedback eliminator". And it turns out that you actually need every page of it! Because of that, I didn't really do too much tweaking beyond the presets... In rehearsal they seemed to work OK for my purposes. If you stick to the presets, it's easy to use. If you want to tweak, it's a pain. So I give it a 5. Given that, it's not really something that you'd want to have to deal with during a gig.

A lot of people are really critical of Behringer gear, and I can see why. I had a small Behringer mixer that was extremely hissy/noisy, so I expected this thing to not be super-clean either. This was purchased with low expectations, and they were met. Worked pretty well in my home rehearsal setup, but when I got it to the gig it just didn't do it's job. The main problem was that it generates an annoying hum (even with no gear plugged into it and no ground loop issues, using a power conditioner, etc). The hum got pretty unbearable when I was at my show yesterday... just a mic into the Feedback Destroyer into the board.... it was to the point where it was unusable. None of my other gear does that. Maybe it just has a cheap power supply or something? I really want to keep this thing because it worked pretty well at rehearsal but two times in a row at a show it was unusable. I dub this product "TONE DESTROYER"!!

I also found that at shows, you needed to tweak in order to get it to actually eliminate feedback. I couldn't get any of the presets to work well on stage. Since it's not really that easy to use, I would maybe only recommend it for rehearsal use. Other than the hum, it did actually work during rehearsal. But it does change the sound. A lot.

Anyhoo... I am going to return mine to Guitar Center tomorrow.

I've had this for a few weeks... seems like it would be fine without a backup. But honestly it's a cheap piece of gear, you know what they say... You get what you pay for.

Didn't deal with them.

Overall I'd say that this might be useful for down and dirty rehearsals, but definitely not stage-worthy.

Compared to a 31 band Graphic, not easy to use at all. However for a digital interface it is relatively simple. The menu's don't go very deep and all of the levels are accessable with a button on the face of the unit. It sure pisses you off though when you change patches after making a bunch of adjustments, cause one slip and you lose it all.

If you're a sound guy, this might be good because you can noodle with it while the band is playing, but if you are in the band and running sound and are hoping that this will make things easier, look elsewhere.

Here is where it really sucks though, you can't save the actual frequencies as a patch, only the type of filter, ParaMetric, Single Shot, Auto. Because of this you have to ring out your room every time you turn it on, unless you do what one reviewer below said and save each locked filter as a Parametric filter.

Here is the problem with that though: The way the machine works is it locks in on the center of a frequency, then it monitors that frequency and adjusts the Bandwidth and Gain to keep the FB at bay and have as little effect on the sound as possible. If you turn the locked filter into a Parametric, you have to adjust the BW and Gain manualy, so much for automation.

Sound quality is great. I tweaked a bunch of Parametric filters and was able to get a really good sound with pre-recorded music. However being a musician in the band, I don't have time to fool around with it.

Another good thing is that when it detects a FB frequency, it makes the bandwidth so narrow that I don't even notice a difference in sound quality. This is the beauty of the machine, too bad it's such a pain to set up.

I'm knocking off one point cause it's a pain to set up, and two points because there was a lot of hiss, but I don't care much about that because you won't hear it over the crowd.

I've only owned it for a few days at a time, no problems. I have about 5 or 6 Behringer products and despite what I have read, I have never had any problems with them.

I've owned this unit twice now. The first time I returned it because it killed the sustained notes from other instruments, then I though I would give it a second chance, but it's going back again.

I've never dealt with Behringer, so this is for the shop in Canada that I bought it from. I never have to worry when I buy stuff from there because I know I will always get my money back.

I'm the bass player in two bands and run the sound for both. I bought this because I had hoped that it would automatically detect and eliminate feedback. Does it do this, yes, but it also eliminates any notes that have any power and are sustained. The first time I used this, the keyboard player hit a sustained note and it was killed. Then that key on his keyboard no longer worked.

The only way around this that I could find was to sub-group the microphones and ring out the room. The problem is, you have to ring out the room every time you power up the system, and it is very slow to find the frequency, like 3 to 5 seconds of ear piercing feedback, 9 to 12 different times for each filter. I'm not sure how you could use this in a two nighter gig, because the people in the bar are going to have about 0.5 seconds of tolerance for the feed back you have to produce to tune in the FB Destroyer. We practice more than we gig, and I can't imagine haveing to ring out the room before every practice.

I'm returning this unit tomorrow and using a 31 band stereo graphic instead. If you have the time to noodle and set up individual Parametric filters, I recomend this product, but if you are like me, trust me it is much easier to use a 31 band EQ. The only draw back of the graphic is not being able to set the band width.

This would be a much better unit if you could ring out the room once and save the settings as a patch for that room, but the only way to do that is to change each locked filter to a Parametric, but then you lose some feedback fighting features.

It's easy to use, but it must be set up properly to work properly. There are a lot of choices, so the learning curve can be a bit steep. It's easy to USE, but not necessarily easy to LEARN to use.

TIP: the sensitivity of the over-all unit is adjustable. Use this adjustment!!!

Excellent. Couldn't sound better. IF it is set up properly.

WARNING: if you do NOT set it up properly, it has a tendency to gradually wipe out all of your sound, certainly if you use the one-shot filters instead of the automatic ones. Why? Because the filter STARTS OUT narrow (1/60th octave) but can be widened automatically, as successive feedback occurs.

I've had this in my rack for over two years. It is a rock. It is absolutely trouble free. If my CAR worked this well, I'd be a happy guy.

This thing works. It is completely un-bogus. Adds at least 20% to usable volume. Ends feedback as an issue.

This unit requires an investment in learning. If you are not willing to study the manual and experiment and play around and adjust and experiment and play around some more, just don't get it. I'm not kidding. Leave this alone and just tweak your monitor placement, mic placement and FOH speaker placement, then turn down your volume about 10%. Don't buy this thing. This unit will gut your sound if you don't set it up properly. Save yourself the pain and don't buy it.

The unit worked great right out of the box. I've had it for about a year now ,I learned how to edit the F.D. and just experimented until I got it right . The manual was okay, but it wasn't totally clear on certain things. A question for who ever reads this and can help me. Can any one recomend any freeware so I can store my pre-sets in any midi library?. I wish I cound control this devise with my midi controler to change one of the parameters using a continuous controler number.

I like it very much ,it helps stop my feed back problems in my guitar signal at rehersal and at gigs. I like the way it control feed back when I switch to my acoustic guitar,the way it patrols my sonic range when I'm going full barage into the distortion zone . And it's great on my clean signal from my 1986 Carvin X-100 B amp head.

Yes. It's very very reliable, not one bad thing since I bought it a year and half ago.

I've e-mailed them asking question and they've been very helpful. Another question is there any where I can have this device up graded?

I play Metal(80's)shred guitar, Fusion, Blues,Classic Rock and Classical. And this device delivers and some. And I would buy it again if it were stolen or lost/damaged. I wish I could control some of the parameters inside my Feedback destroyer using a CC number from my Midi controler. I compared it to similar products and I'm glad I bought this Feedback Destroyer.

Very easy to use. The manual could be with some tips to use this fine piece of equipment. Search in the usersgroups, there are hundreds of usefull tips for the 1124. Ten presets, much more than I shall use. You can easely overwrite these with your own presets. Programming is very easy when you find out how to do this. In the worst case you can plug and play it on preset 1. It does the feedback killing job perfect, you don't believe it is there, till you bypass it!!! You can't prevent feedback if you put to much power on the speakers, but you will win enormous volume with this killer. Be shore that the input is good, when it's to weak you wil hear some hiss. When the input signal is sufficient there is no hiss ore noise at all.

I've used the 1124 last night in a gig in a club. We are a very, very loud blues/rockband. We have 3 singers and a harmonicaplayer. We used the 1124 on the left channel for the mix of the micro's an then into the poweramp. (Yamaha 2x300 watts with two 15inch boxes) I programmed the left channel with 9 filters on SI (so they lock after finding feedback) and 3 free running filters. The right channel I used for the harmonica (we have allways terrible feedback because the harmonicaman in our band plays through a Behringer V-amp. This V-amp give him a very fat, heavy bluessound. But he use compression in his presets and that give the feedback). I programmed the right channel with 12 filters on SI. No freerunning filters because if the harmonicaplayer plays a long note, it will be sucked away bij the 1124! The FOH boxes where placed "behind" the band, so no monitors needed in front of the band. Before the show I ringed out the micro's and harmonica micro, and that was it. No, nonono feedback during the whole evening. Our female singer has her micro in her hand an can walk free in front of the band with no feedback at all!! The only feedback came from my guitar! The voices didn't sound different to us with the time we didn't have the 1124. Even our harmonicamonster was very satisfied. Very good result.

Never had trouble with Behringer. Me and my son have a lot of equipment from this brand. Never failed. But we are not equipmentthrowers. We don't have backups.

Never dealt with them, there was no reason for it.

As I said, we are a very loud bluesrockband from the Netherlands and this 1124 is a soundsaver for us. No ringing ears enymore. Before the 1124 I had a Shark. Worked fine but was to difficult/tricky for me. Too many features to be plug and play. I looked to the Sabine(very exp) and the DBX (expensive too) but for the price of the Behringer, nothing can beat it! B.t.w. on the site of DBX is a very good description of de dbx feedbackkiller. In that descr. they say someting about the Sabine and the Beh.1124! There you can see that the Behr1124 is even more selective than the Sabine!! Offcourse the dbx is the best in that descr., but what do you expect it's their site! But for the price I payed I didn't look further. very impressed and satisfied. The person in the first review obviously didn't understand that you never never can prevent feedback as long as you have enough power to put into the speakers. It's no cure-all it's a help. When it get's out of order, I think I through it away and buy a new one, because repairation will prob. be more expensive. very good bargain.

The easiest way to use it is to use the presets. I've tied it on two gigs - on the first, I rang out the frequencies through the main PA. We still got feedback on the gig. The second time, we linked it to the monitor system and we weren't troubled by feedback. Well, it would begin sometimes but then you could hear the gizmo cut it out.

So it's easy to get a good sound out of it.

Haven't edited patches yet, and the manual is ok.

No problems

No problems so far...

Not tried

The bands I've been using this with have been post/indie/new-rock/emo music with lots of dynamics. This helps me get the dynamics right. Then I can concentrate on the music and the mixing.

Easy to use. Set mode 2, insert it into a strip or sub, turn it
on, prime (a ton!), save the prime, and go. I really need more
than 12 notches (see below on manual clarity). Used -9 sesitivity
for voice, better than the default -6. Filters latch much more quickly.
Also, feed it plenty of signal, at least 2-3 green bars.

I did get this to work with a Mackie 24X8 on a sub with multiple
wireless tie mics (voice only). Seems to be quite good, but don't
put a compressor ahead of it, that will cripple it badly - after
seems works OK.
Mode 3
(where it hunts for FB) in 12 channel mode works, but it will "give
up" needed filters and show momentary ringing. Mode 2 worked best
with a LOT of priming. Venue is 350 seat rectangular room.

Worked out of the box. Used only for 2 weeks so far, fixed locn.

Manual is very sketchy. I need to try the 24 Ch mode, but it isn't
really clear how to do this. I'm going to go back and play with it
some more. Didn't try contacting cust support..

Using it for church worship, mains feed, tie mics only.
So where do you get these for $80 ??
Didn't hear the background tones some folks have.
Haven't tried any other products like this yet. Wonder if the
Sabine box would be one to try? But we can't beat this price :-)
I'm not sure I'd put it in a music channel, for sure not on -9
sensitivity setting in mode 3.
If you send email, use something like Ref DSP1124 and a real name,
or I'll dump it with the other 300 pieces of spam I get every day!
Somebody please tell me where I can get gear like this for
2/3 of Web price!