Behringer DSP9024 Ultra-Dyne Pro

You got to know what you're doing otherwise the endresult is can be poor! As long as you deal with this unit as a cross-over unit with 6 independant compressors you'll be fine. (Providing you know X-overs and compressors) If you get to know this unit you can get very good results real quick, but not as quick as a finalizer express, which is basically a PRESET compressor, which is easy to use but a whole lot less flexibel!!!

The sound quality of the compressors is fantastic. The peak limiter is useless for mastering or broadcast because of the shortest release time is far too long: 500 msec. The tube emulation may sometimes be useful, I don't use it much. The exciter can be a real help, as it souns very very good, as long as you don't push it too far.

I seems sturdy enough. Until now.

I once emailed Behringer about the computer-editor and I got back an Email they hadn't finished it yet. So, the response was prompt but at the same time it was not very usefull!

General mastering (acoustical .... heavy metal .... dance)

The unit is not easy to use for the uninitiated. There are too many keys to push. It has some pre-sets which I found to be helpful, but which are difficult to change and know what to expect. The manual is pretty useless, which is typical of Behringer. It says everything, but it only says it once, and it never tells you things like what the factory pre-sets are. It just says there are some. It took me about three hours to realize that the unit came from the factory with the entire audio spectrum compacted into two of the bands, so I kept wondering why there was no activity on the other six bands. There is supposed to be computer software for this unit, but I don't use it with a computer, so don't know if it's any better. I find myself being afraid to change the settings because I'm not sure I can get the other ones back. The A/B settings display is particularly troubling. You never know which program you're listening to.

I am using the unit to master (yeah, I know. If I spent another thousand, I could do it better). I have seven vocals, and the music tracks are already done. I find the unit to do a decent job of compression. It retains the high end pretty well for my purposes, and gives a good overall mix between highs and lows. The soft knee works very well, and I don't hear any adverse effects, except a little squish once in a while. It generally boosts in the right places, but a small adjustment sometimes results in a large difference in unwanted effects. I do live sound, but I don't use this unit for that, so don't use it for amp protection. To be honest, I cannot tell any difference in the tube emulation types. There are four different types, but they all sound the same to me. The exciter is pretty passive, as well.

It seems pretty dependable, and I must say, I find Behringer stuff to be very dependable overall. I have not had this unit all that long, so don't know about this particular gear. I would not use it live because I am not familiar enough with the operation, and am not comfortable with changing the settings during a live gig. That really is no reflection of the dependability.

As most people know, customer support is almost non-existent with Behringer, but that is not uncommon among sound companies. I actually did get an email from the US rep after I complained that I could not figure out why I was only able to get sound on three out of the six bands. He even offered me his phone number, but by the time he had answered my email (about seven days) I pretty much had it figured out.

I don't exactly play music. I get the tracks done, and then use them for vocals. I use this unit to master and finalize the mix, and it does an acceptable job. I was hoping for a little better, considering the advertisements, but some of that may be because I can't figure out how to use all its capabilities. I strongly suggest a trouble-shooting section to the manual, and inclusion of the factory pre-sets. Maybe even some instruction on what happens when you store a program and over-write the one from the factory. Can you ever get it back? Who knows? Overall, I give it about a six - I like what it does, but I could probably get the same results from an ultramizer for about three hundred less, because if you take away four bands from the 9024, that's about what you have. And from the factory (at least for mine), that's what was offered.

Out of the box presented plenty of ear candy, but on further tweaking found that settings do not work intuitively with each other, that moving the "process" up and down did not cause clear linear results. Manual is fairly clear, but hunting through six levels of menus with multiple settings on each is tiresome, and hard to A/B. Rather have six dedicted comp/lims and a freq. splitter on my rack, but thats alot more money of course. setting the input level can be tricky, moving the box rapidly from ok but not super tight to screeching audio garbage.(and it input/output levels should be knobs with leds right on the front, ok?)

I'm running a mix out of a Mackie VLZ Pro (16 channels from two MOTUS)and not banging the top of the headroom by any means prior to the Behringer. Quick transitions from quiet to loud can be "weird", and I sense the unit was not designed with this type of recording in mind. On evenly loud songs I could get a good full compressed and reasonable sonically separated stereo mix, without noticing the floor noise, but push that gate open a notch with no or low signal, and whooosh. Again, careful use of input/output here is vital, and the transition from full to harsh comes on suddenly. As a result I mildly precompress the stereo signal going into the unit with a DBX unit to prevent it becoming a BOSS overdrive pedal (I also have comp/lim outboards inserted on some of the VLZ-Pro channels. I wasn't looking for this to do the whole shebang). The tradeoff is the undesired loss of dynamics, which can sometimes be fixed in my software (Cool Edit Pro, Cubase VST) program. But it is no magic portal to sonic nirvana.

Hey, I haven't spilt beer on it or had it sit in smock filled rooms, left it over the weekend in the trunk of a car in the summer or outside the backdoor in the winter, so it has not been TRULY tested. No data wheel though. I hate data wheels.

Don't know, haven't dealt. At this price range, I expect it to be reliable until I drop it.

At half the price of a Finalizer with two additional bands, it is ok for tweaking a few not quite right freq ranges into submission. I have successfully used to bring back lost vocals in the mix, but I don't use it alone (slam two channels of unmixed/eq'd/comp garbage in and expect an electronic gold record engineer inside to turn it into awards material). I would say it has increased my ratio of "sounds pretty good"/"wow that is sonic crap" ratio from 1 in 20 to 1 in 12. And I think thats ok. It has produced better demos than some studios around here with "real" gear. Just don't hang it on your rack and start charging your buddies like a real studio. Their ears grow up too.

Not real easy to use, because there are so many parameters that can be set. And you really do need to select the parameters carefully to get a good sound. The Manual is reasonably good, but you do need to experiment with settings to see how it actually affects the sounds.
My unit is Software Version 1.2B. It seems to be significantly better than the units reviewed previously. There are some inaccuracies in the prior reviews (at least in comparison with my software Version). The menu system is reasonable, but again, there are so many possible settings that it is a bit overwhelming until after you have played with it a while and unferstand how to get around.
The "Virtuoso" and "Ultramiser" functions will set compression thresholds and volume levels automatically, and they do a reasonably good job. But it seem like I usually use them only as a starting point for dialing in the right settings.

The sound quality is fantastic. I don't know what else anyone could possibly want from multi-band compression. There is no audible noise or compression-algorythm artifacts. The frequency bands are completely independent and it does not cause high frequency loss when compressing bass bands. (I paid particular attention to that !) Also YOU CAN adjust the volume level of each band independently (contrary to what was reported in a prior review.) I am mainly concerned with the multiband compression functions. The Tube simulator is reasonable and subtle. I don't use it much. The "Exciter" function adds user-selectable odd or even harminics to the signal. I am usually very skeptical about this type if gimmick, but I have to admit that it sounds very good. It seems to add a subtle "sparkle" (excitement ?) to things without being too obvious. THe compression is very transparent. I use it during recording of fingerstyle acoustic guitar. It really evens out the variations in playing while not changing the tone of the guitar. It is also perfect for taming boomey bass notes or resonances due to room acoustics, because you can assign a compression band specifically to problem frequencies. Also great for reducing fingersquaek noises without eliminating all high frequencies, like De-Essers do, or leaving a "hole" in the frequency response, like parametric EQs do. Fantastic "Silky" sound ! I am using both the analog input/output and the optional digital I/O. The AD and DA converters seem very good. I can run S/PDIF signal directly into the DSP9024 but need to use a converter to get the AES/EBU output into the S/PDIF of my recording unit.

Seems very well built, the buttons have a very solid feel and a definite "click" to them. The chassis and faceplate are sturdy metal. But...I did return the first unit sent to me because the Display would fade noticably when the unit warmed up. So far the second unit is fine.
By comparison, it is MUCH more sturdily built than my TC Electroncs M-1. So I would give it a 10 if I hadn't had problems with the first unit, which makes me wonder a little.

I have e-mailed Behringer support a few times on other matters and they have always returned to message within a couple days with a reasonable answer. Usually that would only qualify as "competent", but these days, it seems like any customer support at all is extraodinary. For example, TC Electronics blows off every question completely with an incompetent reply. Mackie just ignores e-mails.

Overall, I have to give this unit a 10, based on the usefullness of the multiband compressors alone.

If you are comparing, note (as I did) that The TC Electronics Triple C only has three bands and they are NOT independently adjustable. All the ratio parameters are slaved to one setting. The Triple C is also always Stereo linked: both left and Right channels must accept and be slaved to the same parameters. Similar with the DBX unit.

On the DSP9024 all bands and left and right channels are COMPLETELY independent. All parameters, volume levels, and frequency band settings are individually setable. Stereo and band linking are an option if you choose to use it (make set-up a little easier).
It also has Gate and Limiter functions which appear to work adequately, but I don't really use them much. Take the x out of my address to contact me.

There are some presets and a very simple wizard type function, or you can edit all the many parameters on their own - so it's as simple or complex as you want to make it.

I couldn't really fault it for the price. I do mostly breakbeat stuff, the 6 band compressor and exciter works well, fattens everything up and makes it nice and loud :-)

Good quality convertors, pretty rugged looking for a rackmount thing.

don't know.

Works well, good for beefing up your mixes on a budget.

For the uninitiated, the Ultradyne is a lowcost mastering processor - like a poor man's Finaliser or Masterflow. It comes with a number of presets supposedly set up for various applications (mastering, percussion, broadcast etc) all of which are fairly poor. You can obtain better results by editing each of the parameters yourself (which include attack, release, knee, ratio & threshold for each band in the 6-band compression, noise gate on each band, plus an overall limiter, tube simulation, and exciter) though this will take a little time and experimentation. Accessing the parameters is easy enough, though.

The 6-band compressor is obviously the units main draw, but in practice it needs time and effort to coax a decent sound from it. You'll generally have to make compromises to get acceptable results, since despite the large number of editable parameters, the results invariably fall short of what you hoped for - the biggest single drawback is that you can't boost the output gain for each individual channel, only for the output gain as a whole, which severely limits the machines creative potential (eg. a tightly compressed band will become quieter, but you can't raise the gain to compensate). However, the exciter and tube simulations are better than I had feared, and are good enough for polishing up digital portastudio type work, though they don't exactly ooze quality. Overall sound quality is about what you'd expect from a low-budget digital signal processor.

No problems so far, it seems sturdy enough. It's only got to sit in a studio rack though, right? :-)

n/a. I've heard bad rumours from others, but I wouldn't want to judge having no experience of it myself. Free PC editing software from the Behringer website is mentioned, though at the time of writing it wasn't available.

Common sense told me this wasn't going to be up to the quality of the likes of the Finaliser/Masterflow/Quantum stuff - I secretly hoped it might be, but you apparently get what you pay for. I wanted to use it for compressing drums as well as for overall mastering, but for drums my Drawmer MX30 generally gives better results. The Ultradyne can add a few extra dbs for amateur mastering, but you won't get much extra 'punch' in your mixes, primarily because, as mentioned above, you can't boost the gain for individual compression bands.

Tested for it radio broadcasting and it is terrible at controlling overshoots.
I found also that if you push it to work the very occassional song with a lot of low frequency caused it to lose all treble, that is a
contradiction of a multiband compressor.
It had other cool features though like treble exciter and plenty of controls.

Appears to be very rugged, only have a few weeks.

I have sent 4 E-mails without any response back, so I have since had to deal with the agent.
However I will be bounced back because this is a not seen as a fault.

I have use all compressor and audio processors right up the Orban range, but this does not do what it says on tin.