Ha! I don’t know about play but I can coach better from my living room!! 
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Hello,
I’m new here but I thought I’d answer the question
“The Mavis costs almost 300 euro where I live. That’s 30 euro less than a microfreak. Now why would consumers go with a barebones 1 vco synth when they can get their hands on a device such as the Microfreak which is way more powerful and versatile.”
For me, Mavis is a cold dead hands module. I had a Microfreak and sold it.
Mavis is WYSIWYG. Completely analog with no menu or modes.
The microfreak is very powerful, but using it was joyless for me.
The Mavis is racked in my eurorack case and it can bring many utilities that are at my disposal.
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Benn has a bone to pick with Sweetwater due to them leaking the polyend tracker mini before he put out his YouTube video on it or whatever happened. So I think he is taking the opportunity to try and throw them under the bus whenever possible even if it is not directly related to what he is talking about. He is definitely not an unbiased source of info.
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I guess im just disagreeing with the idea that synths should be kept as luxury items when we have the tech to make it affordable. Copying stealing etc is a whole other argument…and yes i do understand that Behringer has stole ideas and thats what hes talking about.
IMO Benn’s arguments seem too focused on Behringer. Yes, Behringer are the vultures of the synth market and this role makes them unpopular. And yet their business seems to be thriving. How about that? They may also not look innovative to the outside, nevertheless, cost-cutting does come with its own merits and challenges.
This being said, the synth market is not exactly one of fair and perfect competition. Only because they do not bluntly copy any products does not mean that the dominant Yamaha, Korg and Roland would be peaceful market players. Take a closet look at distribution, which is where the revenues are realised.
Speaking of aggressive competition, when it comes to chip procurement, music gear manufacturers face even fiercer and bigger competitors than any of the above: car manufacturers.
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I mean, Gqom is BRILLIANT and loads of it was made on salvaged Windows 7 desktops in shacks in Durban.
He’s not really wrong that hardware synths, even Behringer ones, are luxury items.
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I think this is in part (and a few other synthtubers have made “Behringer statements” lately) because Behringer has attacked them - calling their integrity in question for not reviewing Behringer products.
In fact, this is now spiraling to Behringer’s “fans” claiming that those that have anything negative to say about Behringer are part of an astroturfing troll farm. Which is funny, but I’d guess the company has an idea how easy it is to hire one.
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Wouldn’t surprise me if this was another ploy from behringer. The tubers are now talking about B which is good for them even if it is negativity.
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Moog’s importance for Asheville is such that it gets to appear briefly in the town’s new anthem (at timestamp); whether that will lead to any municipal incentives to InMusic to help keep the headquarters there is open to question:
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The “all publicity is good publicity” approach would also apply to all the other things they’ve done, including the Kirn debacle.
This is, after all, a company that thought a video tour of their factory city was good promotional material and not mildly horrifying.
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I like Ben’s music and a good number of his videos, but his argument IMHO was a bit off the mark. There are cheap cars and expensive cars. Cheap fridges and expensive fridges. Cheap guitars and expensive guitars. Why not synthesizers? Can’t it just be about the sound and not the provenance of the instrument? And when your critics accuse you of being elitist, “LOL poors go use software” is quite possibly the most tone deaf argument.
The part about Sweetwater’s 0% interest being subsidized by the manufacturer’s margins was interesting. I’ve been curious how they pulled it off. That’s the TANSTAAFL principle at work.
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I think the point was that even the behringer hardware synths are luxury items. It might not be as upscale as the Moog stuff, but it is still a luxury and not a necessity.
Which is true for pretty much all hardware now. There are some quite fantastic free software synths now.
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I watched the video, and I think people are putting way too much emphasis on the Behringer part of it. I did not get the impression that Benn was saying Behringer are the main cause of Moog’s fall.
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There’s more to the context, Benn has been on Behringer for a long time, many public videos criticizing it. This is not an isolated occurrence.
All of these synthfluencers are just salty babies
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Okay, but would you call a beater/intro-level guitar a luxury item? Sure, it is not directly necessary for the sustainment of life, but that’s a pretty low bar to clear. And the implication of the video seems to be “Gear X is okay, but Y is not. If you can’t afford X, you don’t deserve to use hardware.”
The part that rubbed me wrong was the mockery of peoples’ economic circumstances. “You don’t want to be the guy on the basketball court wearing counterfeit Air Jordans.” Maybe it’s a difference in upbringing, but I was raised that you didn’t make fun of someone’s economic status. It was unnecessary nastiness that overshadowed some of the more interesting points he made.
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To be fair, as far as I know, he has always explicitly said he loves the fact that they make synths that are affordable and purely criticized their antics.
Nothing wrong with that I’d say.
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I think you can argue more strongly that free software does not replace a guitar. A synth or a drum machine? That’s a hard case to make. Not that people don’t try to make it, but they may not be arguing purely rationally and instead (even if subconsciously) defending past purchases they may have made. The Helm VST, for example, does a pretty damn great job of getting you a subtractive synth sound for zero dollars.
If Behringer sold affordable arranger keyboards, I could see an argument those are an important busking tool - but they don’t.
One could talk about controller keyboards as necessities to play a synth, whether hardware or software - which would bring us neatly to to the Behringer Swing, a topic I see most Berhinger supporters avoiding like Homer backing into the shrubbery.
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From what I’ve heard they had to sign NDA’s. So they won’t be speaking up. Too bad people who make good money & love Moog don’t see about partnering on acquiring it from inMusic and get some good management to figure out a better production solution than whatever foreign country will now be assembling them. Sequential managed to do it all these years, surely someone or some people w/enough money could do better. But of course I doubt the owner of inMusic will be selling it.
I wonder how things would have been different if NewMoog had released a poly that didn’t cost as much as a motorcycle.
People like to throw shade at the Prophet 08 and sometimes even the Take5, but those products sell.
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