The Clone War - Behringer. Good or Bad?

The Amazon thing is also somewhat specific because all those sellers are selling through Amazon. That would be like if Moog had to sell their synths through Behringer. Of course Behringer wouldn’t advertise their competitors. This is one of the big reasons Amazon is so evil, if you want to sell any quantity you have to sell through them, and give them everything they need to copy you and then bury you on their own storefront.

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I’ve never bought a moog product, but seeing how much interest there is in the behringer clones, maybe i will finally check out the originals since they’re not too much more and similarly within my budget. If it’s worth cloning it must be pretty good!

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They don’t. Behringer isn’t a sales network. What is the point of this metaphor ?

Are you making reference to the Behringer Super Partner network or something ? Amazon is a part of that, in the USA.

It was because I mentioned Amazon (which also clones products), sometimes products sold on their own site (but not always).

I could as easily see these products (swing, edge, spice) killing (or dramatically reducing) demand for the Moog small semimodulars, in much the same way that an Amazon clone effectively kills the product they choose to clone.

OK i get it because Behringer has Amazon as a Super Partner.

Plankton might have a copyright case.

It might be a simple case if they own the copyright.

Looks like they still sell this product.

I was saying that comparing Behringer and Amazon as far as cloning products go is not a great comparison. Amazon gets a massive competitive benefit for cloning through their storefront. They get to see what sells, and they even get lots of info about seller’s material suppliers. Because of this if Amazon clones something they can bury the product they cloned by not advertising it and instead advertising their alternative. This situation does not apply to Behringer and Moog, so the impact of the clones is less than on Amazon.

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They are both vertical monopolies. Amazon is a larger, more integrated vertical monopoly, but they can out compete others on price for similar reasons.

Yes, but Amazon is a vertical monopoly and a horizontal monopoly. Everyone who is cloned by Amazon is relying on selling their goods through Amazon. So Amazon has the ability and incentive to bury those products the second they make their clone. Behringer does not have this ability, though I imagine they wish they did.

Also there is a difference in the products cloned. Amazon is cloning cheap things and making them cheaper. No one is going to wax poetic about the HDMI cable that got cloned. Behringer is cloning sought after instruments.

I know people get annoyed that they focus more on their clones than innovating. but if I were a fan of either, I’d be more annoyed that they have several teased/announced/upcoming long-term vaporware products and instead just spend their time chasing Moog around.

I hesitate to get into the topic, but I’ve been thinking about what rubs me the wrong way about the DFAM and SubH clones in particular (well above and beyond the Crave): I think it’s the fact that these are not just truly unique and well-executed designs, but they also represent what strikes me as a substantial risk for a smallish company to take.

The workshops that led to the production units, the niche-within-a-niche they were going for. The Mother is comparably “safer” as a toe dipped into Eurorack for Moog, but these two constitute IMO a risky and deeply interesting reimagining of how a semi-modular system can work. It could have been a flop, and there are definitely reviewers who couldn’t grok the SubH in particular… And now that they’ve attained sort of modern classic status, B sweeping into what I imagine is a smaller market than for Crave or Model D to begin with… I do not wish them well, and this decision and the Maths clone convince me further to take some care not to buy products or parts from Behringer or their subsidiaries (CoolAudio is in a lot of stuff).

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It’s a classic tale. Someone takes a risk to innovate something new. Someone else copies it and gets rich.

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…like the Analog Four.

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Those aren’t the only products Amazon clones; and like Behringer Amazon has cloned some decent selling products from small time companies.

What Behringer is doing here is the same category of thing - copying someone elses idea, while the product is still moderately hot (and still being sold by the original company at a reasonable price), and crushing them price-wise with their vertical integration.

Maybe a synth company only gets 3-4 years before a product gets cloned. Maybe that isn’t worth the time and resources to get creative, though, and they just stop.

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What Behringer has done for me is taken an image of a company that made solid products, back in the late 90s…I wanted a B mixer so bad.

To a company that I would never consider buying anything from, no matter what the price. And makes me feel dirty for having a patch bay of theirs in my rack. When I get a job, my first order of business will be to take said patch bay out to the bin, break it into pieces and replace it with something else.

All I can do to stop them from their shady dealings is just not support them. Won’t make a difference, but again, that’s all I can do. Oh, and drop the occasional B meme. :slight_smile:

EDIT: took me forever to find this old one…

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I had one of those and I thought it was a great product at the time (an MX1602, I think, in a cheap-ish slant top rack case with 12u underneath). A 16 channel Mackie was beyond my means.

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I agree with you, but I do think it is important to distinguish what Amazon is doing as taking those same concepts even one step further into a realm that has relatively little precedence in the last 50 years.

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Will Behringer ever clone the Octatrack? Probably not but i’d take one for 500 bucks.
Ok, bad joke. Don’t kill me! :grimacing: :innocent:

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Lol, there is a reason they aren’t cloning complicated digital stuff, it would be way too much work!

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Yeah, i think the Octatrack is safe. Nobody could ever clone it. It takes years to fully learn it, how much time would it take to learn how to build one?

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