Earlier this week, I had a notification pop up on my Facebook feed bringing back a post that I made in the past. Well, the post happened to be regarding my first Sunday at North Ridge Community Church with the Behringer X32, THREE years ago!
Three Years Later!
At the time, we had a HUGE 48 channel Allen & Heath ML4000. When we were making our decision on the digital sound board for the Worship Center and also our smaller Ridge Cafe, the first runner up was the Yamaha M7CL for the Worship Center and the Yamaha LS9 for the Ridge Cafe. While these are amazing sound boards, the one thing I disliked was that they didn’t have the same workflow and layout. I really wanted the same board for both rooms, that way the sound techs training in one room, would be useful in BOTH rooms once they were trained! Then I ran into the Behringer X32 while visiting one of my old professors at the Conservatory of Recording Arts & Sciences. There lay a Behringer X32 next to a Yamaha PM5D, a Yamaha PM1D and a few large format analog consoles, my old professor was almost drooling over the X32! After that day, the sound board future of the church was changed! We were able to get two consoles for less than the price of a single Yamaha LS9!
So, three years have past! Not a single issue has come forth with these two X32 consoles in either room. No sticking buttons, no faulty channels, not a single problem has been run into (except those caused from operator error, i.e. routing). We also have had a Behringer S16 digital snake up on the stage for around two years now, no issues with that! So if you are still wondering will this mixer last, the answer is yes!
Another thing to mention, the two mixers that were installed at North Ridge, were the older versions of the X32. They are referred to as the “jelly bean faders” and have plastic glossy buttons.
My last Behringer X32 update was in April of 2013, and my thoughts of the console have become even better with the newer updates that Behringer has released. More functionality has been released with the X32 mix apps now working on Mac, PC, Raspberry Pi, Linux, iOS, and Android. The effects rack now has accurate emulations of classic processors like the Fairchild 670, the Teletronix LA-2A compressor and more hardware items have been released like the SD8 and the SD16 which are AES50 digital snakes in a small robust form factor.
Needless to say, I am still in love with this console series and I am so glad that Facebook reminded me that 3 years ago was my first Sunday in use with the board.