Behringer XR18

andyg_prs

Hi,

This looks like a great unit for the price.  Robust, plenty of channels, output mixes, remote app control, and the USB out with separate mixes per channel a real bonus - I imagine recording and videoing the band.....and then if a singer or instrument is off.....just punch in to that channel to fix it.....

Are there other units at a simple price to consider?

Any downsides I might have missed....whether it's sound quality or anything else?

Thanks,
Andy

Stratavarious

We have got the new CQ20B - records multitrack to SD card in the unit. Very impressed by it.   You’d need an extra device with the XR18. We had a desk that needed a laptop/DAW to record multitrack before… a pain.  It also means you can record a sound check and play back to adjust the mix.

They also do the CQ16T with a touchscreen so you are not dependent on a tablet of phone.

Apps (iOS, Android, Windows) can be tried for free and the CQ4YOU app for IEM mixes is great.

Def upgrade to a XR18 & Soundcraft UI24r. Reliable WI-FI radio.. which is weakness of the Behringer/Soundcraft.

I think A&H really nailed it for small to medium sized bands with these,  I have assigned one of the soft buttons to start/stop recording at gigs.. so one tap and the whole night is on SD.. could not be simpler.

It also works as an interface over USB for studio use.

https://www.allen-heath.com/hardware/cq/


https://youtu.be/RNUaBvcAbyY?si=BnLEapuCsnsASKJc

ESBlonde

There is a similar unit from A&H CQ20B and of course Midas is owned by behringer. The XR18 is quite common these days and represents good value, lots of facilities and compact. Get a decent case and use an external router if you are doing remote mixing.

LooseMoose

The XR18 is amazing but the inbuilt wifi is GARBAGE and WILL let you down.  Chuck a cheapo TPLink, DLink or Netgear router into though and you're away - I used an Apple Time Capsule because I'm fancy (or more accurately I had an old one lying around) and it worked brilliantly.

I only sold it because I'm a complete moron that gets bored quickly.

andyg_prs

So the A&H range is a fair bit more expensive than the Behringer.....the CQ20B being £777 on Thomann compared to £579 for the Behringer XR18.........the question is whether it is £200 better?

Stratavarious

andyg_prs said:

So the A&H range is a fair bit more expensive than the Behringer.....the CQ20B being £777 on Thomann compared to £579 for the Behringer XR18.........the question is whether it is £200 better?

Add in the device (laptop and DAW) you will need to record multitrack at gigs and the essential need for extra wireless network device to make the XR18 trustworthy, I’d say it balances out.

mrkb

The A&H has a Bluetooth connection channel as well for pre gig music. I moved from a xr18 to A&H CQ18T and find it way easier to setup. The auto feedback remover is great.

Danny1969

andyg_prs said:

So the A&H range is a fair bit more expensive than the Behringer.....the CQ20B being £777 on Thomann compared to £579 for the Behringer XR18.........the question is whether it is £200 better?

Judging on previous A&H products I've used for the last 30 years it's probably more than £200 better. A surfaceless desk needs to be rock solid because if it goes wrong that's the end of the gig unless you happen to have brought a spare. 

As an electronics engineer Behringer products make me nervous. Some of the stuff I've seen over the years have been quite shocking when repairing their products. I regularly use a Midas MR18 now and that makes me nervous, basically being an X18 with a pretty frock on. 

Having said that the X32 has proved it's self to a certain extent so maybe the smaller ones are fine too. I would just go for the A&H though the £200 difference would be worth the peace of mind and higher resale price

kennedydream1980

We used an XR18 in my band for quite a few years. It worked for the most part but after about 2 years it started misbehaving. One side of the stereo bus would drop out intermittently which wasn’t good during a gig. It went back for repair a number of times. Each time it came back with no fault found. However the same fault would always reoccur. It was always housed in a flight case and looked after. 

In the end the singer in the band purchased another one to replace the faulty one. He liked the user interface and is a creature of habit. The 2nd one lasted around 6 months and the same fault occurred on that one.

He is on his third iteration of the XR mixers, he bought a 12 in the end to use for solo and duo work. (The band ended). Touch wood he has had no problems with the 12 after nearly a year.

andyg_prs

It's looking like a shared (between bands) PA arrangement might be the way we go....I have use of a pair of active Mackies - SRM350s currently used in my rehearsal space with a Behringer Xenyx 1202 fx.  The singer in a different band has just bought a couple of subs and tops - I'll have to check, but I believe passive.

Is there any reason why you can't mix and match active and passive speakers?

*EDIT - I think it's something like this*

Roland

We’ve been using an XR18 since pre-Covid times, which makes it 4 to 5 years. It’s racked up with the singer’s wireless mic receiver, and two IEM transmitters. Apart from the internal wifi it has been an excellent piece of equipment. The only thing I would improve is to have stereo Aux channels rather than mono so that I can separate band members in he stereo field of my IEMs. I understand the argument for having a physical desk surface. On the other hand, with tablets, four of us are able to adjust things if the others are busy.

andyg_prs

Danny1969 said:

andyg_prs said:

So the A&H range is a fair bit more expensive than the Behringer.....the CQ20B being £777 on Thomann compared to £579 for the Behringer XR18.........the question is whether it is £200 better?

Judging on previous A&H products I've used for the last 30 years it's probably more than £200 better. A surfaceless desk needs to be rock solid because if it goes wrong that's the end of the gig unless you happen to have brought a spare. 

As an electronics engineer Behringer products make me nervous. Some of the stuff I've seen over the years have been quite shocking when repairing their products. I regularly use a Midas MR18 now and that makes me nervous, basically being an X18 with a pretty frock on. 

Having said that the X32 has proved it's self to a certain extent so maybe the smaller ones are fine too. I would just go for the A&H though the £200 difference would be worth the peace of mind and higher resale price

The Midas MR18 appears to have better pre-amps.  The CQ20B is about £50 more than than the MR18 - you'd opt for the CQ20B?  Obviously sound quality is super important.....even though I am hugely uneducated on the topic of PAs / mixers at the moment...

Whistler

andyg_prs said:

Is there any reason why you can't mix and match active and passive speakers?

Despite us calling them active or passive speakers, all speakers are passive; it is just that an active speaker is one (or more) in a cabinet along with its own amplifier(s). A passive speaker cab is one without any amplification which means you will need a separate amplifier somewhere, whether in a powered mixer or a standalone amp. If you are adding the amp you need to check that the resistance (ohms) of the speaker(s) are suitable for the amp you are providing. With active cabs that has been taken care of by the manufacturer.

Danny1969

andyg_prs said:

Danny1969 said:

andyg_prs said:

So the A&H range is a fair bit more expensive than the Behringer.....the CQ20B being £777 on Thomann compared to £579 for the Behringer XR18.........the question is whether it is £200 better?

Judging on previous A&H products I've used for the last 30 years it's probably more than £200 better. A surfaceless desk needs to be rock solid because if it goes wrong that's the end of the gig unless you happen to have brought a spare. 

As an electronics engineer Behringer products make me nervous. Some of the stuff I've seen over the years have been quite shocking when repairing their products. I regularly use a Midas MR18 now and that makes me nervous, basically being an X18 with a pretty frock on. 

Having said that the X32 has proved it's self to a certain extent so maybe the smaller ones are fine too. I would just go for the A&H though the £200 difference would be worth the peace of mind and higher resale price

The Midas MR18 appears to have better pre-amps.  The CQ20B is about £50 more than than the MR18 - you'd opt for the CQ20B?  Obviously sound quality is super important.....even though I am hugely uneducated on the topic of PAs / mixers at the moment...

Well none of these budget mixers have good pre amps but in the typical weekend warrior  / semi pro live environments these mixers are used in it's not really important. The skill of who is operating the FOH mix will determine the quality of the live sound, not the type of opamp used in the preamp sections. 

The MR18 is OK, I like the compression and the delays are OK ... the reverb isn't great but usable in small doses. The way you have to mix stereo IEM's sucks ... you basically have to assign stuff to left ear and right ear and use the amount you send as a pan control rather than just assign to a stereo IEM bus and pan to taste like on a normal desk. Then again with only 6 aux sends it's not really designed for 4 or 5 stereo IEM mixes. 
You can of course buy PMM's and use the Ethernet for it but 4 of those would cost more than the mixer.

I would always opt for A&H simply because in live music you have to pick your battles and I haven't had a failure of any A&H device I've used or installed in a venue. I've been gig'ing a QU16 since it was first released in the UK ... before the wireless ap was even available to use  ..2014 I think and it's never gone wrong once despite being constantly loaded into a cold van in the winter and cooked at festivals in the summer. 

But the CQ20B range is new and I have no direct experience of how reliable it will be, just basing my opinion on previous experience and the fact A&H have a very competent in house design team who put a lot of thought into products rather than just making things as cheap as possible and shifting as many as possible. 

Musicwolf

Danny1969 said:

 The way you have to mix stereo IEM's sucks ... you basically have to assign stuff to left ear and right ear and use the amount you send as a pan control rather than just assign to a stereo IEM bus and pan to taste like on a normal desk.

Can you not link aux sends to form stereo pairs as you do on the XR-18?  Obviously each stereo pair takes up two of the six aux busses but you don't need to mess around with left and right aux busses.

andyg_prs

Thanks all - and,.....blimey......the more I look into this, I reaslise the less I know.

When it comes to analogue and digital, from a guitar perspective I have no issue with digital having used CaptorX, and Fractal/Kemper for years.....

However, I am interested in the analogue vs digital thing.....With this cheap Behringer Xenyx 1202  I have, am I right in saying there is no analogue to digital conversion going on?  In that case......would you except the audio to be audibly (whose ear I know) better or worse with the XR18/MR18/CQ20B?

Stratavarious

The Xenyx has a digital FX block, so suspect it is being digitised at some point before being output.

BahHumbug

I have had an XR18 for 10ish years.  It has survived beer spillage, albeit with the loss of one input channel.  For the price, I've been satisfied with it, but there are gotchas as others have commented.

The onboard wifi is rubbish, and in a gig situation, you tend to lose control of the mixer from the iPad app, as the mixer fends off all the mobile phones in the venue that try to say hello to it.  The wifi on mine stopped working altogether in the last couple of months.

I had a bit of a problem with the recording interface a few years ago.  You should be able to set the point in the signal chain where you get the record feed for each channel, eg pre/post input gain, pre/post EQ etc.  I was finding it didn't matter what I set it to, I always got a tiny signal out, which I suspect was pre input gain.  Probably a bug that they may have fixed in a firmware update, but its been a while since I tried using it for recording.

Actually I also recall the last time I used it for recording, I was getting a lot of hiss coming through.  That might have been the beer though.........

Danny1969

Musicwolf said:

Danny1969 said:

 The way you have to mix stereo IEM's sucks ... you basically have to assign stuff to left ear and right ear and use the amount you send as a pan control rather than just assign to a stereo IEM bus and pan to taste like on a normal desk.

Can you not link aux sends to form stereo pairs as you do on the XR-18?  Obviously each stereo pair takes up two of the six aux busses but you don't need to mess around with left and right aux busses.

I can group 2 auxs as a stereo bus for IEM's but in aux mix mode there's no option to pan anything. Could be I'm missing something though so happy to be educated. 
One a normal desk you just hit the IEM stereo bus, say the bass players IEM feed and adjust the level of any instrument and it's pan position in the same way you would if you were on the master bus / FOH page. Quick and easy. 

andyg_prs

I'm leaning towards the CQ18T - even though it's a bit more expensive....I like the built in controller display.....of course you can still use remote controller apps.....but the all in one thing appeals to me.....it would also encourage people to place it somewhere at arm's length....which means it's less likely to get booted around the stage!

Danny1969

Stratavarious said:

The Xenyx has a digital FX block, so suspect it is being digitised at some point before being output.

On a parallel bus yes. Like most non digital desks it has a basic opamp design for the gain stages and EQ leading to more opamp summed busses for aux, subgroups and master. All analog and very simple. 

The digital effects tends to be a little PCB that's on a parallel send and returned via the output DA of the little digital board. The same way the digital effects in a cheap amp like a Marshall AVT works. The whole signal doesn't get converted into digital the way it does in a guitar modeller.

@andyg_prs ; I don't think you would regret that decision, I'm thinking about one myself