Behringer X32 Rack Review: Best Digital Mixer For IEM
Behringer is an audio equipment company that was founded in 1989. In 2007, they were listed as one of the largest manufacturers of music products.
Their company is owned by Music Group, a company that also owns Midas, Klark Teknik, and Bugera. Today we will be looking at a digital mixing board known as the Behringer X32 Rack.
Why a digital board?
For many years, my band used stage wedges with a traditional monitor engineer at each show. We would come in, load our gear in, setup, and run a quick soundcheck.
During the check, we would have to point our fingers in the air, signaling the monitor engineer how much volume we wanted in our stage wedges for each instrument. Not only is this an extremely tedious process, adding effects to a stage wedge send takes even more time.
After being frustrated with terribly long soundchecks and bad on-stage mixes, we decided we needed a change. We settled on a digital mixing board that was compact, powerful, and easy to control without a monitor person. The board we chose is the X32 Rack by Behringer.
Behringer X32 Rack
Ah yes, the holy grail of in-ear monitoring solutions. The X32 rack was perfect for us and what we needed. Sure, there’s other boards that will send you up into the tens of thousands, but we didn’t have that kind of budget.
Operation is simple; there is a learning curve, but once you understand the rack, you’ll understand all X32 consoles.
Works great with other X32 consoles
The X32 Rack is part of the larger family of X32 digital consoles. The rack model is a 40-input digital rack mixer with 16 MIDAS preamps, built-in USB interface, and boasts iPad/iPhone control.
The rack unit of this mixer is the exact same as the regular X32 board, just with less knobs and buttons. It has all the functionality despite the rack size.
You can access every function of the main board through the LCD interface. It will just take you more time. For our purposes, the iPad app works great.
Only 3 rack spaces
The X32 Rack will only take up three rack spaces, so you will still have room for DI boxes, wireless boxes, Furman’s, playback systems, etc.
iOS and Android Control From Stage or Anywhere in the Venue
Behringer’s X32 Rack offers an amazing on-stage integration: the ability to control your mix via your iOS or Android device. Not only does this make soundcheck super smooth, it gives you the ultimate control to tweak your mix to your liking.
All three of us have an iPad setup near us and change things on a dime. If I can’t hear the synthesizers or vocals well enough, I can easily adjust in between songs. No more pointing at the monitor guy and mouthing to him that I can’t hear the kick drum.
16 Awesome FX Plug-Ins Based on True Physical Modeling
Behringer’s X32 Rack comes with some sick effects plug-ins. In addition to the 16 we’re mentioning here, there are an addition 50+ more effects that would cost tens of thousands of dollars in hardware racks.
These plug-ins essentially “model” classic analog gear in a digital domain. Some famous outboard gear included is the Urei’s 1176, Teletronix LA-2A, Fairchild 670, and Pultec EQs. These plug-ins sound great and are perfect for in ear monitor mixes.
Images courtesy of Behringer and MusicTribe.com
