Behringer Review: 2004 Mixing Desk

History:

Purchase: Purchased second hand, US$300. I wanted a mixer for my home studio setup with several synths, plus the requirement to record accoustic instruments.

What I Like About This Behringer 2004 Mixing Desk: Ita a great unit. Solid construction. Typical EQ and Aux sections. 8 XLRs with Phantom and huge range on the preamps. Makes it easy to record any type of source. Behringer clain big head room, and they are right, lots of gain is available, the mixer is suitable for a range of applications. Great for live, and very good for project studio. Noise floor seems very low, I've never had any audible noise with all faders right up. Insert points for the 8 mono channels is cool.

What I Do NOT Like About The Behringer 2004 Mixing Desk: Hardly any dislikes but one major one: Unit has 4 stereo input pairs, thats cool. What is not cool is that you cant Aux send the stereo channels in stereo! The are summed to the auxiliary. There should be an option to send each channel to a different aux send. With out that, it makes it a compromise in the studio setup because if you use stereo effects, or record from your auxillaries, then you are faced with a reroute to the mono channels, or using the Alt outputs. The Alt outputs are almost ideal, but then you find that it means you cant mute other channels while you are using them as mute and Alt are shared on the same button.

Behringer 2004 Mixing Desk Quality Rating: Great construction quality Minor thing with the design... a 20 channel mixer is quite likely to be something that you setup and leave in one place, its not tiny. But with nearly all the connectors on the top rather than at the back, it makes life messy. Its pretty minor, and i'd probably complain if they were on the back.

Review Summary: Its great, only one issue I mentioned above. For live its a 5 out of 5, especially being perfect for rackmount. For a small studio its pretty good as long as you are only recording 2 channels. Its a fantastic live sub-mixer for foldback or dropping drums to stereo. Its also far better value for money than anything else i've tried of this size.

Rating of this Behringer product: 4

This Behringer 2004 Mixing Desk Recording Gear Review Submitted By: Tim Warren

Review Date: 2002-03-21