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Moog sells its business to InMusic

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Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#131

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

x3874 wrote: post #78
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soundwise those are quite poor copies. Behringer are hit and miss on this. They killed it with their Minimoog clones - very, very close to the real hardware - but not so much with some of their later efforts. I have their Pro-One and their K2 and both lack the character and warmth of the originals. They sound like clones. The P800, Solina and Kat all seem very good though. People who accuse Behringer of cloning are m…

> There is a psychopathic edge - like cloning MI's Plaits, which many suspect helped push Émilie out of the business, to everyone's loss. Thats quite some... BS. Gillet intented to exit the audio hardware industry in search of different, greener pastures already way before Brains was released. Also MI code is public, so 'cloning' is a stretch. MI designs were and are being produced by multiple shops.

Maybe. Brains was announced in 2021. Gillet quit in 2022.

I know the designs are open source and produced elsewhere, but it's not unreasonable to wonder if Brains was what finally pushed her over the edge.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#132

Post by adql »

notmypenguin wrote: post #14

It’s sad how the entire music industry of actual innovators gets scooped up by conglomerates like InMusic. What is worse, however, is the blatant rip-off business plan of Behringer. They went so far as to buy the chip company CoolAudio to build clones of the Curtis CEM3340 oscillator chip featured in all these 80’s polysynths. Wanna know why Behringers product line exclusively features other peoples designs that have…

Sure I am annoyed that in many cases they rip it 1:1 without improvement, and that they rip some products actively in production.

But in greater scheme of things it's some products authors already paid NRE few tens or hundreds times over vs musician having access to gear they couldn't dream of owning few years ago.

And I have absolutely no problems with cloning products already out of production.

> You may say, well, that’s capitalism, but no, dear reader, it’s shady and involves no new R&D work, no innovation, and since their business model is loss-leading everyone else out of business, it’s parasitic and will result in stifled innovation in music hardware.

Oh you sweet summer child if you only knew how often the designs are copied with slight change in that space... hell, whole guitar pedal market is incest over incest for last 60+ years

> They went so far as to buy the chip company CoolAudio to build clones of the Curtis CEM3340 oscillator chip featured in all these 80’s polysynths.

...so the chip is still produced and people can use it vs possibly going out of business. How is that bad ?

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#133

Post by adql »

notmypenguin wrote: post #47
bemusedthrow75 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's be clear: cloning stuff where the patent has expired is not remotely unethical in an intrinsic sense. Even if you launch the product the very day the patent expires. It's a clear part of the social contract of innovation patents. Society says: - Ideas aren't things you can really own - Copying stuff means more choice for consumers and lower prices. - But copying stuff before the innovator has a chance to earn f…

It’s absolutely unethical when your obvious goal is to loss-lead everyone else into either bankruptcy or selling out. I am a consumer of music gear. Behringer actively harms my future ability to obtain new technologies because they kill those who produce them and produce nothing original or innovative. They poison the well! Uli Behringer is also the quintessential slimy shady businessman, look it up. Behringer is bad…

If you can't monetize your product within extremely generous patent lifetime giving it more time won't change much.

Patents already do more to stifle innovation than to help them.

> Behringer actively harms my future ability to obtain new technologies because they kill those who produce them and produce nothing original or innovative

Okay, what company they actually killed by making a clone ? I haven't heard of single one.

I do agree that cloning products currently in production (best recent example being behringer swing) is below belt, but there is NOTHING wrong in resurrecting hardware current manufacturer stopped making, only people "losing" on it are people trying to sell used ones for ungodly amount of money

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#134

Post by masklinn »

scns wrote: post #2

> inMusic isn't free from controversy. Formed in 2012 by Jack O'Donnell, a former vice-president at DJ equipment brand Stanton > Roger Linn, who made many ground-breaking drum machines in the '80s before creating the MPC 60 for Akai, has accused O'Donnell of failing to pay him royalties after acquiring Akai, repeatedly calling him unscrupulous and a "bastard" in interviews. Is it absolutely necessary to fuck people o…

> Is it absolutely necessary to fuck people over to get to the top?

It’s not necessary but it’s so much easier.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#135

Post by x3874 »

rjh29 wrote: post #121
x3874 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a psychopathic edge - like cloning MI's Plaits, which many suspect helped push Émilie out of the business, to everyone's loss. Thats quite some... BS. Gillet intented to exit the audio hardware industry in search of different, greener pastures already way before Brains was released. Also MI code is public, so 'cloning' is a stretch. MI designs were and are being produced by multiple shops.

Behringer attracts more attention. Arturia used MI code in the MicroFreak and falsely claimed they had Gillet's blessing, nobody cared. Arturia make VST clones of every popular synth out and charge $500, nobody cares. Behringer makes an affortable version of the Model D because Moog never bothered to and people complain.

[dead]

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#136

Post by dimal »

rj_hoff wrote: post #126
dimal wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love it if they made some Eurorack modules. I have a DFAM and love it, but for most equipment I only consider Eurorack. The DFAM has to sit outside my case. The ergonomics of that are weird, and there’s only so much room for desktop equipment.

Isn't the DFAM eurorack compatable? I seem to recall being able to take it out of its case and plug a 12pin into it and it just works.

Yeah, but compared to their modules, it’s enormous. It would be a huge part of my case. And for the functionality it provides, it doesn’t really need to be that big. It has a great interface and it’s beautiful, but eurorack modules tend to pack their functionality into a tighter package. And I could imagine that if they put their minds to it, they could create smaller, more tightly focused modules than the semi-modular instruments that they tend to create.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#137

Post by adql »

ubercow13 wrote: post #56
notmypenguin wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s absolutely unethical when your obvious goal is to loss-lead everyone else into either bankruptcy or selling out. I am a consumer of music gear. Behringer actively harms my future ability to obtain new technologies because they kill those who produce them and produce nothing original or innovative. They poison the well! Uli Behringer is also the quintessential slimy shady businessman, look it up. Behringer is bad…

Why do you say they are loss leading? They presumably are not. Instead they are reasonably pricing out-of-patent hardware designs which the original manufacturers are apparently vastly overcharging for decades after they have recouped their R&D costs. If anything this should drive innovation not stifle it. Other hardware manufacturers are now required to innovate and actually spend on R&D to sell hardware at higher p…

> Instead they are reasonably pricing out-of-patent hardware designs which the original manufacturers are apparently vastly overcharging for decades after they have recouped their R&D costs.

That's fine but they do stuff like this:

https://www.behringer.com/product.html?modelCode=P0E2V

https://www.arturia.com/products/keystep/overview

Where it is just a copied thing near 1:1 of product currently being sold, changed just enough to not be sued for making exact copy

And not just big companies but smaller modular ones like this:

https://synthanatomy.com/2023/05/behringer-abacus-a-ripoff-o...

Tho to be fair original maths is based on some old Buchla modules.

I have nothing against resurrecting stuff out of production or produced so long patent expired (they had their chance) but near-copy of current stuff is a bit much.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#138

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

notmypenguin wrote: post #75
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They absolutely have invested in R&D. The clones are not trivial component-for-component copies. A lot of old parts aren't available any more and the circuits have to be rebuilt around what's available today. They've added MIDI and USB features. They built their own chip division to resurrect the chips of the 80s. They built products like the DeepMind which is Juno-ish but not really a clone. What they did do was nuk…

That is a blatant distortion of the truth. They have invested Nothing in New Designs, nothing For The Future, and I find your defense of Behringer utterly disingenuous. Legacy: what legacy of designs, ORIGINAL DESIGNS, has Behringer left us? R&D was not intended to signify honing a rip-off design, but indicates an original design. Name me ONE original Behringer product.

Neutron, Proton, DeepMind, PolyD, Wing, X32, and the BCR series

The official line now is they're moving on from clones into original designs.

The real problem with Behringer is the low cost and not-a-trophy accessibility. No one complains about UDO's JP6 knock off or Groove's 3RD Wave, even though they're very close clones with a few added features.

Perhaps because they're reassuringly expensive trophy products, while Behringer's aren't.

Re: Moog sells its business to InMusic

#140

Post by squeaky-clean »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #124
dimal wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would love it if they made some Eurorack modules. I have a DFAM and love it, but for most equipment I only consider Eurorack. The DFAM has to sit outside my case. The ergonomics of that are weird, and there’s only so much room for desktop equipment.

Couldn't you pull the DFAM and put it in a case? My Mother, at least, is Eurorack.

Yep, 8 screws and you'll need to supply the power cable (for anyone that doesn't know eurorack they're just a few dollars)

https://moogmusicsupport.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/36000...

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