Bummer you didn’t like it as it gets a lot of love over at Gear Space, even from Sequential owners. If this is your first Behringer I can understand how you might think it doesn’t look as good in person. That was my reaction with the K2. I think part of what you are feeling might be just the letdown of the brand appeal. Even if knock-off Nike or other fake brand goods look like the real thing, it would be hard to shake the feeling of having a lessor product. I know that there is an element of that for me with the K2. It’s hard to know how I would feel about it if it said Korg on it. You’re making me a bit nervous with my Pro-800 order. Lol.
The smell is just weird. Anyway, hopefully it grows on you.
I played with it some more last night and interestingly enough the issue with the dead zones and the knob response went away almost entirely (certainly got much better), which is weird but I’ll take it
Tuning also got better, more stable. I should say that I left the synth on when I stepped away from it the first time, so maybe it just needed some time to “warm up” (eg the oscillators also finally sounded very close to each other and equally loud - it actually says it in the manual, that the synth should be left on for a while to get the most out of it… ).
You needn’t worry, the sound is really quite very good and in the end that’s what it is about. I’m not much of a preset guy, I like to program synths, so the handling issues put a dent in it at first, but the hour I spent with it last night was much more enjoyable as the synth responded much better, so it’s all good.
Soundwise it’s that DSI/Sequential sound through and through. I ran it through a UAD reverb plugin (Lexicon 224) and the soundscapes I got were really quite lovely. Looking forward to mess with it over the weekend and maybe pair it with my Mercury 7 yeyeye.
Great to hear. I literally have not heard a YouTube video of it where I didn’t think the sound was great. It seems much beefier than the Take 5 (closer to the Prophet 5 girth), and my gut says it should sit nicely between the Grandmother and Take 5 (I hope). I sort of want it for just dead simple polysynth sounds, and imagine using it almost like an electric piano. The Take 5 can handle the more creative sound design duties.
No, I think it required you adapting your expectations. They dropped to practically zero after your first impression and now you’re positively surprised The smell issue is another story I guess.
Cheers for that analysis, but my expectations were exclusively towards its sound, which were met right away. The previous post were my observations (far from expectations actually) and they still hold (eg build quality & feel), but some of the critical issues I had got better which is odd but good. As far as I know, dead zones aren‘t affected by expectations
What would you say are the basic sound characteristics compared to Rev2 or Prophet 6? It was said to be more o a pad machine due to slow envelopes, but they seem to have fixed that already?
Ok, just received mine.
First impression : quite happy with it!
I guess it all depends on expectations, but the finish looks quite good to me (taking the price into account). I’m not used to expensive synths, never touched a DSI (except in a shop), my most expensive synth atm is a Digitone, for a bit of context.
It is indeed a smelly synth out of the box ^^.
It seems like it takes a little warm-up time soundwise. Thats normal I guess, but not being used to analog synths (appart from MicroBrute) I could easily have forgotten that point tbh.
It’s easy to dial the sounds that I expected, “lush” pads, just added my go-to reverb quickly and that was quite impressive.
It’s always a subjective call, even with both synths next to each other. The different filters will be where you might be able to form an opinion. Afaik the P6 uses a discrete filter based on the SSM2040 design while the Pro800 uses CA’s clone of the CEM3320. It might be worth digging out some demos of synth with that filter to see if it’s to your liking? The OG used a CEM3372 for its filter high was used in a few other synths in the day if you want some context between the OG and the Pro800.
I’m looking forward to getting mine and comparing/contrasting with some of my other CEM equipped synths for sure
I’m imagine they recommend you switch it on and let it warm up for 20 mins before tuning? That would make sense especially in light of what folks are saying about warm up time and stability?
I was more used to be sorted in about 5minutes with the MicroBrute, but I think you cannot avoid this on an analog poly synth.
I’d say it holds a tune pretty quickly, it just sounds much better after about 15minutes.
I’ve actually read some people saying their Prophets and OB6 need about 15-20minutes, so it’s not actually that bad.
I have an OB-6 and it takes about 3 minutes to get stabilized. It probably gets better as time goes on but it’s such a great sounding synth that being slightly out of tune isn’t much of an issue.
Pro-800 definitely gains a lot in sound quality after 15-20mins of warmup time, at least mine does. Will be interesting to see how potential variance in quality control affects users’ experiences (if at all).
Mine had a chip in the right wood panel (is it wood?!) ex-factory. So maybe my experiences so far may also be unit specific. I played with it some more last night and recorded a few patches I liked. I‘ll be keeping it because the sound is really good, but it won‘t replace any synth in my lineup - the build quality is just too cheap (as is to be expected at that competitive price point) to replace one of my better built (and much more expensive) synths, even if the sound is right up there.
As far as I can see, Behringers use the same type of metal eurorack-sized housing as MOOG do. They obviously cut corners in some areas and everything is shrunk down smt circuitry made as cost-effectively as possible but quality-wise I haven’t found them to be too shoddy tbh. They do use real wood for the side panels. The build quality of their SH101 “clone”, the MS1 in particular surprised me, it’s much heavier than I expected with a steel chassis, an absolute bargain.
(eg the oscillators also finally sounded very close to each other and equally loud - it actually says it in the manual, that the synth should be left on for a while to get the most out of it… 
The smell issue is another story I guess.