Behringer Nu6000

[Megasong 0]

We bought one of these for testing in December (and have subsequently ordered another two which should tell you something).

 

In brief if you're looking for a lightweight amp with a bit of power these are great except they are a bit lacking in the top area. They are good for Subs and Mids but not so hot for full range or tops.

 

In our tests they have cut out running into 4ohms at sustained high loads but this was under test conditions with pink noise so not really typical of gig conditions. They run quite cool in general though. Our conclusion is that they are fine for use in bi or tri amping solutions but no use otherwise.

 

Do not think of them as 6KW amps. Running 4 Ohms they are a good 1500W/Channel with 3db headroom and 750W into 8 Ohms. They do not like running into any funny loads so do not even think of using them with speakers with sub crossovers, they're better with mid/top crossovers but our tests show they lose clarity and you can see break up on high frequencies on the scope. Their damping factor is laughably low and this is probably the cause so watch out for your cables and use the best and shortest you can. We normally site amps in close proximity to speakers well away from the desk and they like that.

 

The inbuilt crossover is very simple and to all intents useless for professional use, we haven't tried the DSP version so cannot comment. Use with an external active crossover, drive one channel sub and the other mid and they seem to like this, no cutting out (even into 4Ohms pink noise after 15mins).

 

With the three year warranty they are hard to beat bang for buck but you have to be aware of their limitations. DO NOT buy from the likes of Amazon though, if you buy there or from another non authorised Behringer dealer you won't get your warranty.

[McCardle 1]

Thanks for the review .

 

DO NOT buy from the likes of Amazon though, if you buy there or from another non authorised Behringer dealer you won't get your warranty.

 

This is slightly incorrect no matter what Behringer would have you believe. Under the sale of goods act, your contract always lies with the vendor of the goods and not the manufacturer, and so your first port of call for returning any faulty goods would be with the shop / mail order entity who sold it to you, and they would have to comply with the relevant laws regardless of whether they are Authorised or not. If they fob you off, direct them to the relevant legislation.

 

http://whatconsumer.co.uk/is-the-guarantee...99s-written-on/

 

These laws have been passed and harmonised throughout Europe, and you could buy from a distributor in Spain or Germany, and still have exactly the same rights as you would in the UK.

 

Lets clear up some myths.....

 

Goods purchased from a Non Authorised distributor are called 'Grey Goods', they are more often than not exactly the same product as you would buy from an Authorised distributor, but often the non authorised retailer has bought and imported directly from a country where the product is available at a cheaper price - thus only paying one middleman instead of two. This is basically just the commercial version of those people who fly off to New York to buy an xbox, iphone or fashionwear because its 40% cheaper than in the UK!. Its the same product, just bought outside of the country where it is being used, inevitably at a better price.

 

Some may also argue that the manufacturers could prevent this from happening by playing a fair game and selling their goods at the same price all over the world, rather than hiking the price in some places compared to others :ads:

 

So whilst buying from a non authorised source, may indeed lose you the extended manufacturers' warranty, provided you buy it from within the UK / EU it doesn't mean you forego all rights for repair or replacement, as your statutory rights still afford you some minimum warranty and protection under the sale of goods act, because your contract always lies with the vendor who sold it to you, and not the manufacturer.

Edited February 10, 2013 by McCardle

[Megasong 0]

 

This is slightly incorrect no matter what Behringer would have you believe. Under the sale of goods act, your contract always lies with the vendor of the goods and not the manufacturer, and so your first port of call for returning any faulty goods would be with the shop / mail order entity who sold it to you, and they would have to comply with the relevant laws regardless of whether they are Authorised or not. If they fob you off, direct them to the relevant legislation.

 

http://whatconsumer.co.uk/is-the-guarantee...99s-written-on/

 

These laws have been passed and harmonised throughout Europe, and you could buy from a distributor in Spain or Germany, and still have exactly the same rights as you would in the UK.

 

Lets clear up some myths.....

 

Goods purchased from a Non Authorised distributor are called 'Grey Goods', they are more often than not exactly the same product as you would buy from an Authorised distributor, but often the non authorised retailer has bought and imported directly from a country where the product is available at a cheaper price - thus only paying one middleman instead of two. This is basically just the commercial version of those people who fly off to New York to buy an xbox, iphone or fashionwear because its 40% cheaper than in the UK!. Its the same product, just bought outside of the country where it is being used, inevitably at a better price.

 

Some may also argue that the manufacturers could prevent this from happening by playing a fair game and selling their goods at the same price all over the world, rather than hiking the price in some places compared to others :ads:

 

So whilst buying from a non authorised source, may indeed lose you the extended manufacturers' warranty, provided you buy it from within the UK / EU it doesn't mean you forego all rights for repair or replacement, as your statutory rights still afford you some minimum warranty and protection under the sale of goods act, because your contract always lies with the vendor who sold it to you, and not the manufacturer.

 

We're both slightly incorrect, the first year warranty would apply through the dealer and ther would be Behringer as a back up, the Behringer 3 year extended warranty would not apply through a non authorised dealer. It is also very arguable if you would be able to enforce any sale of goods warranty with the likes of Amazon etc. since you have to provide engineers reports after 6 months (which would cost) once this situation arose and would probably have to take them to court if you could afford it after the engineers report establishing beyond reasonable doubt that the fault was not yours. Virtually impossible with our sort of kit.

 

Better to stick to an authorised dealer.

 

[McCardle 1]

Amazon aren't unique in asking for an Engineers Report, some computer distributors and high end hi-fi equipment distributors do so as well. All an engineers report does is to ascertain whether the damage is caused by mis-use or genuine component failure.

 

Any Electronics Engineer can do this for you, even the local TV repair shop, it doesn't have to be specialised, and its reasonable to expect any engineer qualified to repair a £3000 home cinema system, is equally qualified enough to determine whether a product has failed due to legit component failure or ingesting a pint of beer.

 

Just make sure that your 'report' is from a qualified entity on paper with a trading address, company reg number and ideally a vat number. This is more than enough to satisfy these requirements, and shouldn't cost more than an hour or 90 minutes of labour. Tell the engineer that you are claiming off your insurance and you need a written report for the claims manager.

 

Should cost no more than about £50 - £80, of course its not worth it if you have a £100 item, but for something costing several hundred then yes, its worth it on principle alone. Amazon also rarely expect anyone to do it, so its worth it on that score too

 

Of course the easiest thing is to avoid Amazon altogether, I agree. Unfortunately many won't as this industry is just as price senstive as any other.

Edited February 10, 2013 by McCardle

[Megasong 0]

We received our second and third NU6000s and soak tested them for about 6 hours before using them for their first live gig.

 

First impressions were that they weren't as punchy as the original one, but this may have been a result of their being run through a sense limiter which capped output at 2KW per amp channel peak.

 

We did not run the main feed through a compressor (we would normally have in this situation), compression was only used for the mics as I wanted to hear the Berrys in 'real life' rather than through a load of gismos.

 

They were used bi-amped vertically (one channel mid and the other sub) and not used for tops due to the dodgy results during testing, we used a good old workhorse Cloud amp for this. Clarity and volume overall were excellent. Both Band and Disco sounded brilliant from that standpoint, and to be honest the lack of punch could have been the hall dynamics and speaker placement. We had four (18" Turbomax) subs across the front of the stage, four (Yamaha Club S115V) mids and two (HK Elements used as) tops at the sides. Cables were 4mm2 and about 8M for the tops and Mids and 5M for the subs (which were paralleled in pairs)

 

If their lights were to be believed amps were apparently running quite hard but never hitting their internal clip limiter. There was however a lot of difference between them. We would normally run amps with the attenuators out (or gain full up - but in most cases it's attenuation not gain) this gave a huge difference in indication from the lights, we had to back both channels on one by about five clicks to level them out. And before you ask if it was the mixer or signal we tried swapping sides and the difference stayed with the amp.

 

They played for about two hours of band and five hours of disco with some pretty heavy stuff during the last hour. Apart from blowing a gale out the front they were unobtrusive and ran almost cold. They were run from separate power feeds but you could still see the incandescent house lights being hit by the power drain. Not something to run more than one from a 13A socket. Make sure they each get their own feed and do not share it with anything that draws much power or needs a stable supply.

 

They were a delight to move, with two of them in a flight case with the crossover/sense limiter and compressor (unused this time) all in an easily liftable 6U. The lack of binding posts was a complete pain as we had to take all the connections from the amp's speakons to a rack panel at the back of the case so we could get access to the speaker cables to connect the sense inputs. This means an extra speakon connector in every feed which is not good for reliability.

 

So all in all a successful outing, next time we're going to try then without the tops - using them split sub/mid+top taking the HKs out of the equasion to see how they sound. I'm also going to set the two new ones up and get the scope on them to see if they exhibit the same characteristics as the original and if the lights are accurate, but that'll have to wait until I have a bit more time.