Behringer VMX-300 3 Channel Mixer

[Gary 0]

The Product Specifications:

•3 Channel Ultra Low Noise Mixer.

•Auto BPM counters with time and beat-sync displays.

•Auto Mic Talk-over, with adjustable depth control

•Input signal LED ladders on each music channel

•3D Surround-sound (QRS) effect.

•Super-smooth faders each with curve control.

•Crossfader with curve control and Reverse switch.

•3 band wide-range kill/boost EQ’s per channel

•3 dual action Kill switches per crossfaded channel.

•Gold plated audio connectorsInitial reaction:

 

The first thing that was a nice surprise, on removing the VMX300 from the box, was the shape. When compared to the pictures that I’d seen of the VMX300, which looks plain rectangular in the photos, the real thing shows some very careful designing, with regards to the shape.

 

Firstly, the front wall of the mixer, which holds 1/4 inch mic and headphone sockets and 6 kill switches, a crossfade reverse, plus rotary crossfade curve control. (more on these last 3 points shortly) is sloped slightly to allow easier access to these controls.

 

Secondly, the front corners of the unit are angled in, recessing the corners in by approximately 3/4's of an inch. Just cosmetic? Well, that’s what I thought until I hung the unit between two turntable flightcases featuring the regular metal ball-corners. The mixer and turntable flightcases fitted perfectly flush thanks to the recessed corners, without having angle the turntable flightcases outwards to compensate for the ball-corners.

 

The lip, or rim, of the mixer is however, only 3 or 4mm wide each side, making hanging the mixer between two turntable flight cases possible, with a little care. Alternatively, as the mixer is almost 5 inches high, you shouldn’t find any difficulties placing it directly on the desk/table between the two record, or CD decks.

 

The next nice surprise was the colour of the front panel, which is thick, high quality brushed silver/aluminium, which unfortunately often looks a neutral white colour in web photos, but looks great in real life. This all helps to give the mixer a much more expensive look, than its typically Behringer, modest price tag.

 

All the walls are a silky black finish. All the controls are labelled in bold, black lettering against the contrasting silver background, making for very easy reading in the low light conditions that we all end up in. Every push button has an LED adjacent to it, to indicate whether the switch is on, or off.

 

What’s left in the box?

I was pleased to see that the multi-lingual manuals were all separate, meaning that I could keep the 12-page UK manual and not drag around the 49 pages of French, German, Dutch, Russian and other manuals.

 

I was not so pleased however, to discover that the mains lead for this unit was fused with a 13amp fuse, where a 3amp fuse would have been more appropriate. It’s possible that the user replaceable fuse on the back of the unit gives the required protection, but the manual didn’t mention that this was the case. However, the box had been opened prior to being sent out to me for review, so its possible that the mains lead that arrived with me, wasn’t the lead that Behringer shipped.

 

Given Behringers comparatively recent push into the DJ audio market place, the nice, shiny silver Behringer triangular sticker supplied in the box, was obviously something they want you to stick to your CD / record cases to promote the brand. As you’ll be able to tell by the end of this review, I certainly wouldn’t have any reservations about recommending this mixer.

 

Plug them ‘oles

The rear wall of the unit holds the power on/off switch, a horizontally mounted Rocker. This location avoids the trap that many manufacturers fall into for non-rack mount mixers, of placing a push on/push off type button, right on the front panel/control surface of a mixer, where it can be accidentally knocked, and switched off, if you reach hastily for a particular control..

 

All connectors on the rear panel are phono/RCA sockets. Each pair of connectors is colour coded (White = Left, Red = Right), and are well labelled and grouped together in a logical fashion. From Left to right, you have the output pairs going to “Amp”, “Booth”, and “Tape” (The latter being the only output that you cannot control the output volume of, independently of the other volumes).

 

Next right, are the Send and Return stereo connectors for patching in an external effects processor. Regrettably, but understandable at this price, the Send outputs simply send whatever the PFL/Headphones are monitoring. Unlike more expensive mixers therefore, you cannot apply effects to one music channel, whilst cueing up the next track on the headphones. The moment you change the PFL/cueing buttons to monitor another channel, zap! That’s the channel that the effects unit will see, effect, and send back to your mix, thereby letting the audience hearing what you were cueing up for the next track. Neither is there any facility on-board the mixer to adjust how much of the effects Return is played out to the audience. Such volume corrections will therefore, need to be done remotely, on your chosen effects unit if it has one.

 

Finally, covering the middle, to right hand side of the rear wall, are the 6 pairs of RCA/Phonos, for inputs into the 3 channels. Each channel has two inputs, which can support 2 x Line Level Signal (CD/Tape/video/Mini-disc player), with the option of switching one of the pairs to accept Turntable/Phono level signals. Quite rightly, the manual warns about not plugging a Line Level Signal into the sockets if you have switched those sockets over to Turntable/Phono options, as such a high, line level signal, being fed into ultra-sensitive phono pre-amp inputs, may (probably will) damage the mixer. Good advice? Definitely! However, the push buttons under each pair of channel inputs is positioned quite low down on the rear wall, where pushing the mixer back slightly (against a 4way extension lead for example), could (de)select the switch, causing either silence or distortion.

 

On the plus side, each of the three channel inputs does have its own ground stud for connecting the audio ground leads of your turntables. This is much more convenient option than mixers with only a single, shared gnd/stud.

 

Just fader way

Each of the 3 channels boast a 2 way toggle switch for selecting which of the 2 Inputs (per channel) you want to play, Below that is the Rotary gain control for input level, and below those are the High, Mid-range, and Bass equalisation controls. In addition to the mixer offering Kill switches, these equalisation controls offer you an incredible “kill” range, down to minus 32 db, right up to plus 12db, for when you want a more gradual frequency “sweep” rather than the instant “In” or “Out” of the kill switches.

 

Running up the side of all the above controls, is a 3 colour, 10 segment (6 green, 3 Orange, 1 Red) LED Ladder, continuously showing you (with peak hold) the level of input signal for that channel. This makes level matching the next track, to the current track an absolute breeze, with none of that repeatedly switching your headphones between two channels to try to match levels on a single LED meter.

 

Still moving down, each channel features a good sized, latching button, labelled PFL (Pre-fade Listen) although most will know it a “Cue”, an LED over the Cue button tells you at a glance when that channels signal is being sent to the headphones (and also to the Effects Send Loop). It is possible to select all/any of the channels for monitoring at the same time (but you’ll run out of ears!)

At the bottom of each of the channel controls, and comfortably located about three-quarters of the way down the mixer, are the main faders. The faders are some of the smoothest faders that I’ve used, they almost feel loose enough to slide down to zero if you stood the mixer on its end (but don’t, when you try it).

 

A very innovative feature, which I’m surprised isn’t featured more prominently in advertising for this mixer, is that each of the 3 faders can have one of three curves set on it. Sharp, Mid, or Soft. Set to Sharp, almost all of the signal can be brought into the mix, by sliding the fade up just the first 20mm of the 60mm fader, with very little, if any, more signal being gained by bringing the fader up to the top of its travel. This is great if you need to bring in a sound really quickly. In Soft mode, almost nothing seems to happen in the lower 20mm of the fader travel, with the signal getting building quickly at the top 40mm of the fader. Mid, is a mixture of the two settings, and gives (as far as I can judge) a steady, proportional build of the signal, eg: 20% up is twice as loud as 10% up etc.

 

As with many 10 inch wide mixers, horizontal space is scarce. On the VMX300, this resulted in the channel 3 fader curve switch missing its labelling (Sharp, Mid, Soft), there just isn’t room. However the other two fader curve switches work in an identical fashion and are labelled very clearly, allowing easy reference. The manual recommends, with good reason, that you do not adjust the fader curves whilst the fader is “up” and signal is present, since things could get very loud, or embarrassingly quiet.

“Better than I ever effected”.

 

To the right of all the above controls, separated by a pair of bouncy LED Level Meters with Peak Hold, is the output section of the mixer.

 

Directly below the LED level meters, are the controls for the mixers only on-board effect. The QRS 3D surround – which is controlled by an On/Off switch, again with LED status indicator, and a rotary control ranging from Min to Max.

 

I’d love to tell you what QRS stands for, however, there is nothing in the manual, on the box, or on the mixer itself, which gives any clue… I’d guess at Quasi Rear Sound, (or something). Anyway, the effect is Really Quite Superb (dam, that’s RQS), Describing effects in words is never going to do it justice, but….it certainly does give a noticeable widening and enhancing of the stereo sound, but without the wishy washy hollow sound that those huge 1980’s ghetto-blasters and equalisers used to give when you pressed the “Wide” button. Interestingly enough, the QRS 3D effect seems to work differently, but always very well, on different styles of music. I got some superb reverse-whooshing (I told you the descriptions were iffy) effect added to the beats of a fast, bass track, but a powerful euphoric effect on those “echoy trumpets parp-parping in a warehouse” sections found in so many of today tunes. A small percentage of rapid repeating DDDDelay was also added to the sound, but this too benefited the overall effect.

 

“H’everybody Out!”

The far right hand side of the mixer is dedicated to the output controls for what the audience and you will hear. Including outbound volume controls, headphone volumes and split controls.

 

I’ve already mentioned that this mixer features very easily read labelling of each of the controls. Unfortunately, the top three rotary controls in this section suffer from what can only be described as “over abbreviation”. Here’s why. Two of the rotary controls are labelled “OUT A” and “OUT B” respectively. Ahh, separate volume controls for the left and right signal outputs maybe…with A being the Left channel, and B being the right channel??? No, not at all. Had these two controls been labelled “Out AMP” and “Out BOOTH” then I wouldn’t have had to refer to the manual. Still one quick glance at the manual and all was clear. The third rotary control missing letters from its labelling, was “BAL A”…any guesses? Yes “Balance Amp”, this allows you to adjust the sound levels between the speakers. Used creatively, you could pan the entire mix from one side of the dancefloor to the other. Alternatively, and more practically, when you’ve had to set up in a tight location and one speaker stack is closer to the audience than the other, “BAL A” will allow you to even things out.

 

Next down, is the Talk on/off button, with LED status indicator, which dips the music for when you want to use the microphone. This is much more professional than all that rapid fader fondling for manually dipping the music.

 

A nice long Cue!

Last but certainly not least, considering how much we all need the ability to hear the next track that we’re about to play, are the three controls for the mixers cueing functions. In addition to the PFL (pre-fader Level) rotary control for the headphone volume, which certainly went louder than I’d usually need), you have a switch offering “Stereo” or “Split Cue”. The remaining rotary control allows you (in Stereo mode) to choose what ratio of main mix you hear, compared to the amount of cued sound you hear.

For newcomers, Split cue is simply a way of hearing the track that you’re about to play, in one ear, whilst hearing the track that the audience is already hearing, in you other ear.

 

Why bother with split-cue? Why not just wear your headphones so one cup is off one ear, so you can hear the live sound that way? Well… For bedroom, or house parties (IE: Your house, your mates house etc…not a “house music” party.) that’ll work fine. But when the main speakers are say, 20 metres away, will mean that the speaker sound wont reach your ear “on time”, making the mix sound “off”. With split-cue, however, neither the live sound, nor the cue channel sounds will be delayed.

Dig those curves!

 

Ok, below all the main panel controls that you’ve read about so far is the crossfader, which like the other three faders is loose and smooth. Surprisingly for a mixer in this price bracket, the crossfade curve is not controlled by a switch giving you just two, or three choices of “factory-set” curves. The VMX300 has a rotary control to adjust the crossfaders curve between Smooth, Sharp and ANYHERE in-between, just the way you like it.

 

Beat mix’n’match

Whilst the features and the quality of the VMX300, are above what you’d expect to find on a “beginners” or “Starter” mixer, the remarkable price tag for this unit, brings it easily into the budget of eager Newbies. To assist those new to the skill of beat mixing, a very clever, yet stunningly easy to use, beat counter/matching section nestles directly above the crossfader, and takes up the entire width of the mixer.

 

There are two Beat counter sections, each with a 3-digit LED numeric display, and two internally illuminated buttons Sync Lock and Beat Assist Mode. Each of these two sections is dedicated to channel 2 and 3 respectively, and are horizontally mirror imaged on opposite sides of the main panel. Separating these two sections are two horizontally mounted LED ladders: Tempo Difference, which indicate which input signal is faster, and by how much, relatively, and Time Offset, which indicates how far offbeat the two inputs are.

 

Sync lock is a godsend. Some mixers, even well known, mid-priced units, have BPM counter displays that will sometimes get confused and display a tracks BPM in multiples. eg: A track known to be 124BPM may show as 124BPM one moment, then 62BPM the next moment, 248 BPM briefly, before returning to 124BPM for a while. Some DJ’s end up disabling the feature, labelling it as a distraction. Sync lock doesn’t have any of this. Once the same track (from our example) shows you something close to 124 BPM, press Sync Lock and the button illuminates internally. This prevents the BPM display showing the half and double BPMs described above. Neat.

 

The Beat Assist button, on each side, effectively acts as a manual method of inputting BPMs, for tracks with unusual rhythm layouts, that could give the Auto-BPM counters a false reading. 3 taps on this button, in time to the beat, and the BPM is displayed on the BPM display, ready for the Sync Lock button to be pressed.

 

Here we go !!

In use, you would have (lets say) Channel 2 playing out to the audience. Within 5 to 10 seconds the numeric display will show that tracks BPM (upto 199 BPM), or you can tap the Beat Assist button, and press Sync Lock for that side. Do the same for the track that you’re cueing up in your headphones and the magic begins.

 

As soon as you press the second Sync Lock button, the Tempo Difference LED ladder will light up. If the BPMs are already the same, then just the centre LED will light. If the right hand track is a little faster than the left, then a LED just to the right of the centre is lit instead. The faster the right hand track is, compared to the left, an LED further from the centre of the mixer is displayed. If the left-hand track were faster, then LED’s to the left of centre would light instead, in the same proportional manner.

OK, now, simply adjust the pitch controls on either one or both of your CD’s/Decks to get the two tracks running at the same BPM. Unless you’re very lucky, the tracks will still not be in sync, but will at least now be running at the same speed, and that half the battle won. Next, the lower LED ladder; Time Offset comes into play. It uses the same “distance from Centre” ideas as the Tempo Difference LED ladder did, and “just” requires you to pitch bend, dab, nudge, or spindle tweak the track you’re wanting to mix to, until the beats are in perfect sync. OK, there’s still music phrasing to get right, but hey, even the other, well known manufacturers haven’t got that to work yet.

Kill, Kill, Kill switches.

 

The 6 Kill switches, 3 each for Channel 2 and 3 respectively, worked very well. Individually knocking out Bass, Mid-range and Treble completely with no gaps. EG: If you kill all three ranges, absolutely no sound comes out. The switches have three modes; In their centre position, the sound passes through as normal. When pushed down to the momentary Kill position, they stay down only for as long as you hold them. Lifted up above the centre position (latched), the switch stays put, killing the frequency until you chose to return the switch to its centre position. I discovered one unfortunate point with the switches themselves - It’s this. If you push a Kill Switch down into the momentary position, and quickly let go, its spring loaded action takes it, not only back up to the centre position, but onwards and upwards into the latching position, killing the frequency that you just wanted back. This however, I shall put down to the mixer (and springs) being brand new.

 

The Crossfade Reverse switch, located between the two groups of Kill Switches, is of the same type of three-way switch as the Kill switches. This offers a very fast and fader-friendly alternative to slamming the crossfader from side to side, for transforming or scratching.

 

Conclusion

If I hadn’t known the price of this mixer before reviewing it, I would have estimated it to be in the low £200 price region. At time of writing, the VMX300 is around £150. As with other Behringer units which I’ve used, its not easy to find any “cutting of corners” or “skimping” in any important areas.

A few extra LED’s wouldn’t have gone amiss, to show power ON, although to be fair, the BPM displays do show two lines each to show a state of “ready-to-count”. Similarly LED’s to show On/Off status of the Kill Switches, would have saved me a few confused minutes one day, when powering the mixer up for a home session, trying to establish why no sound was coming out. Only to eventually work out (after checking all the wiring, channel gains, the amps, the power leads etc) that the kill switches were all on “Kill”

 

User-replaceable faders and crossfader would have been a nice addition, but this would have taken the price up again for all those little multi-way connectors, and removable panels etc.

 

My only “in-use” concerns were about the control layout. Firstly, a Microphone can only be used on Channel 1, which is on the far left, Although the “Talk” (override) button, is on the far right. In practice, this meant either crossing hands, or passing the Mic from one hand to the other. This, however, will be no concern for those not using the mixer for audience-less, mixing sessions at home.

 

My only remaining concern regarding the control layout, were having controls (kill switches, crossfade reverse, and crossfade curve) and mic and headphone connectors on the front wall of the mixer. Although not so much of a problem for home/bedroom DJ’s, other regular mobile jocks will confirm that we often get squeezed into the tightest of corners in pubs, house parties, riverboats etc, putting these controls/jacks in a very precarious, prone position at groin height. I’m sure that the stand-proud kill switches would probably fair well, but cable-entry points on mic and headphone plugs are notoriously poor survivors of regular “brush-pasts”.

 

Overall, this mixer is ideal for a beginner, looking for their first unit to mix from CD’s and turntables. However, this mixer will also appeal to an established DJ, looking for a second mixer to use for practice at home and/or to carry with them to shows as a backup to their usual mixer. Lets face it, if your mixer gets given a drink by a punter, and you haven’t got a spare mixer. The night ends right there.

 

Even now, I still can’t work out how Behringer have released such a good mixer this price. I’ve shown the VMX300 to several DJ friends of mine, shown off the features, and asked them how much they’d expect to pay for one. Not surprisingly, they both over-guessed by at least £75, even the mate that knew that Behringer price their kit at extremely keen prices.

 

 

[robert stuart 0]

hi gary behringer djx 700 any good worth buying or not thanks very much

[Gary 0]

Hi there, I've had a "little play" with one at Plasa, but not side-by-side with any of the other brands.

 

On paper...it seems to be a very "clean" mixer, in terms of its audio path, signal to noise ratio, noise floor etc. Cleaner in fact (on paper) than the mixer which its doing a fine impression of. For its price, the 700 makes an ideal 4 channel mixer. OK the durability -may- not be like its look-a-like, and certainly the effects unit is a little basic, but for doing what you'd need it to do...its well worth the pennies.

 

If I didnt have a 4 channel back up mixer already, and my current mixer also becoming ANOTHER backup mixer in a couple of months, when my new one arrives, I would certainly consider buying the Behringer DJX700 before the Christmas season begins.

 

For any of us, (even the laptop users?) the mixer is one of the things that is going to stop the entire show, or at least make it very uncomfortable to complete the night, should something go wrong. Elsewhere on the show, a bulb may blow, a scanner mirror may fall off, a smoke machine may give its last puff, a 4 channel controller triac may refuse to switch off (or on), but these are all piecemeal to a mixer that wont mix.