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peepsaudio
Published on 09/07/08 at 06:41
I've had 2 of these patch bays for a few years now, and at this point I have mixed feelings about them. First of all, they are pretty much the cheapest you are going to find for patch bays. They are selling new for $50 - you definitely can't beat that for a patch bay of this size. They are by Behringer, which unfortunately has a reputation for noisy, low quality equipment. However, in my experience, their products are usually just ruined by lousy power amps. The power amps they use in other products cause a lot of noise and distortion in your program material. Of course, this doesn't have any power amps, so you might be surprised to find that this Behringer piece is actually pretty quiet. So on the technical side, that's a plus, and it performs just like you'd hope it would. Then there is the issue of craftsmanship. After switching it between racks a couple of times, the faceplate on the patch bay came loose and eventually fell off. I ended up having to super glue it in place! In addition to that, at this point after a few solid years of use I am now experiencing connectivity issues with a select few of the jacks. This raises another question of low quality craftsmanship. Thankfully I don't have that many devices running through this, so I'm able to spare a few bogus jacks, but this would be a lot more annoying if I were using this patch bay to capacity. In summary, this piece is only $50, so even if the face plate falls off and after a while you get a dead jack, it is honestly still worth the money because the jacks that do work are working very well and are quiet. I'm also assuming that I've just been unlucky with mine falling apart a bit. That said, it's a good value. Considering others cost easily 2-3 times as much as this one, I'd get it again.