Hi all, I asked this question in another post but it was hidden in amongst another subject. So I thought I'd give it a separate post.

Is anyone using these amps? I've got loads of behringer gear which is all good stuff. Just wondered if their amps were up to the same quality. ( bearing in mind they're dirt cheep )
cheer
baz

I use an EP2500 every day and it's excellent. Can take a bashing and the noise floor is pretty low. It might not have the numbers on the paper that MC2 have, for example, but they do the job, they do it well, and do it reliably. At the price, they are the first thing I will consider next time I have to specify similarly rated amps.

I also occasionally use a rack of 2 EP2500s and 2 EP1500s. Even stacked one on top of the other in a 10U rack with 2U spare in the top of the rack for processing which will, I'm told by the owner, be in there soon, there are no thermal problems of any kind.

In short, I'm well chuffed with these amps, and wouldn't hesitate to recommend them.

Review at : http://www.ukslc.org/Reviews/Audio/Behringer_EP2500.html

Not written by me, but one of our members, I have 6 of em and love them to bits, superb amps and have never had a single problem with them !!

I don't own any but have used EP2500s on numerous occasions. Nothing bad at all to say about them, especially when you look at the price.

They're popular and often recommended over on alt.audio.pro.live-sound.

Same caveat as in my post in the DCX2496 thread though...no manufacturer evokes such strong opinions pro and con as Behringer.

Bob

We have a few of these amps in stock, for the money they are a good buy, obviously not up to the level of some of the more expensive brands but we have only had problems with one and that was because somebody overcooked the input gain for too long!

Good value if you are on a tight budget as is most of their stuff despite all the people who knock them for being a budget brand!

I just had a look at the review...not too much I can disagree with, but I notice it mentions the rumours that went around that it was a "knock off" of the QSC RMX2450.

The similarities are purely cosmetic to do with the case...internally they are very different beasts. I used to have pictures of the two with the lids off to illustrate this but, alas, they were on a different computer that I no longer have!

Bob

ok, cheers guys.

I may still have those pictures knocking about somewhere Bob, I'll have a look if I can find them.

another thumbs up for them, I've got a number of them being used for various applications both monitor and FOH. Can't beat em for the money. I'd choose the EP2500 over alot of amps that are twice the price and more.

Personally I dont see the EP1500 in the same light, I dont think it has grabbed the market quite the same as the 2500 has, there isn't a great deal of price difference, perhaps £35 or so between the 2 making the 2500 worth that bit extra in most cases.


Sticking with the same product but straying slightly ot. Originally the specifications stated 475wpc at 8ohms but now I see them stating 500wpc at 8ohms. does anyone know if there has been a modification to the amplifier or whether they have just altered the specs?



Rob



Edit : having read the recent post on THD, might have been better posting th last bit in there, maybe its related to that, I've not seen the THD figures for these two ratings.

I have 2 of these that I have been using for about 4 years . I think they are great for he money . The similarity with the RMX2450 is superficially as has already said inside they are both different beast . Both my EP2500 failed within a few weeks of purchase and it did take Behringer over 6 months to replace them but replace them they did . I suspect they had a problem batch because both the replacements have been used and abused since with no ill effects . On one occasion they were both bridged into 4 ohms and ran for nearly 10 hours at quite high levels , they did get a bit warm but are none the worse for it .

I've got a pair of EP2500 running bridged into 8Ohm (1300w) driving a pair of folded horns. Whilst never missing a beat, and always being thumped hard, they do get bloody hot. A little hotter than I would like.

I have even taken to putting a huge fan behind the rack to blow cool air into the back of them.

Not had any problems though (reaches out an taps the wooden window ledge) so they get the thumbs up from me. I got them when they were silly cheap aswell, before people starting putting thre price up.

6 months? That really does surprise me, whilst (touch wood) I've not needed to use the customer support extensively (just for a power supply for desk .....my own lack of maintenance caused it and I bought a new one) but it was very good service and all the other opinions of it have been very good.

Rob

'6 months' . At that time all Behringer warranty repairs were returned to Germany via the supplier then distributor and returned by the same route . What I think happened in my case was somebody in the chain was less than efficient . I understand that Behringer have changed their returns procedure .

*bump*

I knew I had this picture saved away somewhere, and today it turned up.. This is a alleged to be (as in - I didn't take the photos so I cant vouch for their provenance) QSC and a Behringer both with their lids off...

I would be interested to do an A/B comparison of the schematics.... I would not be surprised if they were strikingly similar, judging from what I can see of the PCB layouts in those photos!

The Climate control on my car has EVEN numbers from 18-30
So does the climate control on the Volvo V70.

My wheels are also round.

The amplifiers are Class H, and they have similar output figures (just shy of 2500 watts both channels driven into 2 ohms). Is it just me or would anyone else be surprised if they didn't have similarities? They have the same types of component as they are the same type of amplifier. Alter the layout around slightly and they'd be copying a CA9 or an MA2400 or whatever else.

I have a few EP2500's and they perform very well indeed price point aside, so the fact they are not expensive is a bonus.
They are not the best amp in the world, but they were never designed to be. The only QSC amps I own are the PLX series which are a different kettle of fish, so I cannot do any extensive comparison (for performance), but what I do know is the EP2500 performs very well. They are probably more stable than most other amps in that range at lower impedances although I dont quite think they are up to night after night of heavy 2ohm usage.


Alot of people (and this isn't a dig at anyone individually either here or anywhere else) seem to think that Behringer HAVE to copy someone else, so if something is manufactured, the first thing people do is look at what its a copy of. Its a subject that comes up time and time again in every forum so theres no need to bring it up again, (thats me having go at myself there).

Odd isn't it, Everybody copies the Fender Strat design and the Les Paul design with their guitars, they do everything they can to make them look the same, often not caring too much about the sound. People will happily buy a <insert cheap guitar brand here> for £60 which probably looks ok from a distance, a little like what it is meant to be, plays like crap, sounds like crap, but when it comes to using a piece of behringer gear which performs very well for its price point, they wont touch it because its all cheap crap and they copy other people.


</rambling on about not much>

As I recall, the context of these pictures (which I first saw on AAPLS...dunno if they had a life before that) was that somebody "knew somebody" who had opened a Behringer amp and saw a PCB that was totally copied down to the QSC part number. It's always "somebody who knows somebody" and the "copy the part number" urban myth keeps resurfacing.

As Rob says, if you're working with standard electronic components and trying to achieve the same result, there will inevitably be similarities. This doesn't mean "copying".

Anyway, back to the original question, the Behringer amps perform very well for the money...and would even be good value if the price was a bit higher. 'Nuff said.

Bob

Some of the points raised are valid. There is no doubt that the Behringer EP2500 is good value for money, and by the accounts of many people whose judgement I trust (including a few of the posters above!), it is a good amplifier. Perhaps the cost debate should shift to why other manufacturers of amps at a similar performance point cant or wont make amps so cost-effectively. Are they greedy, or just bad at production engineering, or maybe they use excessively expensive components or arrangements. What surprises me most is not how much a Behringer looks like a QSC, but rather how much a QSC looks inside like a Behringer.

The thing that I do find odd is not the major circuit arrangements, but the arbitrary choices that are made. The side the tranny is on, the location from where the ribbon cable connects, the type of heatsink arrangements, the way the speaker connection sub-PCB is placed and arranged. There is no electronic design reason why these choices have to be the same; There are myriad ways these could be combined, yet somehow they look very very similar.

And Rob - is this a class H amp? Looks like a fairly conventional AB to me. Being "fairly conventional", I too would expect the circuitry to be similar, and the nearer the output stages, the nearer to identical, as there are only a very small number of standard arrangements one uses.

Behringer do get a bad rap on the copying front, which firstly colours the judgement of people who should know better, and secondly stains their products that are genuine examples of product innovation, such as the DCX, unmatched at several times it's pricepoint, and being its a computer in a rack case, all the work is in the software.

According to Behringers spec sheets the EP2500 is Class H and the EP1500 is Class AB

HTH

With a bit of digging I've found the schematic, and yep, it switches voltage rails, so class H it is then. Serves me right for being a doubting thomas.

It's a clever trick, class H, its one of those things that just shouldn't work (as in, it should introduce so much distortion at the point of supply rail switch that it should sound awful) but in practice it works, and works well enough.

I wish Behringer would do an EP800...

Edit: I've just been looking at Wikipedia and if Wikipedia has it's definitions correct and I read the schematic right the EP2500 is a class G, not a class H; it looks like the ouput device supply rail is switched between two voltages, rather than having a variable power supply. I base this on the switching device being a MOSFET driven by a comparitor, and that there is only one MOSFET device, and that must be the mother of all devices if it can handle the full output current of a channel of the amp at anything less than hard on!!. A genuine Class H amp I found on the net had multiple voltage controlling elements.

Edit again: I've just gone to my bookshelf and pulled out "Audio Power Amplifier Design Handbook", by Douglas Self, and looking up Class G and H amplifiers, upon which Self writes "Class-H is occasionally used to describe Class-G as above; this sort of confusion we can do without"

David
Would you care to share the source of your schematic, it is not shown in the Behringer supplied user manual. I like to keep as much information as possible on kit that I use. As a long shot, has anyone found a circuit diagram?
Brian

Behringer EP2500 Schematic

Its not a great transfer to PDF, quite a lot of the connections dont line up, and doesn't print, but it gives an idea of how the thing is built.

Many Thanks David
It printed off ok for me.
Brian

Over on the ProSoundWeb forums, one of the design guys from QSC is a regular poster. He seems pretty convinced that the Behringer amp is a knock of of the RMX. Even down to the wording in the manual...

I'm not going to say that the EP2500 is a copy of the RMX2450, however you could quite happily fix one using the schematics from the other, even down to component values.


I'd certainly expect there to be similarities in topology, however I've struggled to find ANY difference in component values.

I am, believe it or not an enthusiastic Behringer use, and have been almost evangelical in my praise of the DCX2496 and Ultracurve. However I was quite taken aback by the similarity between the two photos: Had I not been informed otherwise, I might have thought they were Rev 1 and Rev 2 of the same products!

From what others have said this is not simply a case of two products both having round knobs calibrated in dB!

One would expect two products designed from first principles by two expert engineers to differ in many ways as individual solutions are found to the various stages of circuit, component choice, parts availability and cost, heat sinking, reducing distortion etc.

Or is the QSC RMX such a perfect design in every way that, using current technology, no one will ever deviate from this design for the amplifier or its power supply!

Designers frequently acheive the same solution to a particular problem, whether this solution be copied or arrived at independently: one cannot patent the laws of physics! But to 'imitate' an entire amplifier design goes beyond flattery!

I've often noticed similarities in construction between different makes of gear. It is also fairly common for manufacturers of large power amps to base their circuit designs on other people's designs. In the 70's the RSD amps were based on Phase Linear designs but slightly uprated so that they didn't burst into flames as often as the Phase Linear amps did. I seem to remember that another UK manufacturer (Turner?) copied the Crown DC300 design. In the 80's, when MOSFET's were new, many MOSFET amps basically copied the reference design from the Hitachi data book. It might be interesting to check the data books for the semiconductor devices used in these amps to see if QSC and Behringer are basing their amps on the semiconductor manufacturer's reference design.

I couldn't see which amp was which in the photo but I would assume that the Behringer is the amp with the smaller mains transformer. If that is correct then I would certainly be happier to pay a fair bit more for an amp with a properly spec'ed mains transformer.

Cheers

James.

Woah, Rob, not only do we share the same A&H GL2800-32, ( did you ever buy that extra PSU ?) but we also use the same power amps ( I use the PLX1602 x 3, into a 2 ohm load)

A far as your rambling goes, I would use the behringer amps if I had to, but I wouldn't risk 2 ohms. With the QSC's, I do it all the time, 4x 4 ohm cabs per amp, but with the behringer amps, I would prefer to see a 4 ohm load.

You get what you pay for, and while certain amps can be pushed... others will fail when pushed too hard

well mine are the 3402's but plx series all the same, only on the high mid and high sections of the rig. Powersoft on the rest.


I dont like running any amp to 2 ohms to be perfectly honest, be it the qsc's the behringers the powersofts or macrotechs or anything else, but as you say I'd feel more comfortable with one of the high end amps doing this, this is not to say that the ep2500 wouldn't stand a hard driven 2ohm load all day and all night, I'd just feel better with 4ohms.

I wouldn’t read too much into the general layout. I haven’t really thought about it too much, but most of the similar (stereo, single psu, fan assisted cooling) amplifier designs that I have done have a very similar layout. The only thing I can think of why this is so, is because when looking at the back of the amplifier the signal flow is from left to right, which seems more natural. Once the inputs are put on the left of the back panel the rest of the layout sort of follows.

Here is a picture of a rather tatty looking prototype built back in 1983/4




What is not too clear is that given the orientation of the picture, the mains enters top left, speaker outputs top centre and inputs top right just like the QSC and Behringer. The transformer is rated at 625VA to give a comparison with the other amps and if I built a similar thing today would probably cost more than the Behringer.

The reason I fitted the fan at the front was because it came with its own grille so I only had to cut a single hole (by hand) in the front panel.

Do any amplifier designers/builders have any insights or care to comment why this layout is common?

I just use amplifiers, I dont build them,

That looks an easy layout, everything has its place, everything looks fairly straightforward to access in case you need to repair something.

Personally I would look for even weight distribution in an amplifier. aswell.

Steve, if you read my posts in full, together with what other members have written, you'll see that we were talking about far more than the general physical layout of 'circuit blocks', but the circuit itself!

As to the physical layout, for any power amplifier with a linear power supply one of the key design requirements is to mount the power supply transformer (by far the heaviest component) securely. Your amplifier does not have rear mounts, so its weight will be supported by the front panel alone: I assume this is why you positioned the transformer close to the front panel. Best practice with a large amplifier is to incorporate rear mounting points for the case, and to position the transformer somewhere towards the centre of the case. This is of course not an issue for an amplifier with a switch mode psu.

A through flow of air for cooling is also essential: given that the amplifier is designed to be mounted in a rack, a front-rear airflow is far more efficient than a side to side design.

Many amplifiers use a common heat sink assembly, with an air tunnel through the centre, and output devices attached to either side. To simplify assembly and minimise cost it is usual to put the entire circuit (preamp, driver and output stages) for each channel, or indeed both channels, on a single PCB, with the circuitry for one channel to the left of the heatsink, and that for the second channel on the right.

The layout of your amplifier is in fact very different to that of most modern power amplifiers, in that it is not designed for mass production. It has a number of hard-wired sub-assemblies, which would make it expensive to build in terms of the man-hours required. It reminds me more than somewhat of the Calrec power supply which I have been repairing this morning!

With amps that use passive cooling I fit the output transistors/heatsinks to each side wall and put the psu in the middle for that reason. When using a tunnel type heatsink and fan that would require two fans so balance loses out to cost.

What got my curiosity roused for a few moments was that most amplifiers like the ones shown all have the same orientation. If I remember correctly I have a couple of Yamaha amps and a Matrix amp which are the same. There is no reason why it wouldn’t work as a mirror image. Maybe the manufacturers all get their cases from the same manufacturer.



Yes I am aware of that. I didn’t feel that I could add much to what had already been said and I didn’t want to get into a Behringer designs are all copies debate, which is why I quoted the small section which commented on the layout. Apologies if I gave the impression with my comments that the circuit design aspect was irrelevant. The original comment that I quoted " However I was quite taken aback by the similarity between the two photos: Had I not been informed otherwise, I might have thought they were Rev 1 and Rev 2 of the same products!" seemed to imply that two different products couldn't have such a similar layout. In my opinion the similarity is not so surprising. It is not easy from the pictures to say if the circuits are the same or not. Without seeing the circuit diagrams I would't want to comment.

On a similar theme, if anyone delved a little deeper into the Behringer/Mackie court case in the UK (which Mackie lost), one of the claims was that Behringer took Mackie’s circuit design and used a computer program to come up with their own lay out. If manufactures are using similar software to design circuits, similar software to design circuit boards, common component suppliers and similar production techniques, it is not surprising that the end products are pretty much identical.



Unfortunately I have very few pictures of the equipment I built when I was most prolific. The one I posted was very much a mule put together to test out the tunnel arrangement heatsink. It might be common in modern amplifiers, but going back over 20 years it was new to me. Although it has been pressed into serious action on many occasions, it was never intended to leave my workshop. Durability and dropability was not really a consideration. I was not trying to claim anything except that the layout in the pictures shown is hardly unique and original to QSC.

Hopefully this has clarified that I wasn't trying to get into a dispute. If it has I'll say no more. If it hasn't then again I'll say no more before I dig a deeper hole.

Seasons greetings to all.

I've read this topic with interest, as I own 2 Behringer EP2500s that I bought on recommendation, and am very pleased I did, as they are excellent amps for the money.

One of mine did have a fault, and a couple of phone calls to Behringer revealed that they were unaware of it (in fact the engineer I spoke to was unaware that the UK had fuses in its plugs - it seems we are about the only country which does!)

Before speaking to Behringer I had the amp replaced under warranty. This was a straight, no questions asked swap out by the retailer - not many budget companies offer that kind of warranty. However the replacement did the same thing, hence my phone call. Again - not many companies allow a member of the public to speak directly to one of their technicians!

The fault was simple. On power off, the EP2500 goes through a discharge state, where the lights still show on. On some of these this can be several minutes. Removing the power cord during this, 90% of the time, was causing the mains fuse in the plug to blow. One of those silly faults, and also caused by a silly oversight, which was actually funny. For sale in the UK, Behringer had to rate the plug mains fuse according to UK spec - I.e. wattage/voltage=ampage giving a 5a fuse for the unit, and the leads supplied by Behringer were fitted with a 5a plug. However the on/off requirements of the EP2500 were higher, and for this reason it is fitted with an 8a resettable breaker on the rear. Obviously it is silly to have a minas fuse at a lower rating than the breaker. Solution? Fit the plug with a 13a fuse instead! Behringer didnt realise that our plugs have fuses in them (nor why!) and so hadnt thought of that. Apparently they do now come with 13a plugs instead. A great example of a company listening to their customers!

Regarding the EP2500/QSC copy debate - basically who cares? The amps arent identical - the difference in weight will tell any doubters that. But they are similar. Surely - if you are designing a top quality budget amp, it makes sense to put money into quality of materials and use an established design on which to base the new amp? Not a copy, but certainly 'inspired by'? That is the nature of the world, and if I can get 'nearly' a QSC for less than half the price thats ok with me!

After all - almost anything made in china is copied and sold elsewhere, but we still buy them. Part of Chinese Import law says that anything made there, or sold there must give the government permission to copy the design. A few months later there will be cheap copies floodig the worlds market. Personally I think that is awful, but people still buy them. Most of the lighting available in Europe is sold under several different names - all from the same factory or designs. Chauvet, Acme, Stairville, Eurolight - all the same stuff, basically - but not many complaints about that.

As many others as have said - the EP2500 is one of those amps that just does what it is supposed to, with a great warranty and is a bargain into the equation. It's a shame Behringer havent moved into the Disco Lighting market lol!

Well, carn't argue with the responces, It's pretty obvious that those in the know rate these amps.
Thanks for all the input guys.

I've just ordered two of them.
cheers
baz

Perhaps a silly question, but I assume the mains lead is at least 1.25mm?

Given that the mains lead is goint to be at most 1.0mm and the IEC connector is rated at 10A I would hope the 13A plug has a 10A fuse rather than a 13A fuse.

James

My EP2500 over-heated at a Prom night last Friday and cut out. No ventilation problems and only running 4 ohm per channel ( 1 18" bin and 12" top per channel) and not even clipping. Had it since February, it is now going back.

Sorry, but there clearly was a ventilation problem. Otherwise it would not have overheated.

thats assuming it was definately a thermal cutout and not a failure of something else.

Rob

No ventilation problems at all. At least 3 feet of space was behind and in front of the amplifier. leads going into the mixer were fine as was signal coming out. After the amp came back on, kept dB on mixer down on -18dB and the amp never faltered after that.

Maybe a bad amp though, things do happen time to time.

I'm guessing you checked for buildups of dust inside the amp. You say "after the amp came back on". Do you mean the thermal protection kicked in? If so, and there is nothing blocking air flow, I'd guess at the thermal sensing circuitry being at fault.

No, what I'm saying is. If the amp is going thermal, there IS a ventilation problem. there is clearly NOT ENOUGH ventilation.
I'm not saying that there isn't a fault somewhere causing the amp to run warmer than normal, this may be the case. What I AM saying is that if an amplifier is getting too warm, there is not enough ventilation. The cure may be to increase ventilation or in your case work out why its getting too warm.

then again, if as Ben says the amp is NOT ACTUALLY getting too warm, it just THINKS it is, it maybe a fault in the temperature sensing devi.

Rob

The amp is getting very warm and then when it has time to cool down (during thermal cut-out) the air flow coming out of the amp goes cold again. May be a bad one due to the number of excellent remarks people has made about the amp on here.

You're being very vague when you say "bad one". Normally people would attempt some kind of fault finding.

An amp can have a fault that causes it to overheat. It may "trip out" even when the ventilation would have been perfectly acceptable if it was working correctly. To say that it must have had a ventilation problem since it overheated is an odd way to look at it. If the heatsink fell off the output module and it thermalled, would that be a ventilation problem? :-)

We've had amps that seem to keep going, despite getting overly warm. When we've actually opened them up to diagnose the problem we've found that some of the output transistors were no longer working - leaving just a few still doing all the work and getting extremely hot as a result.

Cheers

James.

I am not an electircal engineer and so am not qualified to fault find on electronic circuitry inside a power amplifier. I would prefer, as I have only had in for 4/5 months, to send it back under the 2 year guarantee.



I think your explaination is more the case than ventilation problems (which it wasn't). Could be a transistor problem like someone else said eariler.........

The way I initially meant it, YES, it would. As there would not be enough ventilation to keep it within its normal operating temperature. As I said, its not necessarily a case of the ventilation not being as it should, rather, something else is not as it should meaning the ventilation level (which is normal) is not enough.

We don't measure ventilation in numbers but if we did and used the unit Vents whilst we wont shorten to V for obvious reason then an amplifier may have 10 vents of ventilation that keeps it within operating temp under a normal working load. A component for the ventilation could fail (fan gets blocked with dust). the ventilation level drops to say 5 Vents. Alternatively another component could somehow cause the amplifier to generate more heat. 10 Vents™ is no longer enough to keep it cool.

Like I initially said, it may not be a problem caused by lack of air flow/fans etc. It may be ANOTHER fault causing the amplifier to run warm, in this case there is a fault, causing a ventilation problem.

So if you are not sure of the problem, it could still be a ventilation problem if the amplifier was getting too warm. Have we established whether it WAS thermal cut out yet?

Not yet. I am going to send it back (as I have only had it since beginning of February). It is still under warrenty so might as well have a replacement new one.

I understand what you now mean about ventaltion problem Rob, could be this as the amp does get very warm when running 4ohm compared to start up. I am going to buy another amp anyhow and run bins and tops separte though a x-over (as they should be). This should help keep strain off amps as they will run at 8ohms per channel.

Also gives you alot more control over the system. The trouble with returning it is, if its now working ie, the thermal cut out stopped it working then has come back in again. IF there is no obvious fault then they wont replace it, and will (rightly) charge you for the round shipping.

Rob

Ran my Behringer amp at 8 ohms last night instead of 4 ohms. Amp ran fine, so will just use it like this until I get another audiohead AH1400 and 2 AH1000 to run my speakers.