Re: Beringer LC2412

Gerry Harris wrote ...
Any comments on a Beringer LC2412 DMX lighting control board?
Are they reliable/ easy to use/ value for money?

I recently bought an LC2412 for a small village hall company. Excellent
value for money considering what you get for less than 150 pounds. I found
it very easy to use and the manual pretty good although I'm used to learning
how to use test equipment by reading technical manuals and some other, less
technical, users have been less complimentary.

Obviously I can't yet comment on reliability but it's sturdily built,
although at such a budget price you can't expect Behringer to have used top
quality faders, so I wouldn't expect it to stand up to heavy professonal
usage.

There are some bugs and problems that you need to consider. The desk has
two banks of 12 faders. The A-preset always controls the individual
channels whereas the B-preset can be set to channel mode, mirroring A, or
else programmed as 10 banks of 12 submasters. A nasty little problem is
that when a B-preset is activated in memory mode, any channel programmed
into any of the memories in the same bank is also activated at a low level.
These spurious channel levels remain even when all B-faders are returned to
zero and only go out when another bank of memories is selected, but of
course you then have the same problem with channels programmed into memories
in that bank. Whether this causes you problems will depend upon how much
pre-heat is applied by your dimmers. With Zero88 Betapacks we saw only a
dim glimmer and there was no observable output at all using a Botex dimmer
pack with pre-heat set to zero. However the small company could only afford
Showtec four-way dimmer packs and with these the spurious levels gives rise
to distractingly bright output. There is a work-around since you can also
control the B-preset memories via the chase fader, when the desk will
diplessly crossfade into the next memory (selected using the Flash buttons)
either automatically at a preset rate or else under manual control using the
Chase fader. This eliminates the spurious channel problem but is only
really applicable to a theatre application since you cannot independently
control the levels of the individual memory states other than by the master
fader. Behringer are aware of this problem but believe it to be caused by
their decision to time-average the fader levels to reduce jitter of moving
lights and colour changers that some users have complained about and so have
no intention to further address the problem. There has been a comment from
a contributor to the "Blue Room" that the problem does not occur with the
original software release (although that has other bugs). I requested
Behringer to send me an EPROM with this version however they sent me an
intermediate release from before their Level Averaging "fix" which still
exhibited the same problem, so Behringer's assessment may be incorrect.

You can also operate the desk in Theatre mode using a chase as a memory
stack. In this mode you can choose to program the chase using either
individual channels or pre-programmed memories from the B-preset but you
cannot combine the two. Also when programming from memories the insert
facility does not appear to work so that you cannot insert additional states
into the sequence without reprogramming everything following the inserted
state. I wouldn't even consider trying to use the desk in this manner and
would always run a show using B-preset memories via the Chase fader.

To access the upper 12 channels you must press the Upper button which shifts
the A-preset faders to control channels 13-24, which makes adjustment of
levels tricky since you then need to match levels in order to "pick up"
control of a channel each time you switch between upper and lower memories.
A work-around for using the desk in preset mode is to program channels 13-24
into presets 1-12 of a memory bank so that the desk then has individual
control of all 24 channels. The LC2412 has a function that stores the
entire live output of the desk to memory and allows you to set up a second
configuration blind and then crossfade diplessly into the new state.
Unfortunately the desk is then subject to the "spurious channel" problem so
that channels 13-24 will all come on at a low level when any one of these
channels is activated, hence whether or not this workaround is acceptable
will depend upon your dimmer packs.

Other things you may need to be aware of: The desk is primarily designed as
a DMX controller but also has an analogue output. However only channels
1-12 can be used in analogue mode (although you can use analogue and DMX at
the same time). The desk uses a non-standard D-15 connector so you would
need to make up your own analogue connector lead. It also has a MIDI
interface, but this is really designed for slaving a second LC2412 and does
not allow you either to fully control a desk or extract the channel output
levels via the MIDI ports.

I bought our desk from Blue Aran, who offered to refund our money. However
there really wasn't anything else available at an affordable price that
would fulfil our requirements so we have decided to keep the Behringer and
live with and work around its problems.

The LC2412 appears to be a rip-off of a MA Lighting Light Commander 12/2 but
at less than 1/5 of the price (£150.42 vs £813.51 from Thomann) so you pays
your money and takes your choice. Despite its problems I would still
recommend the Behringer if your budget is really tight, provided that you
are aware of its limitations and are prepared to work around them. If
enough of us lean on Andy Cullen at Behringer then they may even fix the
bugs!

David


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