Behringer B205D Personal Monitors

[Andyjr1515]

Hi

I've recently posted this in TheFretboard forum but it might be of interest to a few of you here.  For monitor and practice purposes, the comments pretty much apply to basses too

Also, bear in mind that below are personal experiences based on my own band and other playing needs - so please preface everything with 'for our particular needs and facilities' and 'IMHO'

Like many of us, I and my various band / other colleagues have varied needs for monitoring and have always ended up up a blind alley with one or more of the following stumbling blocks  :

• Inflexible for the various scenarios
• Ineffective
• Impractical
• Unaffordable

While it's not yet proven to be the holy grail, this below is nevertheless the closest that I've personally - after years of trying different things - found to something that:

• Can be configured (including, admittedly, some cheats) to be used from a full gig to an open mic
• Is affordable
• Is highly portable
• Works 

Yes - I know, being Behringer, this is probably a copy of someone elses concept (Mackie, etc, etc), but personally I'm a fan of Behringer products. Their products have never yet let me down and pretty much everyone elses have.

And this is it (the Xbox controller is just for scale! :

It cost me £130 new and it weighs just 7lb.  It comes with a mic stand adapter and comfortably sits on that at just the right angle for its intended use as personal monitor.

I won't go through all the features - there are plenty of ads and clips around - but will show these two shots to refer to in terms of the configurations we've been able to successfully use in our particular live scenarios, and thoughts for more in the future.

 

Before I cover the scenarios tried so far, the key aspects that have given us the flexibility are:

• It has, effectively, four volume-adjustable inputs - one at the back (master volume controlled only - and this will, therefore adjust the overall volume of any other individual inputs) and three at the front (common EQ; individual volumes; one of the inputs has a switchable impedance corrector for instruments)
• It has two outputs - the speaker (remarkably good for its size); the 'THRU' XLR output at the back.  They both output the same mix and are both controlled by the 'Main Level' master volume
• It is clear enough and controllable enough to have right in front of you as a personal monitor
• It is loud enough, in some scenarios, to use it as your practice PA or even to turn it round and play to an audience in a small venue
• You can use this as the mixer to the FOH, or as the receiver from your mixer and thru to FOH, or as the receiver from a mixer or any other sound source, and then add extra inputs to that mix and then to the FOH

There is one more factor that has been used in some of the scenarios we've tried.  For some of the scenarios, basically those where we are creating an individual 'more me and less of him, him and her!' mix, we have used various send feeds from the mixer.  Some of those, because one of our mixers is small basic, have needed a bit of thinking and ingenuity.

Scenario One

The dreaded 'Open Mic Night'

OK - maybe all your venues are well equipped with someone who cares about the challenges of the performers as well as the audience, providing balanced monitors and tweaking the mix during the performance.  Yeah, right

Tried solution 1:  Vocalist, Electric Guitarist - mic into the B205; electric guitar into B205; B205 on stand between vocalist and guitarist with mix and master volume fully audible to, in control of, performers.  Resulting mix sent from Thru at back to venue's PA

Tried solution 2: Vocalist, Electric Guitarist, Backing track on Jamman pedal - mic into B205; Jamman output into phono input on B205, guitar into B205; B205 on stand between vocalist and guitarist with mix and master volume fully audible to, in control of, performers.  Resulting mix sent from Thru at back to venue's PA.

Both duo bands I am in had given up doing open mic nights.  We now do them again - and enjoy them!

Oh...and isn't it a lot of extra gear to take?

Other than the optional mic stand (a cupboard, bar counter or bar stool would do), it all fits into this - including cables, power leads, extension cable, Jamman and mic! : 

Scenario Two

Small Band; small to large venue

Equipment: band's mixer; own or venue's FOH PA

When Pete and I play or blues electric / sax stuff, we use this cheapo mixer (below) and send it to a small but adequate band PA, good enough for medium venues:

The mixer above is cheapo but carefully chosen because, unusually for a cheapo mixer, it has a couple of 'Send' channels as well as Mon Send and FX Send adjustment on each channel.

First time round, we tried my B205 instead of our normal wired in-ear buds.  Just sent the 'Phones' output from the mixer to the B205 and it worked a treat.  MUCH better than the poor-man's earphone set up we had been using.  So much so that Pete went out and immediately bought his own B205D.

And that gave us HUGE opportunities.  Because:

• I, as the holder of the mixer, needed to hear the mix that the FOH was hearing
• Pete, wanted to hear the backing track and his own guitar more and not be blasted by my not-so-dulcet vocal or sax tones!

So, set up was:

Pete Guitar to mixer; my Mic to mixer; my sax condenser mic to mixer; Jamman backing track to mixer - all panned central

From Mixer - Main Out Right - to my B205, giving me full mix personal monitor; Main Out Left to FOH PA.  Additionally, I made up a small three cable snake - two of them with the 'stereo jack shorted across ring and tip' mod to allow me to use the Send/IO as outputs without cutting the signal to the main mix. 

So into Pete's B205 is:  Mic send (jack); Electric send (jack); mon send turned on at the mixer for the Jamman channel and Mon Send output to a couple of phono plugs and into Pete's B205

Result: My 205 gives me the full FOH mix at any volume I need to hear myself and other inputs; Pete has individual volume control of the backing track, his guitar and my vocals, also with full master volume of that mix.  Trust me - he can hear the sax without a channel feed needed!

 

So - for us - live playing has been transformed. 

 

Further thoughts - we are going to try it with the full 5 piece band next time we practice.  Every channel we use on the big mixer has a send / IO on it, plus two Mon Send outputs - and with a bit of ingenuity.......

[FuNkShUi]

Looks like a useful suggestion!!

[casapete]

One of the guys in my country band uses the same model, primarily as just a vocal monitor for

his vocal mike. He got it (with some irony) after his Mackie SRM150 packed in, which is basically

what the Behringer is based on.

He just uses it with the XLR in/outs before the FOH mixer, and says it's as good as the Mackie but over £100 less.

Useful bit of kit.

[lemmywinks]

Our keyboard player used one until we got him in-ears, I usually stand behind him and it was enough for me to hear vocals and keys through. He treats his gear incredibly badly and it still works so they must be pretty well built.

[MoonBassAlpha]

What does it sound like with bass going through it?

[Andyjr1515]

1 hour ago, MoonBassAlpha said:

What does it sound like with bass going through it?

Very good indeed.  Hard to believe it's only a 4.5" (or thereabouts) speaker.  Because I don't have a proper bass rig at home, I used to practice on my little Vox valve guitar amp.  Now I use this because it doesn't have the high freq treble jangle about it . You could never gig with it, but as a personal monitor it works just as well as with the other feeds.

 

[Phil Starr]

I'm a big fan of these. I bought mine after comparing it side by side with the Mackie. Apart from some cosmetic differences they sounded and worked pretty much identically apart from the Behringer case being slightly better made than the Mackie.

The sound frankly isn't great, think of a very loud transistor radio. It's a bit like a Precision or an SM58 though, it just sits in the right part of the mix to punch the vocals through. Way louder than it needs to be as well. Even using it as a floor monitor I got feedback before I got distortion. It's the perfect answer to anyone who wants 'more me' in the mix.

My drummer kept borrowing it so I sold it to him and 'upgraded' to a TC VoiceSolo . It's got a better sound and a couple of useful vocal fx built in but the better sound is useless in a band situation, you don't need tops and bass just smooth mids. The hi fi sound just gives you extra feedback issues and the digital controls are less user friendly than a set of knobs to twiddle. To be fair it's better in a low noise environment like my acoustic duo but in a band environment I've been tempted to go back to the Behringer.

Like Andy I often used the mixing in the Behringer and send that to the house PA especially at open mics and similar uncontrolled situations.

Oh, one fault with the Behringer, it's really easy to switch/knock the little button on the back and send a line level signal to the PA instead of the mic level one you intended.

[casapete]

27 minutes ago, Phil Starr said:

Oh, one fault with the Behringer, it's really easy to switch/knock the little button on the back and send a line level signal to the PA instead of the mic level one you intended.

Forgot about this - my band mate does it all the time  , making really unpleasant noises  (he is a drummer though)

Think someone ended up gaffering the button in place .....

[Al Krow]

34 minutes ago, Phil Starr said:

I'm a big fan of these. 

The sound frankly isn't great...

+1 to both the above, which might seem a contradiction(!) so let me elaborate:

We've been happily using a B205D as a very portable and, on it's stand, a small footprint monitor for the vocalists during gigs - and it's been working just fine for that.

5.25" speakers are relatively small and the monitor struggles with lows (and will 'fart' if you push it at the low end). That's very much confirmed by its frequency response range which 65Hz to 18kHz and to give that context 65Hz = the C below the open D string.

If I was buying again, I'd be tempted go for it's slightly bigger brother the B207D which has 6.5" speakers.

But for the money and for use as a portable vocal & acoustic guitar monitor it's a really good value piece of kit.

 

Edited February 13, 2018 by Al Krow

[Andyjr1515]

1 hour ago, Al Krow said:

+1 to both the above, which might seem a contradiction(!) so let me elaborate:

We've been happily using a B205D as a very portable and, on it's stand, a small footprint monitor for the vocalists during gigs - and it's been working just fine for that.

5.25" speakers are relatively small and the monitor struggles with lows (and will 'fart' if you push it at the low end). That's very much confirmed by its frequency response range which 65Hz to 18kHz and to give that context 65Hz = the C below the open D string.

If I was buying again, I'd be tempted go for it's slightly bigger brother the B207D which has 6.5" speakers.

But for the money and for use as a portable vocal & acoustic guitar monitor it's a really good value piece of kit.

 

Yes - I looked very closely at the B207D and, for full band situations, that's probably the better bet - but it is twice the weight.  Because we were looking at this for open mics as well as medium duo gigs, we plumbed for the smaller, lighter one.  As they say, it's horses for courses