Behringer Factory Tour & 20th Anniversary Party

2009. It's the 20th Anniversary year for Behringer. Since we got on so well with Uli when he first came to Australia November last year, Tone and Artie were invited to go to China to help Uli and his team celebrate. A stop-off in Hong Kong was required for a beer and a bite first...


As usual, the video camera came out. If you want to catch any of the 'non factory tour' - sightseeing with Factory Sound, it's here (on YouTube).
But the real reason we headed over to Zhongshan was to visit Uli at home in Behringer City. It's HQ for Behringer, with a large R&D team and plenty of manufacturing taking place there. Plenty is an understatement! With over 3,000 staff on site, Behringer City cranks out over 2,000,000 products per year. Let's just take that in for a moment...

Per day that equates to around 5,500 finished products. Each individual component is checked before being ticked off as 'production-ready' then the products are manufactured, some parts by machine, many by hand assembly. At various points along the way they are checked, before passing a final inspection and packaging. There's no magic packaging machine either!

It was without a doubt an eye-opening tour of 'Team Behringer' and one that we were able to video along the way. Later that night we attended Behringer's 20th Anniversary Party. Amazing.


To see how excited all those individuals were, being able to show off their entertaining talents and getting to put into practice the English they'd been learning was simply awesome. We were given a generous dose of Chinese culture, and have tried our best to capture that on video also.

So...here is both Part 1 and Part 2 of our trip to Zhongshan, China.
Each episode goes for about 8 mins. The first one begins at the party (yes, it was a pretty crazy entrance we had!), and an impromptu interview with the man of the moment, before moving toBehringer City for the tour. We get some good running commentary along the way, courtesy Michael Jago who recently left his post as GM of Behringer Australia to go and sink his teeth into Behringer Europe.
In the second episode we leave most of the talking up to the experts - Michael Deeb (CEO, Behringer) tells starts us off, and then Uli lets us in on some of the secrets of his factory. We swap a couple of times back to the party.
Hope you enjoy, we certainly did!
Part 1


Part 2


www.factorysound.com

Stupid pricing - JUNE SALE starts Monday 1st June

Can't believe it's that time already! Doesn't seem so long ago that the skies were brighter, the days were warmer, and we'd never heard of a Stimulus Package. Well, we're doing out bit to take us back there. It's time for our Stupid Sale - the Famous Factory Sound June Clearance.
1 week only, Monday June 1st - Saturday June 6th 2009.
or until stock depletes, whichever comes first.

Now, if you've had any experience with Factory Sound, you'll already know that we pride ourselves on giving the best possible pricing all year round. BUT the first week of June is when we just go plain stupid. We've got the stock, we've got the knowledge - it's time to make the deal happen. If you need to get something done, we're going to make it work.

There are hundereds of microphone in stock, ready for clearance. Wired or wireless. Studio, live and special application. Whatever you need, we've got it.

This gear is priced so low that we simply cannot publish the prices. No exceptions. Don't call. Don't email. Just come in, or send a friend. It's the only way to get the most serious deals in Australia.

Our range of mixing consoles is huge - live or studio, big or small, digital or analogue, all with one thing in common - stupidly cheap for the 1st week of June.

The great wall of speakers is ready to go as well. Factory Sound is well-known around town as the specialists in live sound. We've got a huge range of speakers, and they don't stop at PA speakers. Studio monitors are also a specialty.

And DJ - we are home to Pioneer, Denon, Numark, Technics, Allen & Heath Xone:Series, Native Instruments...you get the picture.

Home studio - Digidesign, RME, MOTU, Presonus, Apple and more.

Signal Modifiers for PA use, installation or studio...

Plus lighting, stands, leads, cases. The list is huge.


Headphones, connectors, cable, DI boxes, every single item in the shop.

And just to prove that we really are this sale is stupid...here's last year's promo video. Just in case you didn't have enough to do with your day.



www.factorysound.com

JBL EON 500 series - the new generation

Now we know that the JBL faithful can be an excitable lot, perhaps not quite working up to a state like the mac-nerds when Mr Jobs gets up on stage...but nonetheless James B Lansing has by far the most famous three initials in the world of professional audio.

So with the recent (and highly anticipated....see, it's catching) release of the EON 500 series "the next generation" aka "the most powerful ever" we thought it was time to go All the way with JBL.

The 3 new models are: EON510, EON515 and EON518S. You can see the release we attended by viewing our Factory Sound TV podcast page (episode 20).


Back to the boxes: Both the EON510 (10" 280w) and the EON515 (15" 450w) have a super-sleek design, and not many kilos on board. They look to be set for a long life of typical audiovisual applications (plug a mic straight into the back, and also run the multimedia feed into the 2 x line inputs), plus quite at home doing month after month of gigs in pubs. Here's a closer look at the back panel of the EON515.


Now in stock, so come and check them out! We'll make sure you get looked after.

Great deals, bec$AUS we can!

If you've been looking for an upgrade to your PA system or a new addition to the studio, there has never been a better time...and it's most definitely a case of first in, best looked after.

Recently the wheels have fallen off our dollar, and most pro audio wholesalers have reacted by putting prices up. As more than casual observers, we are amazed at how quickly we've received TWO price rises (or one enormous one) from some of our suppliers.

In fairness to them, many pro audio importers had significantly lowered the Recommended Retail Price of many lines while the going was good, although the drop in prices seemed to take a lot longer (and less steep) than the recent rises, which have been quick and big.

So rather than reducing our stock levels and running lean...we went out and spent the last of our beer money buying as much stock as possible to ensure we can offer the best deals around. We figure that the summer festival season doesn't care about our $AUD, nor does the upgrade your studio needs. The only thing that gets affected by a big price rise is your bottom line - that is, unless you go for it while you can.

While we've got stock, take advantage because the deals simply cannot last. Once our stock is gone, we'll have to replace it with more expensive stock.

Brands we have really bought up big on include: RCF (the great wall of Art boxes), Allen & Heath (Zed mixers, Wizard Mixers and GL2400 series), DBX (comps, graphics and drive racks), Soundcraft (EPM & EFX series mixers), Avalon (heaps of the black VT-737SE), Shure Wireless (PGX / SLX) and Wired (SM series & Beta Series), Sennheiser (Evolution wirelss + e900 series vocal & instrument mics), Soundcards by Presonus & RME, plus heaps more.

Until the new prices have settled (around first week of November...though there's probably more grief to come), we've disabled many 'go' prices on our website. We will be looking after existing customers first. This means that if your name is not already on our database, you'll need to subscribe to get the best possible pricing.

Think of it as an early Christmas pressie ; )

Behind Closed Doors: RCF staff training

As you would no doubt already know, we love it when friends drop in...especially with a killer spread of food, accompanied with a few bottles of Italian wine and beer. And that's exactly what happened last night...the 'RCF staff training' roadshow was in town.

So, after a red-hot go at finishing the fare, we headed into our speaker demo room for a bit of a chat. We had our camera rolling, but due to the highly confidential nature of our talk (or maybe just the crappy quality of our filming), the footage has been embargoed until further notice.

We learned about the rich history of RCF for Europe, around the world, and also specifically in Australia. And we also learned much about the future of RCF.

Talking about learning...we also had a look through the RCF ART Series Custom Shop, which has been designed to help corral the rudderless decision maker into the right direction. In our opinion, looking at any powered RCF ART series box is already a long jump in the right direction.

The night ended with a demonstration of the power-to-weight efficiency of the ART525A speaker, but you can imagine that when Tone & Ollie started going for gold in both the ART 'clean & jerk' (lifting onto a speaker stand) and 'snatch' (load into the back of the van) exhibition events, the night was all but over.

Just in time for a group hug in our new shirts.