Behringer releases the 676 FET-style Compressor
by The Press Desk   13th March 2025

For those complaining about Behringer’s clones, patents have expirations for a reason, and if a circuit isn’t patented then it’s free for anyone to use. They aren’t doing anything wrong unless they’re infringing on someone’s current patent or copyright. And they offer the opportunity for people who can’t afford the real thing to get at least somewhat of a facsimile with which to develop their skills - people who might someday be in a position to purchase the genuine article.

Let’s be real here: most of the people who buy Behringer’s knock-offs wouldn’t have spent the money for the real thing anyway - unless of course Behringer’s cheaper version is actually comparable in quality to the “real” one, in which case they are benefitting the consumer by selling a comparable product for less money. That’s how capitalism is supposed to work.

It’d be one thing if Behringer was ripping off a new product made by a small manufacturer who put years into developing something novel that moves the industry forward and who now can’t pay the bills - that sort of thing would harm society as it would discourage innovation, and it’s why patents exist in the first place to (according to the US Constitution) “[secure] for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” But to my knowledge they aren’t doing that. And there’s no reason why anyone should expect to sell 60-year old technology that’s in the public domain for ridiculous markups without competition undercutting their prices.

Now if you want to complain about Behringer’s reputation for poor build quality, then that’s a valid concern. IME there’s a big difference between inexpensive and just plain cheap, and I recommend even beginners on limited budgets to save up for quality gear that will last them decades, if not a lifetime. But Behringer isn’t doing anything wrong by reproducing public domain circuits that are older than most of the people on this forum at a low price, and if people want to buy their products then caveat emptor.

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It's not like they're hiding this fact

But damn, if it's any good, at this price...I might get one.

Uh, except they are doing that? Have you ever looked at their product lineup? They frequently produce shameless 1:1 clones (not just in terms of circuits, but also the design and look) of in production products from smaller and boutique companies (for example Arturia's Beatstep and Make Noise's MATHS) while skating on the fact that none of these companies have the resources to afford a long and drawn out legal battle with them (they are known to be litigious and have threatened to sue journalists for reporting on their business practices numerous times).

Oh, they took a UAD LA-610 and placed their own logo on the front....This is super innovative! :D

The ball is in Bill Putnam Jr.'s court.

Why listen to Led Zeppelin, when I can listen to Greta Van Fleet.

Actually yes you will be able to hear difference from an Uad unison preamp. Honestly I was impressed with the sound of the guitar. 500 Usd for all of that ? Come on guys this is just great

Actually, Midas used Sowter iron at various points of its history, but eventually ruled them out for shitty electronic balancing, like most such brands. Not sure about Jensen, I very much doubt it.

The Midas transformers are likely Chinese transformers, either made by Behringer in their factory or sourced out to some of the numerous oem manufacturers over there.

Also, there are no inductors in the original 6176, UA cuts every corner possible in its hardware, safe for the 1176 and LA-2A, so, logically, there won't be any inductors in this either.

Well there's also trade dress. They could have a case there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_dress

I don't think it was mean't to innovate just allow people to get one at a reasonable price which is IMO a good thing.

I agree it is a fantastic price.

I have shamelessly put myself on the waiting list.

owning 2 6176's I want to try it and see how close it really is.
I got the 33609 clone and the pre to test and im actually going to keep them. they're very usable, do they sound exactly the same as my Neve's no.. but very sound a feel damn good audio wise. the knobs do feel meh but for the price you can't expect it to feel like a neve or bae
I will say with an artist that sounds great on se gemini ii tracks with the warm audio pre and she prefers the sound of the behringer if that means anything... to me its a warm clone and sound the same +/- .5db
its definitely not my ams or shelford but its usable and for the price try it, and if you don't like it send it back

Behringer to release Studer A80 clone soon?

Seems that Behringer and Warm Audio are in a race to provide bargain priced cloned gear.

When I start seeing Pyle mixing boards achieve "cult" status in studios then I know we'll have come full circle!

YeeHaw!

alright this made me fall out of my chair. Ya'll can close this thread now.

True.

And now I pre-ordered and payed.
I never preordered before so we will se what that is worth.
And hope i wont die before i get it.

Why do they use the Behringer and not Klark Teknik or the Midas brand for this?


It looks like all the components are Midas?

I guess a person could get this and then if they like the flow and sound they can save up for the real deal…

I don’t fault anyone for wanting affordable gear. I appreciate the issues raised here and think some of them deserve a closer look:

This reflects a misunderstanding of patent law. Patents expire to encourage further innovation by making knowledge public not to give competitors a green light to copy products still on the market. That tradeoff assumes the inventor has moved on and the commercial value has run its course. The UA channelstrip is very much alive. Behringer isn’t just using what’s “free to use.” They’re sidestepping the cost of creation and selling a clone of a product that’s still being built, refined, and supported. It’s clever, in a way. But let’s not confuse that with fair competition.

I mean, Behringer is not a charity. They're a corporation with a strategy: wait for others to invest time, money, and creativity into building something successful, then replicate it and sell it cheaply to a market that rarely asks what it took to create the original. They could design their own tube preamp and FET compressor at a lower price! They choose not to. Imitation is cheaper, faster, and easier to sell when someone else has already proven the concept and built the reputation.

Even if that were true (and it’s a guess, not a fact) it’s irrelevant. "Knock-offs", as you describe them, shift market expectations. They cheapen the perceived value of the original and drain the commercial incentive for companies to invest in building the next great product. The result isn’t more access. It’s stagnation. It’s a market full of secondhand ideas, slowly racing to the bottom.

Is it? Capitalism - at its very best - rewards value creation, innovation, efficiency, better products, not copying someone else’s work and undercutting them with cheaper labor. Behringer didn’t compete. They replicated. And like so many companies chasing short-term gains, they outsourced the hard part, slashed costs, and sold a facsimile. Take this idea a few yards further, beyond audio equipment: consumers save a few bucks. Meanwhile, domestic innovation shrinks, good jobs vanish, and the market fills with throwaway products. This is how "capitalism is supposed to work"?

Sure, the Constitution says “for limited times,” but that phrase doesn’t mean what you seem to think it means. The point of time-limited patents is to encourage ongoing innovation not to hand opportunistic companies a permission slip to clone still-active products the moment protections expire. That tradeoff only works when the invention has outlived its commercial life. The UA strip hasn’t. It’s still being made, sold, and supported. And let’s not forget, Behringer isn’t even a U.S. company. They’re not protected by the Constitution, nor participating in the system it was designed to sustain. They’re just exploiting it from the outside. Not sure that's what the Founders had in mind

Sure, let the buyer beware. But let the buyer also understand. When you reward imitation over creation, you teach the market that originality is an expensive liability. Is this not already the case within the music industry? The film industry? You do not get more innovation by applauding its absence. What you get is a future full of knockoffs with no one left worth copying.

I'm sorry, but I really doubt this is accurate. Not saying it's right in any way but, there's certainly many people on here that'll bash Behringer for this and similar shady stuff, but will gladly buy one of the 500 Tube-Tech CL-1B clones (or interpretations) that have hit the market over the past couple of years. The patent on this is probably long expired and more likely than not, they're not doing doing anything illegal. Shitty, of course, but not illegal.

It is you who don’t understand the purpose of patent expiration. Patents expire for two reasons, not just the one of which you speak. It is true that putting inventions into the public domain after a period of exclusivity allows others to build on them, thereby encouraging further innovation. But it also allows for competition, which is the part you don’t seem to understand. And this competition, in addition to its other benefits to the public, also encourages innovation.

Patents were never intended to provide the holder a monopoly in perpetuity, extending for generations after the original invention. They allow for a limited period of exclusive rights in order to encourage innovation, ensuring that the inventor can benefit from his efforts and ingenuity, but after that the design goes into the public domain - it is literally owned by the people - so that all may benefit from it. And part of that benefit includes allowing natural competition to take place, so that a fair price can be set by the market rather than allowing a single company to charge people whatever it wants for the rest of eternity.

You speak of stagnation; well expecting to be able to produce a 70-year old design with zero competition is the very epitome of stagnation. If the original producer is still in business after the patent expires, and wants to maintain a leg up on its competition, then it must continue to innovate - it cannot simply rest on its laurels and overcharge people for its ancient inventions because they have no alternative.

If you or anybody else doesn’t like what Behringer is doing then either produce the same designs at a better quality/price ratio, or invent something new and better. But to say that only one company should ever be allowed to build a product that was likely invented before you were born is just flat out ridiculous.

I appreciate your passion for Behringer and your unique interpretation of law. A few points:

Actually, I do. Patent expiration serves two functions: it encourages further innovation and enables public access to knowledge. But that public access is meant to enable progress, right? We agree on this? New interpretations, improvements, and ideas. Copying a currently manufactured, actively supported product isn’t building on it. It’s sidestepping the cost of creation to compete against the very company still investing in it.

Did I say otherwise? The patent system is designed to encourage productive competition, not industrial mimicry. There's a legal and ethical difference between competing by offering a better product, and replicating someone else's with cheaper labor and lower build quality. The first drives innovation. The second just drags prices down while hollowing out value.

Agreed - which is why that’s not what I argued. I’m not advocating for permanent exclusivity. I’m saying there’s a difference between companies that honor legacy designs responsibly, and those who build an entire business around cloning active products and trading on someone else’s reputation.

Ironically, that’s exactly what companies like UA already do. They innovate. They support their products. They’ve earned brand loyalty. Behringer’s strategy is to let others, from Moog to Neve and countless other, do that work, then replicate it once it's safe and cheap. That’s not illegal. But let’s not pretend it’s competitive in any meaningful sense.

I get that there’s no factual argument more powerful than the desire for cheap gear. If, as consumers, we’re at least willing to ask what kind of industry we’re rewarding (and what we’re giving up to get a deal) that’s enough for me.

I don’t give two shits about Behringer - I’ve never owned one of their products and likely never will. Like I said, I buy quality gear that will last me decades and that certainly isn’t Behringer.

What I do believe in is free markets, and you don’t seem to be able to grasp the concept that competition “[dragging] prices down” is an essential part of free market capitalism and an invaluable benefit to the public good. Or that the introduction of competition is an intended outcome of limiting the length of the exclusivity period, not an accidental byproduct of it. Or that it is the introduction of competition that forces people and companies to continue to innovate.

And what, pray tell, has Universal Audio innovated when it comes to the product in question? They didn’t invent those circuits in the first place and weren’t even the company that originally produced them. So why should they, in your mind, be the only company allowed to make them generations after they were invented and long after the actual innovators have passed on?

(Of course they are far from the only company producing those designs. But you don’t seem to care about any of the other countless companies making clones - only Behringer. Whether that’s due to some specific animus you have with that particular company or just a general reflexive hatred of large corporations I won’t venture to guess; I simply find it interesting that your outrage is so selective.)

You are inventing a moral imperative where there is none. In your world once a company has invented something it should hold a perpetual monopoly on producing it - thereby limiting consumers’ choices, forcing them to pay higher prices, and removing any imperative for that company to continue to innovate. And even if the original company no longer exists and the original inventor is in the ground, whoever currently holds the rights to its product names and associated trademarks should also maintain that monopoly on the use of the design, for the rest of the existence of mankind.

Now how does any of that make sense? I may not have any desire to buy or use a Behringer product, but I am very much glad that I live in a society where competition is allowed to exist. If one of those companies chooses to make poor quality products and sell them at a low price, that’s their right in a free society.

LOL

Well, I’ve laid out my perspective pretty fully above, so I won’t rehash all of it. But since there’s been some misrepresentation of what I’ve actually argued, I’ll make the point differently, then leave it to others to decide what kind of competition is worth rewarding.

Let’s be clear: affordable gear matters. No one’s arguing that quality audio equipment should only be for professionals with deep pockets. Plenty of companies, Korg, Arturia, Focusrite, and others, make accessible, amazing tools that help beginners, hobbyists, and professionals create incredible music. Often this stuff is inspired by classic gear. That kind of innovation - making something new and affordable - is good for the industry.

But there’s a difference between building on the past and copying it outright.

Behringer, backed by one of the largest music equipment conglomerates in the world, has made replication its business model. They wait for legal protections to expire, then mass-produce near-identical versions of products from companies like Moog, Neve, Sequential Circuits, Roland, and UA offering no meaningful improvements, just cheaper, disposable versions built on someone else’s work.

That’s not competition. It’s extraction.

I’ll leave it here: Behringer gear can sound great. That’s not in dispute. But when a company succeeds by copying others and skipping the hard work (no design, no R&D, no long-term support) we need to ask what kind of industry that builds. You might get more gear for less money today. But if the people doing original work stop showing up tomorrow, what are we left with? You won’t see another Rupert Neve. Another Roger Linn. Another Dave Smith. And the next great idea? It might not show up at all.

I'm interested in this just because hell it's cheap and if it sounds good I'll buy one and find a use for it.

I dont care that they use Midas transformers either, idk why people think Jensen, cinemag, lundahl etc are the only companies capable of winding a transformer. It's math and winding wires , it's not as if they get their transformers from some meteor that is flown down from planet transy. Alctron is cheap and actually has some good sounding transformers in their 2254 clone.

I have some preamps with no brand transformers that I liked better than some cinemag or carnhill transformers. You guys do understand the transformer is only as good as the human or machine who is winding it. As if Midas (behringer) couldn't of hired a very skilled engineer.

Any patents on the 610 preamp and the 1176 compressor will have expired decades ago.

Is there anything patented or patent-worthy in the UA 6176?

Putting the preamp and compressor in one box seems like a pretty straightforward packaging issue, to save rack space, and a common practice, so not really a patent-worthy invention.

Adding a couple of switches for impedance control and whatnot is also common practice in boutique gear, right?

I don't see why Behringer shouldn't be doing this, but maybe I'm missing something.

100%

Affordable clone doesn’t necessarily mean “cheap”. If it sounds great, cool. But, you “grow out of it” once you can afford better gear, I say it’s best to save up and buy quality stuff. I dare say it’s actually “cheaper” to do that than pick up tons of garbage.