all right i'm dave rat and i am going to open up a behringer x32 and see what's inside mainly
because i'm curious i'm also going to open a midas m32 and look at what's inside there
and then i'm going to put them side by side and look at the differences between the two
consoles and see what we find now i have not been inside of one of these before so this
will be a fun experiment of um
figuring out how to get in all right so let's go in
power tools are faster all right try to lose as few screws as you can there's usually a
couple extras at the end of this [Music] all right what's next see how fast we can get
in here
curious to see what the difference of the build is between the two consoles the um [Music]
difference in price 50 more on the m32 in order to save money and build this for two-thirds
the price somewhere there's going to be some cost cuttings i seriously doubt they're spending
the same amount of money on the build and just charging less for the final product oh
what am i missing here
maybe i should force it was that the magic scoop look at that we're getting in all right
so now it's probably some sort of wires and stuff do we need to mess with here and look
at that ooh pretty cool let's take a look let's unplug some wires memorize everything
and break stuff out of here
some tells me this isn't the best plan here no i want to unplug that doesn't look like
it's easy to unplug
i don't think i really want to do all this what else do i got left i got this guy i've
got this one here which is a problem i've got this guy here these two guys here and
finally this little guy here which is all right that should do us except for that
this is gonna be fun to put back together bleh
all right
okay let's go ahead and open the m32 i'll be a little more careful with this and that
wasn't the s32 because it's not mine i'm really curious to see if it's easier to get into
and um if the build quality is any different really convenient all right oh look at that
looks like we're getting in all right looks like this wants to be unscrewed from underneath
so far this one's a little easier and it's quite heavy
[Music]
oh look at
that i think we're in
so this one tilts the other way very neat let's see what's happening with the ribbons
all right so now oh look at that
that's definitely nicer to get into this thing
one
so there's not much difference in the way these disconnect they both have
the
disconnects only on one side of the um cables which is not ideal not not a fan not a fan
of the adhesive on the
connectors here
okay
and finally okay
and here we got it let's see if this comes off
now and there we go okay
all right so um i've got these consoles open uh they are quite different um there's a lot
more components on the midas console than there are in the x32 we measured that there's
more noise coming out of the output and more noise generated on the inputs of the x32 and
i'm guessing that all these extra little parts in here are the difference and but i will
put some pictures up check out these pictures of the inside full-size leaded transistors
on the mic pres here surface mount transistors there in itself probably not a big deal but
whatever they're doing is different i'll post the pictures you can figure out for yourself
if you want to dive into it more let's take a look at the surfaces because they're definitely
going to be a cost differential and adding the more components and having a more complicated
circuitry but the components are not that expensive what does get expensive are the
buttons switches knobs and faders and wonderful now we did see differences in the components
on the input and output circuits here we're seeing some vast differentials right off the
bat the first thing i'm noticing is these faders are horizontal faders we can see that
they're soldered to the circuit board and there is a round
potentiometer or motor here that is yeah here's the motor there's probably a belt drive that
drives the fader up and down but the faders are mounted flat so when you spill a drink
into it it goes right onto the circuit board these are um mounted perpendicular to this
to the um surface and they're not mounted to a circuit board itself they're actually
mounted to the frame or the chassis of the uh the top level this is huge the difference
in cost between a fader that just solders right to the circuit board versus an actual
real fader that is mounted at an angle and does not have as much susceptibility to drinks
this is a big deal and there's a lot of cost here so that's probably one of the main driving
factors longevity the ability to deal with the environment take a look at
the encoders
i've heard people talking about the encoders are much higher quality on one console versus
the other which would stand a reason due to the extra cost but let's not take anything
for granted and actually take a look now this circuit board um is vastly different here
what circuit board am i taking out
one right above the cell phone holder that holds a cell phone from um many years ago
i don't think anybody owns a cell phone that sits in the cell phone holder that is on the
currently on the x32 and take all the screws out
okay and let's flip that over let's do the same thing here
i like taking things apart
it's the whole putting them back together that really is the fun part especially when
you don't pay a lot of attention to what you're doing okay so here we've got um the two different
console setups now these have the buttons encased in a there's almost like a oh here
we can take it off there's a
look at that okay so the buttons on the midas are conductive plastic
and i think i have my glasses in my pocket here they're conductive plastic with like
the silicone pressure so you push this down and there's four little black conductive plastic
tabs on each of the buttons and then there's four little gold swirls of circuit board and
then an led in the middle and when you push this down these four little conductive plastic
things any one of those probably hits one of those so it kind of gives you a a redundancy
to really make sure it's connecting and then these set these um plastic molded modules
here with the lettering and are lit up by the leds that are surface mounted on the console
let's see what we have on the behringer now it looks similar the quality of this plastic
molded bit is much different it's much
thinner and cheaper and let's go ahead and compare these two so here's the two different
um parts and if we flip them over we can see that they are pretty much identical the size
and spacing of the conductive plastic pads is different so they won't fit in each other's
place but i would say that i'm not seeing at least on this version of console this year
there's not a big difference between the way that these switches work they're both the
silicon rubber conductive plastic padded
and everything's on the board that's um interesting i've heard a lot of comments saying that the
quality of the switches on one was better than the other now that said they are different
these have a soft rubber and the midas has got a hard plastic but i heard that that has
changed as well i think that there might be differences over the years there's no reason
that can't be altered let's see if we can snap that back in cool um encoders let's take
a look at the encoders and see what we can find out about that so the two different encoders
um oh that's kind of neat i've never i'm sure it's been around for a while but the encoders
have clear shafts that the knob slides onto so light can be radiated up through it and
light up the end of the encoder knob it's kind of fun
visually
the encoders appear to be identical i'm not seeing a difference in the actual part that's
being used for the encoder it seems to be the same it's possible that it's not but visually
they look exactly the same really the biggest thing i'm noticing is the faders the input
circuit output circuit and the faders oh let's see if there's anything else i can spot and
then we'll wrap this up oh the motors the fader motors are vastly different the fader
motors i'm going to take a photo of that i'll do it with my phone this is so the qual there's
a fader motor for the
midas and here is a fader motor for the
um yeah the might has got a nice long slender fader motor that fits within the width of
the actual fader and the x32 has got a smaller more cylindrical motor
i think that's about as far as i'm going to go um
yeah dispel the difference um so what i got out of that is that the encoders are probably
the same the switches are similar and of similar quality and caliber the faders are vastly
different and the layout is quite a bit different [Music] durability wise and the ability to
handle drinks and spills if you were to dump a drink into uh the faders on the midas it
would go into the faders if you dump a drink into the faders on the x32 it goes onto the
circuit board with all of the electronics and circuits um okay i've had enough of this
i'm gonna go enjoy putting this back together cool
[Music]
[Music] hmm