Bc2000 (for the BCF2000 & BCR2000)

Hi Steve
--- In bc2000@yahoogroups.com, Steve Meiers <tekrytor@...> wrote:
> Re: 500 plus member here
> The FCB1010 Yahoo group has 10,000 members, no typo, that's 10
thousand members and still growing. Except for a few visits from Jim
Savery, the US Marketing guy, they didn't do much. Occasional comments
on how to get a firmware update, the product sucked big-time initially,
they lurked but did not contribute. They watched good-natured software
developers write FREE code that Behringer should have provided WITH the
product, I'm talking about the editors for setting system parameters.
They watched as the same very generous people reverse-engineered their
code to fix the bugs that Behringer was ignoring. Never a PUBLIC thank
you to these good folks. I and others openly suggested it would be nice
of Behringer to recognize these people's efforts with at least simple
kudos and amybe a T-shirt or "something". But NO!, Nichts, non, nada,
nothing, nyet! And all that for 10,000 or more users in one mailing
list. So I don't know if our devoted 500 has a chance or not.
>
As one of the assembler coders that altered (improved?) the FCB we were
lucky that Behringer 'leaked' the circuit and hardware details to the
group.
Since the recent litigation I assume that Behringer have tightened up on
disclosing their "secrets", but it does show you that you can be lucky.
You don't ask then you definitely won't get anything.
Note that although they are very aware of the illegal reverse
engineering and they know who the villains are they have chosen not to
pursue it. As you know in the US if you don't actively protect you
intellectual rights the courts are reluctant to in force them later on.
I wrote to them explaining about the modified FCB code when I was asking
for the sysex details of the BCR/BCF.
The letter was apparently circulated around Behringer and caused a few
heated moments. I gather the developers were very keen on an open source
stance, but the legal guys...
Still it is a great little machine that I  couldn't build for the price.

> I can tell you that if Behringer devoted a little effort to PR, hired
a few of the active folks on these boards at least part time as
go-betweens, ombudsmen, etc, and maintained an active and positive
dialog with us users, then I would have a much easier time opening my
wallet for their products in the future.

>
> Reputation has killed many companies over the years. Fiat and Yugo
were disasters in the US market because the companies earned bad
reputations. These cars were sorely needed, gas prices were jumping and
they had better mileage than any domestic brands. It costs a money and
time to build a reputation, but it costs markets to loose it.

The low end is the market Behringer have gone for, but they have done it
with some really great gear.  Upset a lot of manufacturers that were
forced to improve their low end stuff and lower their prices on the
better gear. Have you noticed that everyone now is bad mouthing
Behringer. This is a sure sign that they have got something right.

Don't get me wrong, Behringer have very bad manuals and are really bad
at the after sale stuff, but to get the hardware at the low price
something has to give and after sale service is VERY expensive to
supply. That is why so many distributors  get pissed off when you buy
the unit overseas or on Ebay and they get to supply the free after sale
stuff when you haven't paid them anything.

My wish they would at least make the info available. Perhaps we can push
for that.
"Give us the info and we'll expand it ourselves. This will create extra
value for the unit, increase its marketing life span and its reputation
and all for no cost to you."

Try something like that and see what happens.

All the best

Royce Craven