Introduction

As virtual studios become more popular for music production, there is an increased need to provide some sort of tactile control of sequencers and software synthesizers. Using a mouse just doesn’t always cut it. But fully featured controllers like the Mackie Control are somewhat expensive for the average hobbyist or project studio. So we were excited when we saw the prototype for the BCF and BCR2000 at Winter NAMM and found out they were $219 and $149 respectively. This is quite a huge price breakthrough (which tends to be a Behringer specialty).

Ok, so you know that you need them, and you know that the price is right, so how do they perform? Well, in short, pretty darn good.

Look and Feel

One concern that a lot of people probably have is that if something is so inexpensive, it must be poorly made. Well the BCF2000 certainly doesn’t feel like it. The case feels solid and durable, the faders feel sturdy as well. Overall the unit feels as good as or better than any of the other controllers I have tried regardless of price.

The BCF2000 features 8 faders, 8 rotary dials with Push On/Off capabilities, 16 buttons with indicator lights (2 buttons per fader/rotary). In addition there are 4 buttons that can be used for transport control (Play/Stop, etc) not counting the buttons for control of the BCF2000 itself.

The BCF2000’s footprint is roughly equivalent to a Mackie Control, which means it’s small, but not too small for clumsy fingers like mine. The main thing it is missing is the large LCD display to show you which parameter each of the faders/rotaries are controlling. It does have an LED display, but when using the BCF2000 it will just show the value of whatever control you are moving. Each of the rotaries however has an LED ring that shows what the current value is. All in all I would say it’s a fairly good compromise for the price difference.

Installation

The BCF2000 allows you to use it in a lot of different configurations using both the USB and MIDI ports and you can even use both at the same time. You can select the mode by using a simple key command on the BCF2000. Using the MIDI ports would allow you to use the BCF2000 in “stand-alone” mode, which means you can use it even if you didn’t have a computer. This would be a good way to work also if you wanted to use the BCF2000 to control hardware synths. I chose to use the “USB 1” mode since my main use would be to control software synths.

Installing the BCF2000 itself is pretty simple. I just plugged the included USB cable into my machine and plugged the power supply into the wall. Windows XP Home found the device as a “USB Composite Device” and did not require any drivers to be installed nor required a reboot. Configuring my software to work with the BCF2000 was a little more complex however.

Taking Control

Setting up the BCF2000 to work with software synths was relatively easy. Most software synths allow you to use a “Learn” function which will look at what controller information you are sending and map that information to the parameter you select. I had fairly complex configurations mapped out to several popular software synths (FM7, Reaktor, Lounge Lizard) in just a few minutes.

Alternately I can assign most any controller number and type to any applicable controller by using key commands on the BCF2000. This includes more sophisticated controller types such as SysEx and NRPN. This would probably most applicable to controlling hardware synths since few of these will have a “Learn” function. Alternately, if your hardware synth can send parameters (as many do) you can use the “Learn” functionality on the BCF2000 so the BCF2000 will map itself automatically to whatever parameter your synthesizer is sending. I was able to use the BCF2000 to control every hardware synthesizer in my studio with just a little tweaking.

You can also specify minimum and maximum amounts so you could restrict the range of a parameter (for example if you don’t want to have the filter go all the way to completely closed, but from muted to all the way open). Also, this allows you to reverse the range so that the fader goes from 127 to 0 so you could simulate drawbar functionality on something like Native Instruments B4.

The Struggle Within

Setting up the BCF2000 to control my sequencing program however was not quite as easy. Fortunately, there a limited number of “templates” available for the BCF2000 and the available templates for Cubase SX, Logic and Sonar, covers a ton of people. The program that I use (Nuendo) does not a template available, so I had to go in and configure the BCF2000 to work with Nuendo manually. This was quite a bit more of a pain, requiring me to use the “Learn” function for each and every fader and knob, which took a fair amount of time. Additionally you have to do this for a 4 sets of faders. Of course once one person does this, they can share these setups with everyone and they will be spared this arduous chore (which really only took less than an hour, I am spoiled and lazy), so I imagine it will only be a short time until templates for every major program out there are available.

Behringer has said they will be releasing a free editor program for the BCF2000. Although programming the BCF2000 is not really that hard, it will make it just that much easier. And if there was a program that emulated an LCD screen to show you what parameter you were currently controlling, that would really make the BCF2000 almost perfect.

I did run into a more serious problem that took me a while to solve. Once the BCF2000 was set up to receive control message, the faders would “grab” when I would make larger fader moves. This rendered the BCF2000 useless for controlling faders since I was sure that I was going to rip out the motors in a matter of days. I contacted technical support (which is required as part of the review process anyway) who got back to me quickly. They told me this problem was caused by a loop of the incoming data being sent back out by my sequencer. The suggestion they had was to turn off the sending of data to the BCF2000 which wasn't going to work for me as I need the faders to follow the sequencer.(or at least for this test I did) I did hear back from Tech Support a second time but it took 2 days. They had me try some different debugging techniques but I ended solving the problem myself (by not making the BCF2000 the default MIDI device). Once this was done the BCF2000 and the Houston co-existed quite well. Although it did take a couple days to get a more complete answer, I did get the feeling from tech support that they were willing to do whatever it took to get the problem solved. And at the end of the day the problem was on my end in the software, not with the BCF2000.

Manual Control

One problem with dealing with MIDI is that it starts off relatively simple and then jumps to painfully complex. One minute you are reading about simple things like volume and then suddenly you are thrust into Most Significant Byte and understanding binary code. If you are a novice looking to get a complete grasp of the subtleties of SysEx, this manual is not going to do it. But it covers how to do everything you would need to do with the BCF2000 including all the different setups that you might want to try depending on how much you will be integrating the BCF2000 with your software. Also included are charts of the different presets of the BCF2000 and a blank chart you can use to document your own presets. That was a nice touch.

Conclusion

There is no question; the Behringer BCF2000 is the best moving-fader control box you can purchase for under $300. That’s because it’s the ONLY one under $300 (way under 300). But it’s got plenty of the features that the big boys have and is easy to use. If you haven’t tried hardware control of your software, it really is a great feeling, and now it can leave your bank account feeling good as well.

Check out the Behringer BCF2000 here.

Have more questions about this product? Please write to us here.

Or to be kept informed of all the latest news, reviews, articles, and more, click here to subscribe to the audioMIDI.com newsletter.