Behringer's Music Tribe Buys British Brand Aston Microphones

Music Tribe, the expat manufacturing and distribution organization created by Uli Behringer in China to assemble all the brands that have resulted from his multiple past acquisitions, has now confirmed the addition of Aston Microphones, a studio microphone brand founded in the United Kingdom. The partnership with Music Tribes adds Aston studio microphones to Behringer's pro audio portfolio, which was never particularly strong in that product segment.

Audio mixing consoles, devices that blend together multiple sound sources, continue to experience a customer shift towards low-end products, cannibalizing the mid-range market. That’s one of the key takeaways from a new report released by Futuresource Consulting’s pro audio team. On the positive side, the overall segment continues to grow, thanks to the strong momentum experienced by professional audio digital mixing consoles in touring and rental, broadcast, and installed commercial applications.

We’ve not heard much from Uli Behringer’s ventures for almost all of 2016, except for the fact that MUSIC has been hiring and restructuring all its world operations, centered on expanded manufacturing facilities in China. Now MUSIC confirmed the appointment of yet another ex-Harman executive, this time to lead its Installed Sound efforts.

The Music Group, Uli Behringer’s conglomerate now combining world-recognized brands such as Behringer, Midas, Klark Teknik, Lab Gruppen, Lake, Tannoy, Turbosound, TC Electronic, TC Helicon, Bugera, DDA and Eurocom is slowly making a comeback. Basically, Music is moving all production to their state-of-the-art factory in China and is reintroducing products from the brand’s existing portfolio as well as promised new designs. The Klark Teknik 1176-KT compressor, now announced is a sort of a surprise.

Engineered in Switzerland and manufactured in Germany, the uTrack-X32 is an all-new expansion card from Cymatic Audio for the Behringer X32 and Midas M32 series of digital mixing consoles, allowing to record 32 channels directly from the console, without the need for additional hardware or computers.

Since, in September 2014, the TC Group publicly announced that, based on its shareholders’ interest, it was open for a sale of its entire operations, there where rumors about a three-tiered race between Harman, Yamaha and Behringer. During Prolight+Sound 2015, Harman confirmed it was out of the race. Now, the MUSIC Group confirmed the acquisition.

We’ve recently seen a series of announcements from Mackie and PreSonus introducing digital stage box format mixers - basically replacing the physical control surfaces with iPads and wireless control. In a way, challenging the tremendous success of the very affordable but extremely powerful Behringer X32 digital console family. In response, Behringer now announced its own X Air Series stage box format mixers.