Vintage Synth Explorer Forums

More info on the Behringer site:

Deep Mind 12 Product Page


Deep Mind 12 Manual

Thanks for the link to the B webby. Wow their new synth looks (reading the spec) amazing It seems to be an "all out" product, all the most useful knobs, bells and whistles etc.

I was amazed to see a Deep Mind at my local Guitar Center yesterday. This is the same GC that didn't get a Kronos on the floor until two years after it came out. I was equally surprised to see a Moog Mother 32 (not hooked up), an Akai Timbre Wolf (which was just as bad as I expected), and Roland Boutiques. GC finally remembered they had a keyboard department

The DM is a lot more like a Juno than I was expecting. The first thing I realized is how many things required menu diving. It was only later at home when I read the manual that I deiscovered that some of the things I was looking for required multiple button pushes, just like a real Roland At least Roland used to mark the shift functions but Behringer does not. What sort of things? How about switching to the live panel (press/hold PROG and press WRITE), choosing LFO waveforms (press/hold LFO EDIT and move rate slider), loading a default starter patch (press/hold PROG and press COMPARE).

Like a Juno it seemed like very patch had the low boost turned on, unlike a Juno you can use the HPF and the boost at the same time. I didn't run through every preset (there's 1024 I think) but the ones I did try were slathered with effects and all used unison! Sure with 12 voices, you can afford to use unison but like the boost it's sort of cheating. Turn off effects, boost and unison and the synth sounds a lot flatter.

What did I like? The filter sounded really good.. Being able to switch between 2 and 4 pole is nice. I dialed in a bunch of old school noise plus self-oscillating filter sci-fi sounds and it was just like being back in 1971. Add some delay and you're in outer space The bottom end was huge, some really substantial basses are possible. Master volume and portamento time knobs next to the wheels is great ergonomically. The LFOs run fast enough for some FM effects. The display shows the value of any slider you are currently moving and gives a graphic representation of the filter as you tweak it. The controls can send/recieve either 7-bit CCs or 14-bit NRPNs for extenal sequencing. There's a MIDI THRU and the MIDI OUT has a soft thru function. The MIDI routing in general is good, you can control how the MIDI jacks and USB MIDI interact. USB is class compliant, no drivers You can control the response of each stage of the three EGs between exponential, linear and logarithmic on a per patch basis. The power supply is built in, no wall wart.

What didn't I like? The display was rather "low-fi" and hard to read. You can't select voices quickly, for gig use you would have to make sure the patches you use are close together so you can get at them quickly. I'd rather see the sort of letter/number keys used by Roland and Yamaha. The stereo output jacks do not have a mono option. The octave buttons do not have any indicators to tell what octave you are in The CCs for the filter and amp EG do not use the standard MIDI assignments (71-75)...it would be so simple to do that so whether slaved to a master keyboard or used as a controller for other synths, the filter and EG controls would just work. There is no way to disable the effects easily...no on/off switch. no depth slider, etc.

Overall, I think Behringer did a pretty good job. I'm sure Juno fans will be DM haters, but I'd buy this in an instant before spending over a grand for a used Juno.

Thank you for posting your impressions, it's been some time now that I've been thinking about purchasing my first poly analog synth, and DM12 is on my radar, together with the Prophet Rev2...actually I think that the Rev2 will suit better my needs, much more complex and interesting synth than the DM12 (I'm more into editing sounds than "playing"), and your post confirmed my thoughts...

Attempting to make a Bagpipes sound on the DM12.

meatballfulton wrote: The octave buttons do not have any indicators to tell what octave you are in

This is not true. There are small LEDs that indicate the octave position below the arp section. You can see the little yellow light in the video above in the 0 octave position. It has indicators for -2 to +2.

Otherwise, a very realistic review IMO.

I'm used to octave switches that illuminate...like some other things I thought were missing but later found out by RTFM, it wasn't intuitive what octave I was in.

Does anyone know if the portamento can be "detuned" or offset for each voice thus producing the lovely old school portamento that the OBXa and family all did...as well as the Korg Monopoly? IE: each voice had a slightly different time on the portamento and in a stacked mono lead voice it produced an amazing huge sound helped out by the "smear" or "detuned" portamento from the different times on each voice.

Also can you set the portamento to a logarithmic curve? Again similar to the Oberheim portamento...

Thanks for any insights!

From the manual:

Incredible polyphonic portamento with flexible fixed rate, fixed time and exponential pitch glide modes.

The PORTAMENTO function can be tuned to your specific playing requirements by way of 14 different modes.

Read p.66 of the manual yourself, but it would appear that the short answer to your question about per voice is no.

Thank you...I'll check that out. At some point I'll try and get to a store to actually try one out and test this aspect out.

Thanks again.

The speed can be different between the two oscillators. I am not sure if there would be a way in the mod matrix to change the times by voice...I'll check it out.

mmp wrote:The speed can be different between the two oscillators. I am not sure if there would be a way in the mod matrix to change the times by voice...I'll check it out.

Thanks Michael...I'll be interested to see what you find.

Thanks again!

Note number can modulate portamento time, so it looks possible to me, or at least something similar. Again, I will try it out on the instrument tomorrow.

Voice number is also a mod source, and you can modulate a modulator...looking more likely.

bloodsample wrote:Attempting to make a Bagpipes sound on the DM12. [...]

Why?

Stephen