I avoided Behringer products until recently I bought—and subsequently returned—two Neutrons that I'd hoped would fit in with my other Eurorack equipment. It's not that they were a bad concept, just that the execution was flawed. The first had too much crosstalk between the overdrive and VCA circuits, and the second was built so badly that it wobbled every time we pressed a button or tweaked a knob.
Behringer has always been the Walmart of music equipment. Their business model is selling cheap gear to consumers who can't afford, or won't pay, the higher prices that name brand manufacturers charge for their equipment. I don't buy Behringer gear for myself or for my studio not because they aren't "good enough" sounding, but because I don't have time to waste on all the extra cost and work one has to do with inferior equipment. I'd rather pay the higher front-end price for name brand gear because after the mix is printed, the cost will actually be lower.
It's not news that Behringer clones other designers' gear—they do it with all their products, not just synths—and I don't have a problem with that. It's just business and competition. I don't like how they go about doing it though, and that's about behavior rather than actual methodology. Many of their products are designed to look so close to the original that it's not even a joke anymore (review the Swing, for example, which is a nearly exact copy of Arturia's KeyStep 37, or the Pro-1 modeled after Moog's Pro One).
The thing is, Behringer is capable of designing and producing good equipment without having to resort to ripping off other designs. The DeepMind 12 is a major accomplishment. The Neutron, despite it's manufacturing flaws, is a cool piece of gear for the price, as can be said of the Crave. Why not focus on creating unique gear, or if you're going to clone, then make something that looks different enough to be unique, but make it better? Hard to say, but it doesn't matter now, because Behringer have a reputation for building inferior gear and stealing other designs. I feel they harm the industry and we musicians and engineers rather than they do for themselves sitting in the group as an equal.
The other reason is about ethics and personal responsibility. It's not always productive to discuss, but it cannot be overlooked:
I think what Uli did to Dave Smith and Peter Kirn, and tried to do to Tom Oberheim, were not just churlish and petty behaviors but an example of a fundamentally flawed human being. If someone is willing to beat up a total stranger—AND FOR NO ACTUAL PURPOSE OTHER THAN EGO—in the full view of the public, customers, vendors and professionals alike, then that person/company will not get my business. End of story, full stop. As of today, I own only one piece of Behringer gear: a rack EQ that was left in the studio by an engineer I hired. It stays where it is simply because I didn't pay for it and I don't even want to devote the energy to remove it from the gear rack. I can't actually recall when we used it on a track because even my dbx 231 is better, and that's not saying much.
Every industry needs a bratty nephew that is just a pest to everyone, and that's the role that Behringer has decided to play in our music equipment family.
"I'll just plug this in here and see what happens."