Jittery BCF2000?

[gdougherty]

I joked the other night that the BCF's came pre-caffeinated but I seriously want to check if I've got "normal" behavior on my two new units.

Not sure about the other that's packaged in a box at home, though I do know the other night both units seemed to be affected, but the unit next to me at the moment has a jittery fader #7 whenever I move or select something onscreen. Click-drag and select a bunch of channels and it jitters. Move my hot channel selection around and it jitters. These would both be on views not linked to the BCF either. When it jitters it makes an audible shuddering noise.

Also, any of the faders shudder if I drag the onscreen fader up or down with the mouse or adjust them with an arrow key. Some are noticably worse than others. Is this just the "cost" of a $200 control surface, should I have Behringer replace it or is it something about the MIDI data being sent from SAC?

[Bob L]

That seems to be normal behavior for the BCF units... the faders are self adjusting to the values being sent from SAC... and the internal fader resolution is rounding the data up and down to find the closest resting place for the actual data value.

The MotorMix and Mackie units are much smoother in that regard.

Bob L

[gdougherty]

Thanks Bob, if I keep enjoying a control surface as much as I have I may have to spring for a better unit. Wouldn't mind having the channel labels.

[KUI]

I have 7 units. 4 where purchased last summer 09. 3 more where purchased in april this year 2010. The new ones exhibit the behavior you are reporting. The units are jittery even when selecting a channel or bank switching. They also behave differently from fader to fader on the unit themselves. The older ones are smooth and quiet.

I suspect some changed in the internal design or a chip change in the unit?

They are by no means unusable, but compared to older units they would appear to be malfunctioning.

KUI

[Jeff Scott]

Mine has a bit of Jitter to it as well. Not on long fader adjustments but on small "tweaks". Something I've learned to live with considering the overall price.

[Bob L]

The new ones do seem to be more jittery than the older ones... oh well... something has changed me-thinks.

Bob L

[Frank DeWitt]

The new ones do seem to be more jittery than the older ones... oh well... something has changed me-thinks.

Bob L

I took one of these apart. (A new one) They use a commercial manual fader and there own motor and belt drive. When you get in there, it is clear that the motor can be moved to adjust the belt tension. It is also clear that the factory doesn't do this. All motors were set at one end of there mounting slots allowing max slop in the belt. I suspect this is a change in assembly technique and it saves a minute or so in assembly.

Take a small Philips screw driver. loosen the two screws, slide the motor until the belt has less slop (not real tight) and tighten the screws.

Here is a picture of the motor and belt before adjusting.
http://www.lbpinc.com/motor-adj.jpg

Don't go to tight. Just take out the silly slop. The belt and motor pulley have teeth so you don't need tension.

Frank

[905shmick]

That looks like a nice simple mod to keep things running well.

Now all we need is an option in SAC to tell the BCF units to only go to -80 instead of -inf so that they don't get slammed to the bottom when using the BCF in chase mode. The slapping isn't noticeable when a band is up, but when the room is quiet and you're moving around, the slapping of the faders when they to to -inf always turns a few heads.

[Trackzilla]

or perhaps a little chunk of felt glued to the bottom of the fader slot would accomplish the same thing with no Bob time...just thinkin it might be good to address the problem where it is rather than modify what isn't the problem

[905shmick]

True, the felt might work, though I wouldn't think that it would be a major code change to have a BCF Fader mode enabled. Maybe something to include in SAC 4.0