BBE Sonic Maximiser?

[Battousai]

i heard a lot about this thing... what does it exactly DO???

 

[zimbloth]

if you use it with a live tube amp setup? it can really rape your sound. its mainly useful as a bandaid with some direct recording applications or with solid state amps. it mainly is just a treble boost at 5khz and supposedly realligns phase or whatnot.

if you have a Peavey XXX, stay clear of this.

 

[swedenuck]

http://www.seymourduncan.com/forum/showthread.php?t=104724

There's a lot of info and opinions right there

 

[Battousai]

if you use it with a live tube amp setup? it can really rape your sound. its mainly useful as a bandaid with some direct recording applications or with solid state amps. it mainly is just a treble boost at 5khz and supposedly realligns phase or whatnot.

if you have a Peavey XXX, stay clear of this.

Fuck just a slight boost for $300 heh Unimpressed

 

[zimbloth]

All you need for a boost w/ a tube amp is a Tube Screamer or something similar. That's my (and most people's) opinion at least. I use the Ibanez TS808.

 

[TomAwesome]

The Sonic Maximizer is a great unit. Its controls are simple, but this unit has a lot of audio engineering going into it. The main purpose of what it does is that it changes the phase relationships of different frequencies so that speakers reproduce the signal more accurately. Speakers are not perfect sound reproduction devices, and there's some envelope distortion going on there.

The knobs might seem like mere "presence" and "resonance" controls at first, but there's more to it than that. Someone told me a while back that they add harmonics in certain frequency ranges. I'm not sure if that's true or if it's just an advanced EQ system, but I can't reproduce whatever the knobs do with my 31-band EQ.

Of course any good rig won't need it, but any rig (or any audio for that matter) can benefit from it. Some people don't like it for some reason. Even when I'm making computer programmed music, I run everything through a Sonic Maximizer. You just have to be careful not to overdo it with the knobs. Subtle use of the BBE can do wonders, but it's easy to overdo it and make things sound like crap.

 

[Hellbound]

if you use it with a live tube amp setup? it can really rape your sound. its mainly useful as a bandaid with some direct recording applications or with solid state amps. it mainly is just a treble boost at 5khz and supposedly realligns phase or whatnot.

if you have a Peavey XXX, stay clear of this.

good point I tried one on my 6505 and it really pushed the distortion to the point where it was nothing but overdriven mush. My tubescreamer is much better.

 

[zimbloth]

The Sonic Maximizer is a great unit. Its controls are simple, but this unit has a lot of audio engineering going into it. The main purpose of what it does is that it changes the phase relationships of different frequencies so that speakers reproduce the signal more accurately. Speakers are not perfect sound reproduction devices, and there's some envelope distortion going on there.

The knobs might seem like mere "presence" and "resonance" controls at first, but there's more to it than that. Someone told me a while back that they add harmonics in certain frequency ranges. I'm not sure if that's true or if it's just an advanced EQ system, but I can't reproduce whatever the knobs do with my 31-band EQ.

Of course any good rig won't need it, but any rig (or any audio for that matter) can benefit from it. Some people don't like it for some reason. Even when I'm making computer programmed music, I run everything through a Sonic Maximizer. You just have to be careful not to overdo it with the knobs. Subtle use of the BBE can do wonders, but it's easy to overdo it and make things sound like crap.

That's all well and good, but he uses a Peavey XXX. A really good tube amp doesn't need that kind of fix-er-up IMO. He'd be much better off with a Tube Screamer or something like it. I owned one of those and it just made my Mesa sound ultra hi-fi and unnatural, squishy and compressed.

 

[smueske]

I have the plug-in version and you really have to be careful with it. I think it's great for drums, after the compressor in the signal chain. Personally, I would never use it on guitar unless the sound is really dead. To my ears and in my environment it sounds a lot like a filter. In fact, I can capture nearly the same exact sound of the presets by futzing with an EQ.

 

[Battousai]

i wasnt actually thinking of buying it i just wanted to know what the fuss about it is

plus it sounds like a Sensational device

BEHOLD! THE SONIC MAXIMISER!! BOW DOWN TO ITS GREATNESS!!

ALSO TRY THE AURAL PERPLEXINATOR!

 

[swedenuck]

That's all well and good, but he uses a Peavey XXX. A really good tube amp doesn't need that kind of fix-er-up IMO. He'd be much better off with a Tube Screamer or something like it. I owned one of those and it just made my Mesa sound ultra hi-fi and unnatural, squishy and compressed.

In my experience Mesa amps, especially rectos, are absolute garbage when used with a sonic maximizer. The natural frequency spectrum they have seems to already boost the frequencies that the sonic maximizer focuses on, making said range overbearing and unuseable. I find it to be quite handy with my 5150 when playing live but when I'm not in the context of a band I leave it off. Also I'll have to agree with the sentiments of using the BBE with a XXX, it does the same thing as a Recto, turns to poop. If you want something with more "oomph", almost noticeable gain, anf hi fi qualities than I certainly suggest one, otherwise you're probably not going to get what you're looking for.

 

[kmanick]

I used to use a Sonic Stop with my 5150, but it died on me. I went back to just using an MXR 10 band EQ in the loop and I'm betting a better sound now
than I did with the BBE.
Not bad though, some amps love em , some amps don't.

 

[TomAwesome]

That's all well and good, but he uses a Peavey XXX. A really good tube amp doesn't need that kind of fix-er-up IMO. He'd be much better off with a Tube Screamer or something like it. I owned one of those and it just made my Mesa sound ultra hi-fi and unnatural, squishy and compressed.

Yeah, good amps don't need it, but since when do we try to stay minimalistic and use nothing that we don't need (we're in a 7-string forum, after all)? Comparing what the BBE does in any way to what a Tube Screamer does just doesn't work one way or the other. They're not even close to doing the same kind of thing. They do work better with some rigs than with others. For some reason, my other guitarist's GT-8-into-a-solid-state-head rig doesn't benefit as much as my rig does, though it does still help. I know one guy that stopped using his BBE because they don't work with the Krank head he got. Apparently they're just plain incompatible with Kranks. I forgot to read up on why, though, since I personally don't give two shits about Krank amps.

Every time I've seen (heard?) someone's rig sound bad because of the BBE, it has been because they set the knobs too high (of course I'm not counting the times I don't know what they were doing with it, so there's room for error there). Like swedenuck kind of said, depending on the amp's voicing, the knobs don't work as well with some amps. People seem to like to set the knobs at 2:00 or more. That's bad most of the time, and that's when you get that ugly transistory sound some people complain about. The way I see it, if your tone has a BBE-characteristic sound, the knobs are too high. Jeff Loomis has the knobs on his a bit higher than suits my taste. Even if you leave the knobs all the way down, you still get the speaker compensation benefits, and I can't imagine a BBE making the tone worse with the knobs at 0%. Of course I could be wrong, though.

 

[vco]

I tried this out and it didn't do much for me. Then I put a D Sonic 7 in my guitar and it tightened up the B string and it did a lot that I expected the BBE to do. I suggest trying that.

 

[loktide]

I always thought the BBE does a phase shift of the lower frequencies relative to higher ones, so that low and high frequency waves hit your ears simultaneously when playing a few meters away from your cab. ADDITIONALLY, i've heard you can also use it to boost lows and highs giving you the already mentioned HiFi effect (which is a matter of taste).

 

[TomAwesome]

I always thought the BBE does a phase shift of the lower frequencies relative to higher ones, so that low and high frequency waves hit your ears simultaneously when playing a few meters away from your cab. ADDITIONALLY, i've heard you can also use it to boost lows and highs giving you the already mentioned HiFi effect (which is a matter of taste).

Yeah, pretty much on that first part. The reason the different frequencies are otherwise reaching our ears at different times in the first place, though, is largely because of the speakers. That's the envelope distortion I mentioned in my initial response. And yeah, as you implied, if the knobs are set lower, it gives less of a hi-fi sound and just more of a better defined sound.

 

[loktide]

Yeah, pretty much on that first part. The reason the different frequencies are otherwise reaching our ears at different times in the first place, though, is largely because of the speakers. That's the envelope distortion I mentioned in my initial response. And yeah, as you implied, if the knobs are set lower, it gives less of a hi-fi sound and just more of a better defined sound.

Yeah, that confirms it. I need to try one of these out sometime... Is there a significant difference among the different BBE maximizer models?

 

[TomAwesome]

^
Between the older models (the black and blue ones without the i after the model number) and the newer ones, yeah, I'd say so. But between the 482i, 882i, and Sonic Stomp, they all sound exactly the same.

 

[loktide]

so, which one is the "best", or least noisy / processed-sounding ?

 

[canuck brian]

I've used one for about 10 years now. I think putting either of the knobs more than half turns the nice sound into a piercing chainsaw or farts out your cabs pretty hard. Used subtlely, it can really make a improvement in sound. That' my opinion though....