What does in the right hands mean? Well this is a pedal you have to learn. And you have to learn it in context with your amplifier. That will mean rigging up your amp at stage volumes, putting the BBE around the loop and learning how the controls interact with each other and how they match up with the EQ on your amp. Just turning it on and hoping for the best won't get you there. Does it make a difference? With the right soundguy and PA, my guitar sounds beautiful.
Would I leave home without it? In a pinch, sure! If I had no space on my pedalboard for it, I'd certainly make do without it. Would I recommend one?
If you can put the time in to learn it then absolutely! Messages 5, JonSick said:. The pedals are useless I think. The rack units can be good for certain things live or recording.
I used them for synth parts. Honestly the Aphex Aurol Exciter is better I think. The Aurol Exciter does something entirely different. But the results are similar. Butbagain the BBE pedal is nothing like the rack unit. In short, if you already have a good sounding amp, the BBE will do no good and may actually do harm.
If you have a bland sounding clean channel on your amp, it may make it sound a bit better. Like I said I used to use it and the Aphex for my synths relgiously back in the day. I dint use or own eithe fine anymore. Scratch that apparently I still do own the pedal. It was a gift I never used and would cost more to ship than it's worth to sale. I used one on my board for about a year. It basically adds a bit of high end clarity.
But after a year I wanted the board space for something else and just didn't care enough about its tone shaping to keep it. Messages 10, You must log in or register to reply here. Trending Topics. Guitars in General. Your go-to guitar…. Started by jlectka Wednesday at PM Replies: DS-1 - was it always like this??? Started by metrokosmiko Today at PM Replies: Why do pedals go right to left? Top Bottom. View More. Recent Blog Posts.
Recent Photos. View More Photo Galleries. Unread PMs. Forum Themes Mobile Progressive. Essentials Only Full Version. How does the BBE sonic maximizer work? It works, and I can't believe how amazing it is. How does it do that? Are you referring to the hardware or plugin version? From what I remember about it, it delays the bass signal so it supposedly arrives at the ears at the same time as the treble frequencies.
The presets are rather jarring, especially after listening for awhile. Like many plugins, at first it seems wonderful, but after use, it wears on you. Experiment with using as little of it as possible to accomplish what you want. My rule is, set it where you can just hear the effect, and then back off by half. But reputable engineers have made analyses of the way the ear operates and have come up with systems of unimpeachable worth, such as the various Dolby noise reduction processes, which bend the rules and allow us to record sound more realistically and, if we wish, more artistically.
The BBE engineers claim to have done the same thing for the way a loudspeaker works and I'd like quickly to summarise their findings: Loudspeakers all suffer from a less than perfect amplitude and phase response. If the amplitude response isn't flat, then some frequencies will be reproduced louder than others.
If the phase response isn't ideal, then the timing differences between the various frequencies of a signal will be altered. Higher frequencies are usually delayed and reach the listener after the lower frequencies, thus making the sound 'muddy' or 'smeared' and changing the characteristics of the instruments.
BBE have developed a model of a typical loudspeaker and have worked out the corrections needed to bring the phase relationships between signals back to what they should be. Of course, different loudspeakers have their own individual characteristics, but there is a sufficiently high degree of consistency for the process to be valid.
I don't think anyone would disagree that the loudspeaker with the perfect frequency and phase response has yet to be invented. So let's see how BBE deal with the problem, once again in summary: The signal is split into three frequency bands: below Hz; Hz to 1. The low frequency band is delayed by approximately 2.
The mid band is delayed by 0. The high frequency band is passed through a high quality VCA, and is used as a point of reference to make dynamic amplitude corrections in both positive and negative directions to the high frequencies. RMS average loudness detectors monitor the mid and high bands, comparing the relative harmonic content and controlling the high frequency content at the output via the VCA.
I think that what this means is that, as well as applying delays to the low and mid bands, it also monitors the level of the mid band and cuts or boosts the level of the high frequencies in accordance with that.
However it does what it does — and I do find it difficult to believe that all this processing is improving the overall accuracy of the signal's reproduction — all we really have to do is judge the Sonic Maximizer Model on the quality of the results and not get blinded by the scientific verbiage.
In an age when music and recording equipment of all types is becoming increasingly complicated to operate, and not always to good purpose, the BBE Sonic Maximizer is refreshingly different. Discounting the power switch, which I don't really think of as an audio processing tool, this unit has only three controls.
Anyone who judges value for money by the operational parameter count is I fear going to be severely disappointed! In an ideal world this would have been a true relay bypass, as all in-line effects units should have, but that's just one of only two very minor quibbles I have about this unit. The Lo Contour and Definition controls I shall come on to shortly.
The Sonic Maximiser is a stereo device with quarter-inch unbalanced jack inputs and outputs. This unit is intended to be used with line level signals, so you can't plug a mic or electric guitar straight in, but this is no drawback.
This is below professional headroom standards and therefore the Model is definitely for use at lower domestic levels only. Perhaps this is to differentiate it from the more expensive pro version. When connecting it up to your system it's important to remember that the Maximizer is an in-line device, like a compressor or noise gate. This means that you feed it with the untreated signal and then use only the processed signal that comes out.
Now, those two other controls The Lo Contour, despite its arcane nomenclature is a simple bass control. Actually it's a rather good bass control, because it allows you to cut virtually all the lowest frequencies or wind them up from an almost unlimited supply of bottom end, which is of course every engineer's dream.
I wish my mixer had low frequency EQ like this; it's obviously a result of choosing the correct turnover frequency and characteristic. The Definition control is more what the Maximizer is all about.
Basically, the further clockwise you turn this, the more trebly the signal gets. But this isn't an ordinary HF control, because it does sound radically different. The only way to describe it is to through what I found when I tried it out. I fished out of my expanding library of DAT tapes a couple of mixes that I was basically happy with, but which I thought could do with a bit of tweaking to bring them up to a fully professional standard.
I first listened with the Maximizer bypassed.
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