BBE sonic maximizer

[PaulG]

Every heavy/hard rock guitarist in the 80's used BBE's - Skid Row, etc and the producers like Michael Wagener would sometimes bring their own in to get a heavier sound. I use the plug in and it's awesome for my guitar tracks. Just put my DAW studio together so don't have much to "A/B" but I write rock and there's no way I would even think to play on any track with distored guitar (at a minimum) without it.

[jeffn1]

Jeffn1, I believe it actually is delaying certain bands, if you read up on it from BBE they say it works by playing with phase. Frankly I think it sounds decent on guitars and certian other instruments as long as you never bring any knob above 2. Do they still sell the plug-in version or has it been discontinued? I may have to pick one up.

Oh. I think it works different thant the harmonic exciter in Ozone, then.

jeffn1

[ew]

Jeffn1, I believe it actually is delaying certain bands, if you read up on it from BBE they say it works by playing with phase. Frankly I think it sounds decent on guitars and certian other instruments as long as you never bring any knob above 2. Do they still sell the plug-in version or has it been discontinued? I may have to pick one up.

AFAIK they do- I picked mine up at Cakewalk's online store a couple years ago, and I'm pretty sure they still sell at least the DX version there.
ew

[gravehill]

I'm a big fan of BBE Sonic Maximizer. I have both hardware and sofware versions.

I normally use them with guitars, basses and all kinds of percussive material. Like someone already said the range of the knobs in BBE is a bit too wide. The useful range being up to 2 or so. After that the effect becomes too obvious IMO. Also I have never been able to apply BBE to a whole mix without making it sound too obvious. On single tracks it's one of my favorite tools.

[eugene]

res,

acutally, i dont find anything really wrong with the BBE vst effect unit. i was just curious what else was out there that does the same kind of thing. just kind of shopping around. i know several bands out there that wont play live without the hardware version of the BBE.

im starting some mastering work on some stuff, and since i picked up my UAD card, ive got an itch to pick up some more mastering type plug ins.

thanks everyone for your thoughts! i will check out the 4front stuff.

[alxstewart]

Here's a freeware plugin calle Xcita I found a couple of weeks ago. http://www.uv.es/%7Eruizcan/p_vst.htm

[kritikon]

I've not heard of anything that properly compares with BBE. Almost all other enhancers use harmonic addition of some sort....which is a completely different process. That's one of the main reasons I bought my original h/w BBE ... too easy to f**k up your sound with harmonics. Certainly a Sonic Maximiser can f**k up your sound if you set it too high, but alot less so than the others. I've occasionally used it over a specific group with way-too-high process as a specialFX. It gives a kind of syruppy, fluid sound that is very odd, but can work in some circumstances if timing is not important. it's a difficult to describe effect - it's like you're in a dark room that's moving around...suddenly someone turns on the light (which is the extra clarity the BBE gives), but you're moving slower than the room.

Anyway...no reason to be dubious about the BBE - it works very well, and is still used widely. And tape recordings have nothing to do with it...BBE was very popular after DAT became the standard. Sonic Maximiser was designed to compensate for inaccuracies introduced through your physical monitors...the recording medium is totally irrelevant.

And yeah...I agree about the h/w too. I prefer it to the plugin (although the plugin is exceptionally good too). I'm fairly sure the h/w must introduce some extra distortions of some kind due to the physical circuits, but whatever it does, it sounds better in some inexplicable way. But if I didn't have the h/w, I'd be pretty content with the s/w.

[kylen]

There's a bunch of different BBE Hardware models out there, many with different designs, some sound better than others according to peoples descriptions in forums. I have a 462 which is in my live rack - good for monitor feeds and exciting the highs a touch. The knob neutral settings are somewhere above minimum so I had to fish for zero and label it. I don't know what model(s) the BBE software plug is designed after - the developer was on a BBS a few years ago explainin how he implemented the phase shifts and whatnot but i can't find the link anymore...I've read the BBE marketing stuff about arrival times and delays and things of that nature but I don't know much about that. When I run my 462 thru a spectrum analyzer I can see the pivot points and shelving action of the lows and highs. I have the software plugin and use it to brighten up a send sometimes but rarely pull it out anymore.

[boin]

Like someone already said the range of the knobs in BBE is a bit too wide. The useful range being up to 2 or so. After that the effect becomes too obvious IMO.

Agreed. That is probably the great BBE defect: it's too easy to overuse it. In this sense the presets are totally useless IMO. BTW I'm talking about the plugin - no hardware unit here.

Also I have never been able to apply BBE to a whole mix without making it sound too obvious. On single tracks it's one of my favorite tools.

Using a little bit of BBE on my mixes usually makes them sound better, at least to my ears. But just a little bit, barely enough to notice on an A/B testing. Somehow it makes things more defined and with a better sense of depth.

[xander]

We used to use something a bit similar - at 15K Dollars per month - in Apogee Studios in Atlanta. It was called an 'APHEX' system.

This is from the BBE site:


Research shows that the information which the listener translates into the recognizable characteristics of a live performance are intimately tied into complex time and amplitude relationships between the fundamental and harmonic components of a given musical note or sound. These relationships define a sound's “sound”. When these complex relationships pass through a speaker, the proper order is lost. The higher frequencies are delayed. A lower frequency may reach the listener's ear first or perhaps simultaneously with that of a higher frequency. In some cases, the fundamental components may be so time-shifted that they reach the listener's ear ahead of some or all of the harmonic components. This change in the phase and amplitude relationship on the harmonic and fundamental frequencies is technically called “envelope distortion.” The listener perceives this loss of sound integrity in the reproduced sound as "muddy" and “smeared.” In the extreme, it can become difficult to tell the difference between musical instruments, for example, an oboe and a clarinet.

BBE Sound, Inc. conducted extensive studies of numerous speaker systems over a ten year period. With this knowledge, it became possible to identify the characteristics of an ideal speaker and to distill the corrections necessary to return the fundamental and harmonic frequency structures to their correct order. While there are differences among various speaker designs in the magnitude of their correction, the overall pattern of correction needed is remarkably consistent. The BBE Process is so unique that 42 patents have been awarded by the U.S. Patent Office.

The BBE Sonic Maximizer will deliver surprisingly good results on guitar, bass and keyboard tracks. Electric guitars have added “bite”, “chunk” and improved definition. As Guitar Player magazine said, “
BBE is the most cost effective improvement you can add to your rig.” Acoustic guitars processed with the Sonic Maximizer have a breathtakingly natural sparkle and presence. Bassists will delight in the BBE Sonic Maximizer’s ability to bring much more punch to the bottom end without muddying up the midrange. The Sonic Maximizer is also great for keyboards, with everything from the latest samples to a vintage Rhodes benefiting equally from the patented BBE process. For more information about the BBE process, please visit BBE on line at www.bbesound.com



Edit: spelling

[mgc3003.com]

Thanks for clarifying my skepticism about this! I

So is it the general opinion here that the BBE Sonic Maximizer is something that could (should?) be used sparingly on all tracks?

Here's a good question: does this effect translate well to MP3s??? Keep in mind that many MP3 players use *joint stereo* which merges your bass frequencies to mono in order to use more bits in the higher frequencies. Also, a lot of MP3 players lop off frequencies above 16khz.

[xander]

Thanks for clarifying my skepticism about this! I

So is it the general opinion here that the BBE Sonic Maximizer is something that could (should?) be used sparingly on all tracks?

Here's a good question: does this effect translate well to MP3s??? Keep in mind that many MP3 players use *joint stereo* which merges your bass frequencies to mono in order to use more bits in the higher frequencies. Also, a lot of MP3 players lop off frequencies above 16khz.

Yes it does translate well to MP3. Go to www.VB-audio.com and get the free DXi host for Winamp, then load any demo of Ozone or BBE, etc., into it and listen to the diff they make on various MP3s and so on. I think you'd like it.

[soma]

Thanks for clarifying my skepticism about this! I

So is it the general opinion here that the BBE Sonic Maximizer is something that could (should?) be used sparingly on all tracks?

Here's a good question: does this effect translate well to MP3s??? Keep in mind that many MP3 players use *joint stereo* which merges your bass frequencies to mono in order to use more bits in the higher frequencies. Also, a lot of MP3 players lop off frequencies above 16khz.

Yes it does translate well to MP3. Go to www.VB-audio.com and get the free DXi host for Winamp, then load any demo of Ozone or BBE, etc., into it and listen to the diff they make on various MP3s and so on. I think you'd like it.

Wouldn't that add the process after the MP3 compression. I think he was asking if the process can stillbe heard after a processed signal has been MP3 comressed.

[popsych]

Thanks for clarifying my skepticism about this! I

So is it the general opinion here that the BBE Sonic Maximizer is something that could (should?) be used sparingly on all tracks?

Here's a good question: does this effect translate well to MP3s??? Keep in mind that many MP3 players use *joint stereo* which merges your bass frequencies to mono in order to use more bits in the higher frequencies. Also, a lot of MP3 players lop off frequencies above 16khz.

I would assume it would, havent run any tests though. Joint stereo btw is nothing like you've decribed. JS encodes the whole mix as mono, and additionally encodes what information is different between the two channels. Sort of like M/S

[mgc3003.com]

That's weird... I forgot which encoder I read about that explained it the way I explained it - but THAT encoder did precisely that.

I found the problem because I had a song where the bass synth panned left and right alternating notes and it merged them mono after encoding... That's how I figured that out.

I don't doubt your words -- rather I just wonder if JS is a specific standard or -- does it vary from encoder to encoder?