KVR Audio

kritikon · Post by **kritikon** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 6:02 pm

I believe the original question was never really answered by anyone knowledgable of the said unit.

The original question was answered by several people with experience of BBE. We since moved on to completely unrelated topics and the usual mix of KvR myth, waffle and opinionated opinions (myself included, of course)

In short - the answer is: no. Spectralive is better.

deaf dunderkwac · Post by **deaf dunderkwac** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 6:14 pm

I like waffles!

bduffy · Post by **bduffy** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 6:34 pm

Actually I think the first page or so had some relevant opinions, until the inevitable descent into madness.

lion_cub · Post by **lion_cub** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 8:49 pm

bduffy wrote:Actually I think the first page or so had some relevant opinions, until the inevitable descent into madness.

Frippertronix · Post by **Frippertronix** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 10:50 pm

FWIW, Ted Weber got back to me but didn't really have any opinions about BBE. Not surprising, really, since he doesn't do hi-fi. He mostly just said he wouldn't be surpised if their claims are exagerrated since they are a pretty successful company and spend a lot on advertising.

Frippertronix · Post by **Frippertronix** » Fri Dec 16, 2005 11:05 pm

Kingston wrote:
Frippertronix wrote:I guess as far as "phasey messes" go, Kingston, don't all non-linear phase EQ's also make a phasey mess?

If BBE's premise is true, then unprocessed dynamic speakers make a phasey mess.
*sigh*

confused terminology in part of the whole audio world.

linearphase doesn't fcuk with phase, but the time domain information. pre-ringing is the term. and yeah it can make things sound bad, even with PLpar. I use phasewarp mode all the time.

Speakers have cross overs, quite similar to multibands and here "phasey mess" somewhat applies, but it depends on the crossover design. You see, speaker crossovers, and most multiband stuff, are "phase warping" filters, and that can have adverse effect on sound. Bad speakers (ie. combined phase error of crossover and speaker cone) in this case would result in mess. And that kind of thing is next to impossible to compensate in general and unless you know the *exact* specs of a given speaker, and design a unit *just* for that, you'll most likely end up making things worse.

Hope I'm making sense with this.

Thanks for the input. I said "non linear phase EQ's" (by that I meant to say EQ's other than the linear phase ones). I understand linear phase EQ's don't warp the phase.

I agree that it seems it would be hard to design a "generic" compensation function for time lag related high/low phase problems with all dynamic speakers. BBE claims to have found some kind of magic formula to cover most common speakers. I haven't looked into what kind of technical justification they give to support this, though. The crossovers are another matter and BBE doesn't touch this as far as I know.

Barbarossa · Post by **Barbarossa** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 8:03 am

Checked the BBE-plugin.
Here http://img226.imageshack.us/img226/3931 ... ase9zz.jpg you can see it's frequency (red) and phase (green) graph (decibels left scale, degree right scale).
The settings for 'bottom' (bass) and 'process' (treble) are flat.

AD80 · Post by **AD80** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 8:11 am

What does it all mean?

G&L_player · Post by **G&L_player** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 9:04 am

Thanks to all who contributed to this thread!

I'm currently checking out the SpectraLive v2 plug-in, and wasn't sure how it rated amongst people who had a pretty good depth of understanding in the mastering arena. (I certainly don't claim to have much experience in this area myself.) So, I'm grateful for the informative posts pertaining to this topic.

And, with that, I think I'll pick me up one of those SpectraLive devices. Hopefully, I can make good use of it, in line with what was discussed about it's potential uses, etc...

Thanks, again!

Barbarossa · Post by **Barbarossa** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 12:10 pm

Here are some more graphs:
Whole frequency range, and zoomed in amplitude (1dB =max):
http://img228.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bbe1db6rw.png

Frequency response: process-slider moved to 0.5 units:
http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/9505 ... s052kz.png

Frequency response: process-slider like above, Bottom-slider moved to 0.5 units, too:
http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/4374 ... m058wd.png

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 12:25 pm

Frippertronix wrote:Thanks for the input. I said "non linear phase EQ's" (by that I meant to say EQ's other than the linear phase ones). I understand linear phase EQ's don't warp the phase.

I agree that it seems it would be hard to design a "generic" compensation function for time lag related high/low phase problems with all dynamic speakers. BBE claims to have found some kind of magic formula to cover most common speakers. I haven't looked into what kind of technical justification they give to support this, though. The crossovers are another matter and BBE doesn't touch this as far as I know.

whoops. yeh you did say nonlinear, but I somehow skipped it. sorry.

the technical justification, and the whole process for their generic compensation was explained on that BBE MP link I posted here. And it was marketing crap. Apparently the same process works for mp3 now! Yeah right.

You simply cannot design something like that to cover all speakers, or even mp3 at once. I mean there are even some speakers with zero phase problems nowadays.

And like I said earlier, a filter like that would be relatively easy to design.

Now we'll just wait for the next boom of something that BBE will try to fix with their process. First speakers, then mp3. Next what? I suspect cellphones.

Barbarossa · Post by **Barbarossa** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 1:05 pm

What do you want to say? Because there are some 0.000001% 0-phase speakers, the phase mangling of the SonicMaximizer is sh.t?
It's not really of interest, if there are active speakers with linear-phase crossovers. You know, music production is always a compromise, to get the best sound for most systems, it is intended to be played on.
Therefore we still have mono-compatibility.

So if the BBE-does something, that makes some mixes sound better on most of the systems, then it is justified.
Another question is, if such a tool should be used for mixing?

omo · Post by **omo** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 6:37 pm

Barbarossa wrote: So if the BBE-does something, that makes some mixes sound better on most of the systems, then it is justified.

it doesn't

l33troll · Post by **l33troll** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 9:51 pm

peejunk wrote:The whole BBE deal makes no sense. All speakers are different, they don't use same crossover designs, or components or driver models, so even if BBE can mend phases in a way that it sounds better on your speaker system (i.e. you can dial in a setting that sounds better to you) there is no guarantee that it will sound better on other systems, and that's why I don't see any use of it or any other phase-based enhancer in mastering.

Yes I understand they don't sell it as a mastering exciter but as a speaker-fix for live situations

Kingston · Post by **Kingston** » Sat Dec 17, 2005 9:59 pm

Barbarossa wrote:So if the BBE-does something, that makes some mixes sound better on most of the systems, then it is justified.
Another question is, if such a tool should be used for mixing?

If it did something good, yes, it would be justified, but that's not the case. What BBE does is marketing bullshitting.

But in mixing? well that's so highly subjective that I'm just going to say that YMMV. Personally I hate what it does.

*shrug*

BBE Sonic Maximizer: Still the best exciter?