BBE Sonic Maximizer: Still the best exciter?

[Kingston]

Then there's this plugin called Retroband by certain {cough} author, which will be released some time in the not too distant future. It perfectly suits this task...

Will it be payware?

God only knows...

anyway, did you take a look at that link I posted. It only makes me think worse of BBE. They simply bullshit the customer there! and a whole lot other crap!

See the mp3 charts they post of "a real mp3" with massive high frequency cut off? Well that doesn't actually happen with any decent encoder unless you tell it to filter the audio.

jesus. what a bunch of crap that "scientific document". Smoke and mirrors is the first thing that comes to mind.

[Frippertronix]

All of this mp3 processing really relates to their original (analog) product line?

That's all I'm interested in. I'm not really looking at any of their digital offerings.

[bduffy]

BTW, I emailed Ted Weber and I'll be fascinated by his response about the whole "world of BBE". There are few people on the planet who know traditional dynamic loudspeakers better, and he's usually good about answering questions.

I'll be curious to hear from some outside people on this stuff.

Until then, good night, all.

[Frippertronix]

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.

Or maybe I'm not clear on what you mean by that term.

It seems to me there are phase related problems in all these cases.

[bmanic]

The point Kingston is trying to make, at least how I see it, is that BBE sells more with "words" than anything. They have nice adds that want people to believe all kinds of weird stuff. In the end it's only your ear that counts and depending on your experience level, that might not be a very good start either.. I know, from experience too. (read: been there, done that)

Cheers!
bManic

[Kingston]

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 f**k 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.

[Barbarossa]

But what they describe is the ideal world. The reality is that doing a process like that using standard digital filters (or equal analog conterparts) is going to amount into one helluva phasey mess.

I don't find the BBE is fatigueing. When it's used, it's best used with most minimalistic settings on the treble (the bass i don't like at all).

Secondly, this argumentation about phasey mess is a theoretical one, not a musical one: the worlds most famous EQs also mangle the signal's phase.
IMO the only thing that counts is the result. If it is a phasey mess, it doesn't say anything about how it sounds to our ears. Our ears are not logical machines.

The BBE can IMO ofcourse be helpful, but it is only a rescue-ring for mistakes that were made earlier, or problems in the signal, that weren't taken out. And if you can solve the reason, why trade with the symptom?

Exciters are attractive. I used them for years, too. With them there's no need to learn to EQ trebles, just add some effect and it sounds better. Additionally many digital EQs have problems with good sounding treble and that makes it even harder to get the eq right. Using an exciter then makes things look more beautiful.
But sadly that's not the way, to get it really good sounding. You'll nevertheless, if the one enhanced track sounds right, have the impression, the whole mix is just that "little bit" away from the real good sound. But in reality the fundamentals of a good sound are not there: rightly eqed tracks (with adequate good eqs).
IMO it's not that complicated: if a healthy source-signal with full spectrum is available and it lacks shimmer, then the reason almost ever a spectral unbalance. Either a peak in the fundamentals, a peak in the treble or even a not good chosen hipass and loshelving.

IMO it's much better to go the old but good route: leave the effects off and make it sound really good just with eq and compression. And then one day you'll probably notice, you don't need an exciter anymore.
My 2 ct.

[Chopper]

i agree...
the reseon why you don't find those in pro studio( and even less in mastering) is the amount of high trebles it generates... those are impossible to cut properly on vinyl and the mastering engineer will have to high cut a significant part of the spectrum!
you basicly put a stick in the wheel if you overuse those so subtility is the key... and the fact that you cannot choose the bass freqencies is a pain...
but if you finished with a mix that you cannot go back to for some obscure reasons and there is not much happening in the upper range, then a light use of the bbe can do wonders...
but to be honest, mastering should be left to mastering engineers... if a track is that good and you intend to release it, it's worth th £150 or so for a proffesional cut... you will learn more in that hour than spending ages messing around on your own with a exiters, wich should be better used to bring back to life stuff you sampled from whatever source... that is actually something that the bbe is extremely good at.

[kritikon]

There's tube vitaliser by SPL, don't know if it's available anymore. That thing I wouldn't mind using on mixes. It was like aphex exciter on steroids with non-fatiquing sound.

See, that shows you're coming from personal taste, not any objective dislike of BBE. I personally found all Vitalisers extremely fatiguing. I really do not find the BBE process fatiguing in the least. There was a fad for Vitalisers on dance music right through the 90s, and I thoroughly disliked alot of it - maybe it was the overdoing of it, but I could never get any mix I did to sound pleasant with a Vitaliser. Talk about bloody fatiguing harmonics - you get far more on a Vitaliser than a BBE. Same with Aphex. Vitalisers and Aphexes, to me, were always characterised by nasty scratchy hats that made me wince. Lots of nasty stuff going on in the mids too...


So you don't like BBEs, fine. Doesn't mean they don't work though. In fact if you like their character, they DO work. But that's the crunch - character - you like it or you don't.

[kritikon]

Hmmm...I followed that link - can't say I'd ever heard of BBE MP. The only thing I know is that BBE made no mention of regenerating any harmonics on the original h/w. In fact they made much of NOT using harmonics. I've never seen any evidence of harmonic addition on analysers either. That's the precise reason I liked the sound of, and bought a unit years ago - exactly because it didn't add harmonics like some of the other (IMO) nasty enhancers.

So you're slagging off BBE MP. I can't argue that one, because I haven't even heard it in action. But it sounds like a completely different process to the unit I've got, or to the original plugin, which purported to be close to the h/w (and not too far off from the tests I did on it - not exact though).

Shall we at least argue about the same plugin/process please?

[deaf dunderkwac]

So you're slagging off BBE MP. I can't argue that one, because I haven't even heard it in action. But it sounds like a completely different process to the unit I've got, or to the original plugin, which purported to be close to the h/w (and not too far off from the tests I did on it - not exact though).

Shall we at least argue about the same plugin/process please?

This is MUCH more entertaining!
I have absolutely no experience with the BBE MP but I just love to see all the wacky reactions to the terminology.

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

[Kingston]

So you're slagging off BBE MP. I can't argue that one, because I haven't even heard it in action. But it sounds like a completely different process to the unit I've got, or to the original plugin, which purported to be close to the h/w (and not too far off from the tests I did on it - not exact though).

Shall we at least argue about the same plugin/process please?

eh?

it's just another deviation of the BBE process. ok so it doesn't have red knobs and blue background, but you saw the 'most important bit' I quoted? that's the exact same process the whole BBE enhancer thing is all about.

Oh and about personal taste, I thought we were clear that just about everything on KVR is about personal taste. I just tend to want to justify my decisions, hence all the pseudo-scientific babble.

I mean what can I do if my ears don't like BBE? take it at face value and keep using it because user X with big grammy hits likes it? No thanks, I think I'll rather find out exactly what it does and avoid anything remotely similar to it.

[deaf dunderkwac]

Guess I missed that part...
and as I mentioned before, the original effect was very effective with a certain manufacturer's loudspeakers at that time. But in a digital world I would hope the need for such a device would be purely for it's subjective taste.
And you are so right. All effects (and yes, eq is also an effect) are subject to personal taste.
The only point I was trying to make in this discussion is that one should never dis any effect, as all effects have their use. In my own work I've found using new effects to be very inspiring (or not), and my first impression of something is generally the most accurate.
But I would never *buy* something without knowing 'about' what it did, or had an opportunity to 'dink' with it.
That said I disregarded my own advice and bought the Spectralive. And it works as I expected it would.
And I use eq... and I find multi-band compressors to be esp. useful... and you can never have enuf 'verbs and delays... blah blah blah.

[peejunk]

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.

Enhancers that add harmonics usually use some form of nonlinearity and added harmonics are of same phase as the original partials they were created from. They might sound fatiguing (personally, I think it only makes sense to excite prior to EQ-in so that you can "cut out" unneeded bits from enhanced signal) but at least what they do can translate to end-user systems across the board.

[deaf dunderkwac]

The unit I used only worked really well with 'one' manufacturer's speaker cabinets, which led me to believe thats what the product was developed for..(i.e it didn't work as well on the "J" boxes).
It's an effect. It did the job... I haven't used it in almost 30 years.
It's a whole different world, now, and has been for at least 10 years.
If you twist my arm I would reveal which manufacturer it really worked well on.
That said, the latest offerings from that same manufacturer in no way resemble their 'older' (and much better) products.