BBE Sonic Stomp - Maximizer clarification...

[greenboy]

Post #23 from another recent thread, describing the BBE process as found in the rack units.

 

[Bassamatic]

I Can't believe that the old hype about the BBE maximiser is still going around! Please guys - the "official" description is just some made-up marketing hype that they knew few would understand.

Many years ago I was product manager for the company that made the ORIGINAL product whose effect BBE was attempting to duplicate. However as our process was Patented, they used other means. You can be SURE that our engineers carefully evaluated the Maximizer.

The BBE process is 2 SIMPLE things -
1. A fixed Bass Boost.
2. A dynamic treble expander. This expander boosts the highs in proportion to amount of highs that are there to begin with. The more highs, the more boost. It similar to the old trick of using a dbx or Dolby noise reduction unit for playback only to increase brightness, as that is how they work.

The combination of bass and treble boost can add more than 16 dB of level to your signal, so be very careful with it.

All this business about time alignment, etc. is just fun with words. ALL EQ affects the time alignment of the sound - it ALL affects or rotates the phase, etc. That is what happens in ALL analog EQs - it is a result of using L and C components in the circuit.

There is NOTHING that can "delay some frequencies so that they can line up"!!! This is impossible and even if it COULD be done it would vary for each room and each amp/speaker setup to the next!

Let's call a spade a spade - It is a variable EQUALIZER, folks!

I am not saying that it does not have some effect that some people might like, but PLEASE, let's air out the hype.

 

[the_ruckus]

I used to run a sonic stomp, however, it never made a notifiable difference in my tone. I ran it dead last in the chain and even tried it through the FX loop and never could tell a difference. I thought the pedal was bad, but it did WONDERS for my guitar player's randall head.

 

[dagrev]

To resurrect a really old thread....

I recently bought a used Sonic Stomp pedal version and used it Sunday (through Ampeg V-4BH, Ampeg Heritage 410) in a live setting. I had it in between the preamp and power amp to maximize the amount of signal it processes. I used a '64 Thunderbird IV thinking that if it can make that perfect bass sound even a tad it can make almost anything sound better. I liked it! It wasn't a drastic difference, but a noticeable one to me. I didn't have much time to fool with it but the little I did produced a difference.

Slightly tighter, bigger, thicker, fat tone. Bigger without boomier might be what I got out of it--which is fine with me. I didn't notice a scooped sound, but cold see how you could get that. (Someone wanting tighter and brighter could easily get that with appropriate adjustments.) I don't really know how to explain it, but it does do something--and on a bass and rig I'm COMPLETELY happy with. I have the Lo Contour at 11:00 and Process about the same. More tinkering with another bass may prove more interesting or disappointing, but I happy with used pedal. It does something, and I like the something. Can't explain it but can hear it, and I was somewhat skeptical about it doing much useful. I just thought it might make the sound different not really better. So far so good. I can't see getting rid of it.

 

[Miles_ONeal]

Has nothing to do with the speed of the frequencies. BBE are saying that by pushing the high freq's out first the brain has a better handle on the perception of the sound.

This. Low frequencies take longer for the ear/brain to hear enough of to process. And someone said BBE references speakers distorting the space/time continuum of audio as well.

 

[bassbrad]

This subject of Aural Exciters or enhancers gets bandied about pretty regularly, some folks can hear the effect of the processing and to others it seems to be a lot of hype for what they simplify as a 2 band EQ. IME while it isn't all snake oil using it on bass instruments is a bit of a hit or miss. The effect was intended to be used on 1 part of a whole mix of vox instruments to pop out a vocal, solo or other part without needing to use simple volume gain that often threw off a working mix.

Aphex , White Instruments and BBE sound used different technologies and my favorite fact is the original Aphex units units were actually not functioning as intended but had a certain "exciting" effect leading to much speculation.

 

[Miles_ONeal]

Normally, I would be posting something antithetical in this thread. This time, however, I'm at least going to give Sundogue some "props" for a well written & thought out thread on what the Sonic Maximizer is supposed to be doing.

While these types of "effects" have proven to be of little use or value to me; and that I find the claim of trying to "align" waveforms over an undetermined listening distance to be a little suspect - I still cannot fault anyone for having found the BBE processing useful for their own purposes! To each their own signal path!!!

A good thread, Sundogue.

I don't think it's a question of distance, just the time to process the wavelength. Until you have processed a full cycle of a particular frequency, how do you know the frequency? But once you've processed that cycle, you can know the frequency.[1] It takes for lower frequencies to be identified or "heard", which is effectively the "slower" referenced in the thesis.

[1] Maybe it's a half cycle. The concept is the same.

 

[crguti]

This is the most common schematics of the BBE Sonic Maximizer. I just see a State Variable Filter, where the HPF pass through a VCA compressor that is activated based of a peak detector, then the HLF, BPF and LPF are summed together. The HPF and LPF can be adjusted with the Process and LO Contour pots.
There is no magic here.