Double Bass Four-letter word beginning with "B"

[PB+J]

I can understand having no dough and wanting to play, and Behringer's prices are crazy delicious. But besides the ethical thing, I think I hear a difference, and I didn't used to. The sansamp Bassdriver used to sound great to me, now all I hear is, for want of a better word, "graininess" and a huge mid-suck. Once I started using and Avalon U5, I got kind of spoiled. Everything else sounds bad. There's lots of gear as good as the U5 around, or different people want to hear different things, IMHO you can hear a quality difference. generally quality components, simple design, and a clean, uncluttered signal path make for good sound, and cramming as much into a little as possible doesn't

Now can anyone hear it on stage? That's another question

 

[FredH]

I image this B* stuff is knocked out in China by contract fabrication companies that specialize in high unit volume consumer electronics on the cheap. I bet if you take a look at the construction of the budget gear you will see light solder joints, skinny traces and minimal shielding. The problem is bass amps take a lot thermal and physical stress both in operation and in moving from place to place. Small wonder why cheap gear is or gets noisy soon after using. Amps need to be robust, attributes not usually associated with consumer electronics.
I’ve opened up GK’s and Trace Elliots and you can tell that a lot of oversight goes into their manufacturing. Big solder joints, tough circuit boards with huge ground planes with the parts unit fixed not just connected with wire.

 

[drurb]

Now can anyone hear it on stage? That's another question

Excellent point! When one considers signal-to-noise ratio and masking effects, I am confident that many of those differences will become inaudible. I didn't say all of them would and this is not a defense of B******* equipment or of bad equipment.

 

[drurb]

I image this B* stuff is knocked out in China by contract fabrication companies that specialize in high unit volume consumer electronics on the cheap. I bet if you take a look at the construction of the budget gear you will see light solder joints, skinny traces and minimal shielding. The problem is bass amps take a lot thermal and physical stress both in operation and in moving from place to place. Small wonder why cheap gear is or gets noisy soon after using. Amps need to be robust, attributes not usually associated with consumer electronics.
I’ve opened up GK’s and Trace Elliots and you can tell that a lot of oversight goes into their manufacturing. Big solder joints, tough circuit boards with huge ground planes with the parts unit fixed not just connected with wire.

Once again, this is NOT a defense of B******** in general or an endorsement of their products. Okay, the first bass combo amp I bought was a B******* BX-1200. I still think it was a fantastic product for the money. The tone-shaping circuitry allowed one to actually get a decent sound with UB. The thing was built like a tank and withstood substantial hauling around. It now sells for less than $200. Yes, it pales in comparson to my EA rig and while a quality/dollar ratio is certainly NOT the way I choose equipment, one would be hard pressed to argue that my EA rig is seven times better. Just a thought.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

Once again, this is NOT a defense of B******** in general or an endorsement of their products. Okay, the first bass combo amp I bought was a B******* BX-1200.

What amp was it "modeled" after?

 

[drurb]

What amp was it "modeled" after?

I was hoping you'd tell me!

 

[fdeck]

Just for the sake of tossing around ideas, and because I'm genuinely curious....

My parents always used to buy huge containers of generic cereals, the ones that look exactly the same as the original brand, taste almost as good but cost much less. Even the packaging was sometimes very similar. The only major difference was the name on the box.

Is there a reason why this is acceptable in the food industry but not in the electronics industry? If there are no patents involved, then it's really the same thing as the cereal, isn't it? I'm trying to get my head around the whole issue. At the moment, I see "B" as the generic brand... same product in essence, but cheaper and not quite as nice.

The question is whether it's the same product in essence. My comments here are not about B in particular, but are intended to be entirely general.

How confident are you that the generic brand is a true copy? Simply copying a design won't get you the cost reduction necessary to offer a noticeably lower price. You have to go further. In consumer electronics design, you continually review every component to find out if there is a cheaper substitute meeting your requirements. Everybody does this. The copy artist does it too, but without knowing what the actual design requirements are. They may cut corners where they hope that the consumer won't notice or care. They may choose to accept pieces, or even entire batches, of defective parts.

And if you have not gotten the warm fuzzies yet, the prime targets for cost reduction are electromechanical parts such as pots, switches, and connectors, which are critical to reliability. A cheap resistor saves you $0.00001, and doesn't really work any different, but have you ever looked at the cheapest of cheap connectors?

If they were devious, they could choose to copy the look and feel of a product from a popular brand, and let the rumors fly, taking advantage of the popular brand's reputation. I can hear the salesman saying: "Here, buy this cheap pedal, it is a copy of a B*** pedal." What wonderful free advertising.

My advice would be to assume that the generic brand is not a copy of a quality product, unless you can prove otherwise, which you can't. You have to make your decision based on the objective merits of the product, and not the merits of the product that it is purported to be a copy of.

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

I was hoping you'd tell me!

Looks an awful lot like Invalid Link Removed, although there are a few subtle differences.

 

[drurb]

Looks an awful lot like Invalid Link Removed, although there are a few subtle differences.

Quite interesting! Let's see what they share:

1) cabinet shape that can be tilted (kicked) back to double as a monitor

2) 120 watts

3) Special 12" aluminum driver

4) A control called "shape" to tailor response

5) Hartke has "Transient Attack" circuitry, B* has "Dynamizer" that seems to be analogous.

Now, it sure seems to me like the B* is a copy of the Hartke.

Here's what B* added to theirs:

1) Two channels rather than one

2) A "sub-harmonic" generator.

3) Included foot pedal to switch channels and "sub-harmonic" generator.

4) A fourth band of EQ.

5) A variety of useful inputs/outputs.


The Hartke sells for over $400, the B* for under $200. I have not had an opportunity to compare their operation and sound side-by-side but, as I mentioned earlier, the B* allowed me to get a quite decent sound with UB, I had no complaint about the electronics (and I am picky!), and it was built like a tank.

Ethics and matters of law completely aside, the B* packs one hell of a whallop for the $$$.

Disclaimer for third time: This is not a defense of B*'s business practices.

 

[mje]

I hate to introduce facts into an otherwise interesting debate but speaking from a little actual background in psychoacoustics, yes, it is entirely possible that experience allows one to learn to make auditory distinctions that a more naiive lister cannot.

This doesn't mean that the hi-fi tweeks aren't distributing taffy when they talk about "a slight chalkiness in the midrange"- they are- but rather that you can learn to attend to, and to discriminate between, differences that you would not necessarily attend to on casual listening.

At the same time, with age and experience comes presbycousis, which means those experienced 40-50 year old ears are missing at least an octave that 18 year old ears can easily hear.

 

[PB+J]

psychoacoustics is such an interesting field--wish I knew more about it!

I've definitely lost some hearing (47 yrs old) but I've gained some as well, of that makes any sense. I know better what works and how sounds fit together, and how to make that knowledge apply to bass. I hear defects in sound I didn't hear before

Anyone that doubts that quality matters to sound, try this--go to the "basstasters" website (Invalid Link Removed) and listen to any preamp sample you want. Then listen to the Millennia STT-1. True, this is not exactly scientific, but if you can't hear the difference then, imho, you've got some listening to do

Sure, the stt-1 should sound good for the dough it costs, but it's a question of scale--those costs have to be cut somewhere, and I doubt it's wages after a certain point.

 

[drurb]

I hate to introduce facts into an otherwise interesting debate but speaking from a little actual background in psychoacoustics, yes, it is entirely possible that experience allows one to learn to make auditory distinctions that a more naiive lister cannot.

This doesn't mean that the hi-fi tweeks aren't distributing taffy when they talk about "a slight chalkiness in the midrange"- they are- but rather that you can learn to attend to, and to discriminate between, differences that you would not necessarily attend to on casual listening.

At the same time, with age and experience comes presbycousis, which means those experienced 40-50 year old ears are missing at least an octave that 18 year old ears can easily hear.

Well, speaking from a decades-long career in psychoacoustics, I agree! I believe your point reinforces (if not restates) what I said in my earlier post.

Now, the problem with the subjective descriptions offered by the hi-fi golden ears is that they are just that-- subjective. They MAY, in fact, correspond to real distinctions stemming from their learned abilities to attend to stimulus dimensions that others do not. In other words, their claims could arise from the very same learned disciminations you cite! That's where objective testing comes in.

With regard to presbycusis, it may be more experiential than age-related. With regard to that missing octave, it depends whether the 18-year-olds you mention are male of female. Also, there is precious little energy in music in that last octave. Much of that is masked by the dominant energy at lower frequencies (called "upward spread").

 

[drurb]

psychoacoustics is such an interesting field--wish I knew more about it!

Keeps me busy-- when I'm not participating here!

Anyone that doubts that quality matters to sound, try this--go to the "basstasters" website (Invalid Link Removed) and listen to any preamp sample you want. Then listen to the Millennia STT-1. True, this is not exactly scientific, but if you can't hear the difference then, imho, you've got some listening to do

Whoa! I'd be very wary, indeed, of basing any evaluation on what you hear on any website like this. There are so many questions regarding the transcription of the waveforms of the various devices that it boggles the mind!

I tried the site. Sure I hear differences-- most, if not all of them related to frequency response. I am highly confident that by applying judicious spectral shaping to those samples, I could make one sound just like the other.

Again, nothing new under the sun. This goes back to the hi-fi world. I can't tell you how many times the golden-ears claimed that one or the other piece of equipment was sonically superior to another only to be embarrased by the fact that a difference could no longer be discriminated once the frequency-response was tailored. Suddenly the differences in price (separated by orders of magnitude) seemed unjustified. There is a long, long history to this.

Note in edit: Here's another one. There was (is) a standard "trick" in hi-fi "salons" in order to cause the customer to choose a given set of loudspeakers that are reasonably close in sonic character to another. The salesperson goes through all of what appears to be a very careful matching of sources and devices feeding the sets of loudspeakers. All he/she has to do is increase the intensity to the to-be-desired set by about 2 dB or so and that's the set many will prefer. The customer will assign all kinds of superior (subjective) characteristics to the more intense set and will virtually NEVER say, "Hey, that set is louder." True!

 

[PB+J]

well of course you could be right, and like I said, there's no scientific control at that site. I also notice that my ears are very variable--at home I sometimes pick up the bass and sound awful, then come back to it a few hours later and think I sound great. Same bass, same room, same player.

But I've had gear--swr gear, for example--where try as I might I just could not eq out what seemed like a "bad" sound. SWR gear always seemed to me to produce a wierd stirofoamy midrange, harsh and unpleasant. And I've had guitar amps that sounded great at first, but tended to produce a kind of set-jaw tense irritation after a while--maybe some really high frequency content? In my experience, gear that uses active eq to "model" various sounds, like the sansamp for example, ends up sounding bad, and the more extreme the eq is, the more tiring the sound is. I hear these things with some gear and not others

But yes, the imagination is a powerful tool. Wish I knew more about psychoacoustics--other than the kind of psychoacoustics that connects your ears to your wallet!

 

[drurb]

well of course you could be right, and like I said, there's no scientific control at that site. I also notice that my ears are very variable--at home I sometimes pick up the bass and sound awful, then come back to it a few hours later and think I sound great. Same bass, same room, same player.

But I've had gear--swr gear, for example--where try as I might I just could not eq out what seemed like a "bad" sound. SWR gear always seemed to me to produce a wierd stirofoamy midrange, harsh and unpleasant. And I've had guitar amps that sounded great at first, but tended to produce a kind of set-jaw tense irritation after a while--maybe some really high frequency content? In my experience, gear that uses active eq to "model" various sounds, like the sansamp for example, ends up sounding bad, and the more extreme the eq is, the more tiring the sound is. I hear these things with some gear and not others

But yes, the imagination is a powerful tool. Wish I knew more about psychoacoustics--other than the kind of psychoacoustics that connects your ears to your wallet!

Well, the kind of spectral shaping about which I was speaking would afford more control than what is usually provided for on consumer equipment. You raise a very valid practical concern. If the gear sounds bad to you AND appropriate and sufficient controls are not provided to tailor the sound to your liking, then it is virtually useless to you, regardless of price and overall quality. Psychoacoustics aside, if the gear doesn't do what YOU want it to do then you must listen for something else. This points to the importance of being able to "play with" and audition gear in conjunction with YOUR equipment before making a choice. It's the same sort of advice given to those purchasing loudspeakers for home use. One should try to bring them home and listen in the very environment in which they will be used before the sale is final.

Thanks for pulling this discussion back toward the real world.

 

[wphantom]

All he/she has to do is increase the intensity to the to-be-desired set by about 2 dB or so and that's the set many will prefer. The customer will assign all kinds of superior (subjective) characteristics to the more intense set and will virtually NEVER say, "Hey, that set is louder." True!

I'm quite surprised to find so many psychoacoustician here... I'm one more I think (even if I'm now drifting from pure psychophysic to the cognitive psychology side of hearing).

For this salesman trick, one may find an explanation in the equal-loudness curves (see for example here). It will predict that a change in overall intensity will change the spectral balance between lows, mids & highs...

I also own & use the b******** BX 1200 with my DB with a K&k bassmax pickup. I agree that it is very good for this so little price. As DRURB mentioned, the "shape" knob allows to find a quite good sound in every situation. I'm still dreaming of an AI coda (so many $$$$) but I think I will not buy an intermediate amp.

I've AB compared the b*** with a Fender Rumble 200 (or something like that, I don't remember) & for the DB I highly prefer my amp. It may be different for EB (but I don't touch these things)...

Sylvain Clement aka wphantom

 

[seamonkey]

Here's something I don't get.
Measurements. It would really help to choose equipment if there were some reference measurements. Yes sure they can be misunderstood or abused, but they're just not there at all for bass gear.

You can't possibly try a piece of gear in every situation you might expect to play it in. Trying it in a store is no good because it's not realistic, no band playing with you, and lots of drone cones and basses around....

I can see why B doesn't always publish measurements because the brands 7x it's price don't.

Maybe what ticks off the people that buy 7x products is that they have no real idea if on reference, they're gear is superior. It's all subjective.

What I don't get is why the 7x brands get away with not doing it. Just a step away is pro-sound which does do measurements at the 7x prices, and the lower priced brands typically publish something.

 

[drurb]

I'm quite surprised to find so many psychoacoustician here... I'm one more I think (even if I'm now drifting from pure psychophysic to the cognitive psychology side of hearing).

For this salesman trick, one may find an explanation in the equal-loudness curves (see for example here). It will predict that a change in overall intensity will change the spectral balance between lows, mids & highs...

Well, yes but it's not necessarily so. The Fletcher-Munson curves flatten at high levels. Your explanation is valid if the comparison is done at low-to-moderate levels. Typically, they don't do that it hi-fi stores! There is a "pure" and strong loudness component to the preference.

I also own & use the b******** BX 1200 with my DB with a K&k bassmax pickup. I agree that it is very good for this so little price. As DRURB mentioned, the "shape" knob allows to find a quite good sound in every situation. I'm still dreaming of an AI coda (so many $$$$) but I think I will not buy an intermediate amp.

I've AB compared the b*** with a Fender Rumble 200 (or something like that, I don't remember) & for the DB I highly prefer my amp. It may be different for EB (but I don't touch these things)...

Sylvain Clement aka wphantom

The BX-1200 works far better for DB than it has a right to work!

 

[Chris Fitzgerald]

The BX-1200 works far better for DB than it has a right to work!

If it's anything like the Hartke it seems to emulate, that would make sense. At the club I played at last night (where I play 35-40 nights a year), the Hartke kickback 12 is the house bass amp. I never cared much for it on its own, but last night I took the Focus and a VL108 (too little for the room), and ran the direct out into the kickback. When it was used for support only and with an Ai preamp, it sounded pretty damn good. I've also seen Jay Anderson play there with that as his main amp and sound great...but Jay would probably sound great playing a washtub through a transistor radio.

 

[mje]

I'm quite surprised to find so many psychoacoustician here... I'm one more I think (even if I'm now drifting from pure psychophysic to the cognitive psychology side of hearing)....

I started out in pure physiological psychology, doing research in a hearing lab, and drifted over into cognitive and psycholinguistics. Must be something about musicians, eh?