REVIEW: BBE D82 Sonic Maximizer
When I first heard that BBE were to release their Sonic Maximizer (again) in plug-in format I got interested. I have never had the chance to try the Sonic Maximizer, neither in hardware or software form, and wanted to know what the fuzz was about.
What’s a sonic maximizer?
A little background info for you: The original hardware Sonic Maximizers (there are several) were made by BBE. Some years ago a software version was released. That was quite some time ago now and for some reason they decided to make a new version together with Nomad Factory. Interestingly both Nomad Factory and BBE have a lot to say about the Sonic Maximizer, but neither is really saying what it is, but more what it’s not. BBE claim it’s not an exciter or enhancer but something that:
[...] restructures the signal in such a way which allows speakers to more correctly and faithfully reproduce the signal.
(from the BBE website)
I wouldn’t know if that’s the case, but when products start using definitions like that I really don’t care anymore. Instead I listen to what it does to the signal and start thinking of it as something I can relate to. In the case of Sonic Maximizer I think of it as something for enhancing bass or treble. You can have a listen and decide for yourself.
Sloppy played Xpand! drums while turning the knobs on D82.
The talk around the Sonic Maximizer have been quite interesting. I’ve seen some people express opinions like “use EQ instead”, not that they think the Sonic Maximizer is a bad device, but because “we should use EQ”. I find this very odd, and it almost makes you believe we’re talking about a magic box which we’re not. I almost at times get the feeling that this is something high-end people “shouldn’t like” and that it’s something magazines about bedroom electronic musicians praise. This certainly isn’t my opinion, it’s a vibe I pick up here and there.
The sound
The first thing I do is slapping it on the master fader of a roughly mixed (OK, unmixed) track and start tweaking the knobs. I get the ‘pushing the record button’ impression, which isn’t really that odd since unmixed tracks tend to be a little ‘dull’ as opposed to ‘bright’. Yeah I know. I shouldn’t like this. I should tweak the individual tracks and do this and that instead. Screw you. I do whatever I want and at the moment this is what sounds good. But at the end of a full mix I really don’t see it sitting on the master fader.
So for some individual tracks then. I use it on vocals and it’s sort of a ‘blanket remover’, meaning it’s capable of adding some air to the vocals. I can’t help but wonder if it’s just a case of high-shelving filter so I load Digidesigns 1-band EQ 3 and give it a go. As it turned out similar results are most definitely achievable. I now come to the conclusion that the D82 is a sort of ‘hi-fi box’, meaning it boosts highs and lows which are obnoxiously boosted in todays records - people just don’t like mids anymore (which I cry blood over every day, but that’s a whole other topic).
I do some further testing with EQ vs D82 on drums, guitars, bass and other things that just happens to be in the sessions. I still get the same feeling, that this is basically an EQ set to ‘the right frequencies’ but it seems to color up a little more than EQ 3 does. If the color is because of harmonics or “restructuring the signal in such a way that it allows speakers to more correctly and faithfully reproduce the signal” is beyond my knowledge, and in my opinion rather irrelevant. After a lot of testing I think my favorite application for the moment is on submixes. I also see it as a tool which should be good for loops.
With a plug-in that’s only designed to do one thing it’s hard to point to negative sides, after all, if you like the sound then you like it, if you don’t, then you don’t. There’s one bad thing about it however - and this seriously pains me - D82 does not map to control surfaces. Please add control surface support! By the way, CPU usage is pretty much unnoticeable. I instantiated seven copies of it on my MacBook (which is beginning to show age) and didn’t see any difference in the CPU meter.
Conclusion
I’ve seen critique against the Sonic Maximizer over the years, mainly in the form of odd arguments that someone of my philosophy don’t understand. For instance that I shouldn’t use it because it’s some sort of cheating, or I should EQ instead. I have no idea what started these arguments but I don’t care for them. When I first instantiated D82 I thought of it as a specific EQ with a special character and limited to very few frequencies. My view has changed slightly and now I consider it more of a ‘hi-fi box’, however vague that definition might sound. Sometimes I like that, and sometimes I don’t want to think of the frequencies that I boost (not all EQs have sweepable bands). While I like to use it to make black metal guitars so sharp that they cut your ears, or as the only EQ for a drum bus, I think it might have use in the much prettier modern rock and pop genres as well. The big downer for me is the lack of support for control surfaces, if they fix this it might actually be one of the few plug-ins that gets to stay in my plug-in folder. And no, unfortunately I don’t know how it compared to the hardware…
My guess always was that this is sort off an EQ; first compressing highs and/or lows and then mixing that compressed signal in with the original. Just try the EQ on the vintage warmer (PSP) and start dialing in the processed sound to the unprocessed sound and you’ll get similar results as well. I don’t think this is just EQ. BUT…I use an aural exciter by aphex quit some times on recordings I haven’t made myself but need to mix (OK, also on some of my own recordings). It’s the first thing dialed in for me for dull vocal recordings. I know… EQ changes the color of the recording less, but I never got 1 complaining client….In about 15 years!
Is there a big difference with the earlier BBE plug in?
By J~P ~ July 4, 2008 kl 5:19 pm
Never struck me to compare it to PSP but I’ll have to try that later. There’s no wrong in using exciters, if it sounds good it is good. I don’t get why some things should be considered “wrong”.
Unfortunately I never tried the original plug-in.
By stiff ~ July 5, 2008 kl 3:08 am
I’ve got it lying around, but have to compare it to this on…which I don’t have.
By J~P ~ July 5, 2008 kl 6:55 am
Just out of curiosity, how did you like the old one?
By stiff ~ July 5, 2008 kl 9:19 am
It was “sort of OK”. The thing is that the Aphex sounded much better (I’m trying so hard not to say: it sounded more “analog”). However, this is a hardware unit. As a plug in the BBE Sound was OK. It did what it needed to do. It opened up the upper freq’s nicely and on some tracks it worked well on bass as well. Although this Lo Contour function can also muddy up the track with ease. When on the road (working on my powerbook) it was nice to have it with me as a tool.
Ofcourse the newer plug in is MUCH better as it has silver knobs instead of the black plastic old ones….:)
By J~P ~ July 5, 2008 kl 9:53 am
FWIW, have been a LONG fan/user of the BBE (over 20 years now). My application is with no boosts at all, I simple use it to try and keep things from stepping on each other (especially in submixes). The process itself is all about separating (delaying) frequency bands to ‘emulate’ how our ear responds to a real acoustic event as opposed to a flat fixed transducer moving back and forth (a speaker). With both knobs all the way down, there is NO EQ involved, the ‘blanket being removed’ are the frequencies not being masked by occurring simultaneously being heard again.
Anyway, a device that if used with care allows a transparency in the mix very different from any eq technique (whitch in many cases is makng up for this ‘masking’. Again, no NEW information is added when both knobs are down so it is a less ‘artificial’ means of getting your transients back.
I own several of the other boxes mentioned, the are entirely different in intention and implementation as they set out to ADD something that is no longer present (or never was) in the recording (which makes them great for restoration). Of course they can also be used to ‘cook’ up all manner of aural spice but again, this is different from the BBE.
For fun, try visually A/B’ing some files before and after with both knobs all the way down and note what happens to the transients. Because of this, a good tool for over compressed (flat) files.
IMHO (with a little science) of course!
By Loopy C ~ July 5, 2008 kl 10:51 pm
COOL! never knew how it actually worked. Just supposed it was compressing….
By J~P ~ July 6, 2008 kl 2:30 pm
I didn’t really do the explanation justice, I just want to make sure the basic process is represented and understood to how it’s different
“When we listen to live music, all of the highs and lows reach our ears in the same relationship to each other as when they were created by the instruments. If this same live music were to be recorded and played back through a loudspeaker system, the loudspeaker would introduce frequency-dependent phase shifting. The inductance of the speaker’s voice coil creates a stronger impedance as the signal’s frequency increases, resulting in a time delay. Consequently, frequency components with large negative phase shifts (high frequencies) arrive at the listener’s ear later than signals undergoing small phase shifts (low frequencies). The resultant signal is distorted in the time domain to the listener’s ear. Audio material containing sharp transients (e.g., percussive and plucked sounds such as drums, guitar, piano and harpsichord, etc.) suffers the most from this phenomenon, making it seem unfocused, or mushy.
In order to address these problems inherent in basic loudspeaker design, BBE Sound, Inc. has developed a circuit that has two primary functions. The first adjusts the phase relationships of the low, mid and high frequencies. Since a loudspeaker’s natural tendency is to add progressively longer delay times to higher frequencies, the BBE sound processing system adds progressively longer delay times to lower frequencies. This creates a kind of “mirror” curve to the time delay curve created by the speaker, neutralizing its phase distortion.”
The second function involves the actual eq make-up circuits which i won’t reproduce here.
By Loopy C ~ July 7, 2008 kl 6:50 am
Yeah, I just bought an aphex aural exciter which just adds a load of treble or bass too.
It’s sitting on the floor, under some junk.
By Chris ~ July 10, 2008 kl 9:36 am
In my days of being a ‘tape user’, the Aphex was quite helpful for tapes that had left all their high freq’s on the tapehead! Other than the occasional cassette ‘rescue’ I have not used it much (in the last ten years (I have both a rack unit and the TDM plug-in.)
These days, I am generally trying to compensate for fatiguing high end, not add it back in! (well except for all that wonderful surface noise, clicks, crackle, and wow I spend my money/time recreating
By Loopy C ~ July 11, 2008 kl 1:00 am
“These days, I am generally trying to compensate for fatiguing high end, not add it back in!”
So you’re going the opposite way of the world I suppose?
By stiff ~ July 11, 2008 kl 4:37 am
“So you’re going the opposite way of the world I suppose? ”
Always! The funny thing is, I have a VERY wide range of music tastes (a lifetime’s worth) so I am quite comfortable listening to ‘noise music’ (sometimes) because it is the intensity and extremes of frequencies/density that is the compositional focus. But that lifetime also has many mistakes of thinking concerning this frequency range that hopefully I am learning from (just in time to be losing those same frequencies naturally from age)
By Loopy C ~ July 13, 2008 kl 11:00 pm