Customer Reviews

BBE 362 Sonic Maximizer

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All I have to say is that this item definitely works as advertised. The description has plenty of tech talk that involves lots of physics, which I understand as a physicist and an electrical engineer, and that's great, but there's a more important question to ask here - what do you hear as a result? I'll summarize my experiences with this item:

It's an EQ, but it's not. There are two knobs on this device, "Lo Contour" and "Process." When you boost Lo Contour, you hear more bass frequencies. When you boost Process, you hear more of the higher frequencies. Sounds like an EQ right? But when you boost the lows on an EQ, all the higher frequencies sound muddier, or even get completely blocked out! And then when you boost the higher frequencies, all of a sudden the low frequencies get quieter. Then you're fighting a never ending battle to find the perfect balance. That's not what happens with this product. Once you've boosted Lo Contour and you're hearing your bass frequencies, you can turn the knob for process and all of a sudden, the higher frequencies punch through your speakers without blocking the bass frequencies! For instance, when I listen to "Sweet Child O Mine," Not only can I can hear and feel the low rumble of Duff McKagan's bass, I can also hear, with more clarity than ever, the sound of his pick striking the strings.

I have these hooked into my Alesis M1Active 520s and the music sounds much more rich. I always have to have this on when I'm listening to music. This has become an integral part of my stereo, and I will continue using products like these if I ever need to make more speakers sound better. You may still need a proper EQ depending on your set-up to make sure your speakers are outputting the right frequencies, but these will ALWAYS make your equipment sound better. 100% recommended.

I own it. I've used this model on electric and acoustic guitars, and on vocals. Taking all the tech-speak out of it, the only way to really describe what this does is to say that it adds "sparkle" to the sound. This doesn't replace proper EQ - you still need to roll off some mids and take the boom out of the low end on an acoustic, for example - but it does help instruments and vocals cut through. It restores clarity to vocals and helps guitars "ring" with good harmonics without adding any other off-flavors (like chorusing or flanging). I currently use this in an effects loop on a Mackie mixing board to add depth and sparkle to the main mix in live settings (five-piece rock band, instruments miced or line in). I also use it for live solo acoustic work on both the guitar and vocals, and in recordings (direct in and mixdown). It is the best $100 you'll ever drop on a piece of musical equipment.

I've been using one of these in an equipment rack at home that I use to convert old analog source material: open-reel, 8 track, cassette and records. For those of you under 30, yes, that's what we called vinyl back in the days before consumer digital audio was available: there were two main categories - LPs: 12" 33-1/3 RPM, and singles: 7" 45 RPM. Plus, our parents even had old 10" 78 RPM shellac records in MONO (that's MONAURAL, not MONONUCLEOSIS)!

I use this setup to archive and preserve mostly rare, hard to find, or out of print material on record or tape before the medium they're on degenerates to the point where the signal can no longer be preserved with any quality.

Anyway, I use this along with a compressor/noisegate set as a limiter, and a graphic EQ set to restore lost frequencies and boost amplitude to max before distortion, to dub first to MD (minidisc). After the minidisc dub, I create track breaks, and the opticially dub to CD, after which I load the CD into my computer and rip the tracks to 192K MP3s.

It's amazing the quality I can obtain from an old well-preserved cassette or record with this in the signal chain. It really does make old songs sound new again. I have dubbed several recordings from well-preserved cassettes and albums, that other than the presence of slight surface/media noise, actually sound better than some of the hasty CD re-releases of old records that have found their way to market.

This is nice that the adjustments you make are for both channels. Make set up much faster.