BBE 882i Sonic Maximizer

[chunkylover73]

Hi, anyone here using a BBE 882i Sonic Maximizer in their PA system? I can pick one up pretty cheap but I'm just wondering if it's worth the money. I play in a rock cover band and by the weekend our PA system will consist of a couple of T39s and OTops. Thanks.

[Ron K]

Completely useless. Dont bother. Get a good DSP and EQ. You want big bottom? Have the drummer and bass player play big bottom sounds and then reinforce them with your PA. There is no substitute for doing it right! make sure your drummer can really tune his kit well.

With a good sounding kick comes a good sounding kick in the PA! I dont care if you Mic it with a 57!

[SeisTres]

Completely useless. Dont bother. Get a good DSP and EQ. You want big bottom? Have the drummer and bass player play big bottom sounds and then reinforce them with your PA. There is no substitute for doing it right! make sure your drummer can really tune his kit well.

With a good sounding kick comes a good sounding kick in the PA! I dont care if you Mic it with a 57!

I never did get how things are supposed to work. I just know they use psychoacoustic effects (whatever that means)

Can anyone enlighten me, please? All I know is that "cleans out the high end and tightens the low end".

[jcmbowman]

Completely useless. Dont bother. Get a good DSP and EQ. You want big bottom? Have the drummer and bass player play big bottom sounds and then reinforce them with your PA. There is no substitute for doing it right! make sure your drummer can really tune his kit well.

With a good sounding kick comes a good sounding kick in the PA! I dont care if you Mic it with a 57!

I never did get how things are supposed to work. I just know they use psychoacoustic effects (whatever that means)

Can anyone enlighten me, please? All I know is that "cleans out the high end and tightens the low end".

From playing around with a few of them in the past - they do a pretty decent job with conventional cabinets. It's basically a set of proprietary EQ/delay/phase/ and stereo imaging DSP settings that are optimized for the most common defects in traditional 2-way and 3-way Direct Radiator boxes. There's also some creation of sub-frequency harmonics, similar to the MaxBass Waves products, but not as good.

It then takes all these adjustments and tweaks and makes them available to the end-user with a single knob. There's very little that the BBE algorithms do that can't also be done with a good speaker processor unit and EQ setup (like the DCX/DEQ combo), except with the latter option you can adjust each of the parameters individually instead of relying on BBE's judgment of what they think you need.

If you have horn-loaded subs and line-array tops, it's a complete waste of money, since the BBE units compensate for inherent design flaws in direct radiator boxes, and those problems don't exist in horns/line arrays.

I used to love the things, but now with my BFM gear it's the epitome of turning up the "suck" knob.

[SeisTres]

lol, I think my behringer powered mixer has the "suck" feature "ON" by default.

Thanks, your explanation helped alot. Now I know they don't use magic

[Zack Brock]

I ran an 882i through my RTA once, made for a nice smiley face EQ on the pink noise I fed it.

I don't particularly like the sucked mids sound with hyped highs and hyped lows, so I got rid of it.

The sucked mids 'feature' could explain the comments people make where they say a BBE makes their speakers sound like a "blanket" has been taken off them.

[Ron K]

The problem for me with units like that is they give a false representation of how instruments/music are supposed to sound. Kinda like the sound guy who cant keep his pesky fingers off the Delay or Reverb and thinks everything has to sound like its coming out of the bathroom and your listening down the end of the hallway! Yeah it has a "neat" sort of sound but nothing you want to listen to all night long. The other thing is those units because of the generation of many harmonics and boosting them up with the fundamentals cause listening fatigue. Sometimes less is more. If your mixing Floyd in an arena then yeah have at the effects but even they know how to use them tastefully.

Effects I commonly use are:

Vocals-Very short slap back delay with an early reflections verb behind it.Just enough to fatten the vocal up but not make it sound effected!

Snare-Gated 800ms decay verb.Small stage type verb.

Sax-again short slap echo but only enough that if you take it out you notice its gone but with it in its barely noticeable.

Backing Vocals-Early reflection verb and more on the backing vocals then the lead Vocal.Enough to keep them behind the Lead and still audible.

I dont use any on Bass, or Guitar except maybe an Tap delay echo with minimum feedback on a lead if it sounds thin and it can use a bit of wrapping around the room.

Gates on Toms and Floor Toms and Kick.

Keys-detuner at about 5-10cents to help them separate form the guitars.

Nothing on cymbals.

No sonic whatever's ever!

[chunkylover73]

Thanks for the input. I'll hold out for a DBX driverack pa instead.

Stupid question: I'm looking at picking up a Peavey IPR 1600 power amp, is there any need for the DSP model if I go with the DBX driverack PA? I'm assuming it would be overkill and I'm better off saving my cash for more BFM cabs but just wondering what everyone else thinks. Thanks again.

[Zack Brock]

The way I see it, if you are buying a DriveRack, then there is no need for DSP on a Power Amp as the DriveRack can be your all-in-one multiband Graphic EQ, Parametric EQ, Crossover and Limiter. It even has some subharmonic synthesis and compression, neither of which I find too useful in the way I use it. I own two of them.

[SeisTres]

Thanks for the input. I'll hold out for a DBX driverack pa instead.

Stupid question: I'm looking at picking up a Peavey IPR 1600 power amp, is there any need for the DSP model if I go with the DBX driverack PA? I'm assuming it would be overkill and I'm better off saving my cash for more BFM cabs but just wondering what everyone else thinks. Thanks again.

The only thing that the dbx DRPA lacks is the brickwall limiter. It is more of a steep compressor, but not hard limiting. Despite this, it does everything I need it to do. And even pushing my t39 bp102, they've been fine wiht the limiter from the DRPA. So yes, I would recommend it. In the band we used to run a full rack of gear, and while it is a little bit more tweakable and easy to use(mind you, I dont use the wizard set up from the DRPA), I find the the DRPA more convenient.