BBe sonic maximizer

[kevina]

Does anybody still use these things? Are they out of style? I'm thinking of using one for a general "sounds good" knob. You know, when I don't have a lot of time to deal with pretentios.. pretentias... Prima Donnas.

[tatteredstudios]

They are really good for a HOME setup, to listen to a CD....I dont think they are worth a crap for recording... That's just me

[The Late Great Libido]

I have a Sonic Stomp last in line on my pedalboard and I think it does wonders for my tone. It basically cleans up the sound - clearer highs, less mud in the lows. Its one of 3 pedals that I leave on all the time and one of those pedals you forget is on - but when you turn it off you miss it. I have no experience with the rack mounted units...

[kevina]

So you're saying that maximizers are not studio gear, and should be reserved for amatuer setups? I've never used one. Are they noisy? cheap circuitry?

[guitarmaniac30]

i have the rack version and the pedal version and i think that is a matter of tone perspective. for me i think that improves great my tone in recording levels and makes easily to put my guitar into the mix. some people may think that is the worst think that could happen to the natural guitar tone. but im not a purist, just trying to get the best tone with the gear that i have!

[Drummaman]

Our harmonica player has one between his mic and his amp and it made all the difference in his tone. VERY nice for live performance - and it's really helped us get a good initial tone in the studio.

We also drop the BBE plug-in on tracks that need to "pop" out of the mix a little more, but you really need to go easy - and use your ears.

I haven't used the outboard rack unit for years, but "back in the days of tape" we used it on lead vocals and lead guitars with good results - though again -
it usually took a subtle finger tip on the knobs to find the sweet spot.

They're worth having around.

MG

[sparqee]

I used one on a harp track recently. It was in a fairly dense modern orchestration mix and the harp just wasn't cutting. I added (what I consider to be) a surprising amount on the track insert and it gave me a very interesting, slightly synthetic sound that really cut yet still suited the mix. Mind you this wasn't a traditional orchestra piece but something more along the lines of what you hear from Cirque du Soleil. The track ended up sounding more like a synth harp patch but it worked for what I needed.

I don't really think the thing qualifies as a "sounds good knob" but it has it's place in my toolbox (if not in my daily use tool belt).

[Dime]

I own a couple of BBE Sonic maximizers but, I do not use them for recoding. If I am not mistaken a sonic max was not designed to use while recording.

The sonic max re-times the high and low frequencies so that they reach your ear at the appropriate time. Of course getting the sonic max dialed into where it should be is not always going to be easy. It's easy to go too far either direction... My goal is always to try to get performance playback to sound as close what it sounded like during mixdown in the sweet spot.

Edit: In my opinion if you play live, you need a sonic max.

If you're on a budget pick up a used 362 or a cheaper model. Unless you already play through the BEST gear and have an AWESOME sound man working his magic then I can all but promise you that you will wish you had spent the $50 that a used sonic max sells for long ago.

If you have Carnagie Hall concert quality sound then it may not benefit from a sonic max. But, if you're like 99.9999% of guys who do not have a $50,000 system.... a sonic max WILL impress the heck out of you.

[saiza]

I use it to sweeten up my samples from LP records.....if not over used it can help keep that **** analog sound

[brandondrury]

Does anybody still use these things? Are they out of style?

I'm glad you used "out of style" because the "fad" like implications of that post are indicitive of the true nature of these devices. Wait. Way too many big words in that sentence! Let me cuss once. Shit. Okay, fixed.

These stupid Sonic Maximizers take expensive sounding mics and turn them into $100 mics. So if you have a $10,000 Neumann U47 all you have to do is run it through a Sonic Maximizer. You'll instantly have the sound of a MXL microphone or whatever.

Brandon