Product Description - BBE Sonic Maximizer 382i User And Reference Manual

T
hank you for your purchase of the 382i, and for the trust that you've placed
in BBE. We are committed to bringing you the finest products, with useful
and unique features to serve your audio needs.
The BBE Sonic Maximizer is a two channel signal processor that will benefit any re-
cording or sound reproduction system. Whether you purchased the Sonic Maximizer
for your home studio, P.A., DJ system, or instrument rack, you will find the Sonic
Maximizer's rugged construction and careful electronic design a welcome addition
to your sonic arsenal.
The BBE Process — "What it Is"
Loudspeakers have difficulty working with the electronic signals supplied by an amplifier. These difficulties
cause such major phase and amplitude distortion that the sound reproduced by a speaker differs significantly
from the sound produced by the original source.
In the past, these problems proved unsolvable and were thus delegated to a position of secondary
importance in audio system design. However, phase and amplitude integrity is essential to accurate sound
reproduction. Research shows that the information which the listener translates into the recognizable
characteristics of a live performance are intimately tied into complex time and amplitude relationships
between the fundamental and harmonic components of a given musical note or sound. These relationships
define a sound's "sound".
When these complex relationships pass through a speaker, the proper order is lost. The higher frequencies
are delayed. A lower frequency may reach the listener's ear first or perhaps simultaneously with that of a
higher frequency. In some cases, the fundamental components may be so time-shifted that they reach the
listener's ear ahead of some or all of the harmonic components.
This change in the phase and amplitude relationship on the harmonic and fundamental frequencies is
technically called "envelope distortion." The listener perceives this loss of sound integrity in the reproduced
sound as "muddy" and "smeared." In the extreme, it can become difficult to tell the difference between
musical instruments, for example, an oboe and a clarinet.
BBE Sound, Inc. conducted extensive studies of numerous speaker systems over a ten year period. With
this knowledge, it became possible to identify the characteristics of an ideal speaker and to distill the
corrections necessary to return the fundamental and harmonic frequency structures to their correct order.
While there are differences among various speaker designs in the magnitude of their correction, the overall
pattern of correction needed is remarkably consistent.

PROdUCT dESCRIPTION

The BBE 382i is a dual channel, single rack space device for use in -10dBu unbalanced level applications.
There are two separate channels that share the same front panel Lo Contour control and Process
controls for ganged-stereo operation. A single function button switches the BBE process on or off in both
channels, which is useful for comparing the processed sound to the unprocessed sound. An LED next
to the function button glows green when the BBE process is on and red when the process is off. The Lo
Contour control is for adjusting the level of phase corrected low frequencies in the program material. The
Process control is for adjusting the level of phase corrected high frequencies in the program material.