BBE 382isw Sonic Maximizer [3/12] Product description

hank you for your purchase of the 382isw, 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 difculty working with the electronic signals supplied by an amplier. These difculties

cause such major phase and amplitude distortion that the sound reproduced by a speaker differs signicantly

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

dene 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 rst 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 difcult 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 382isw is a Sonic Maximizer and sub-woofer lter network combined into one unit. The single

rack space device is for use in -10dBu unbalanced level applications. There are two separate channels that

share the same front panel Lo Contour control and Process control 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.

The SUB section consists of a FREQUENCY control and a LEVEL control. The phase corrected low

frequency information from both channels is summed together and directed through an 18dB/octave lter