Pro Audio Asylum

Posted by Bill Fitzmaurice (M) on August 13, 2003 at 12:16:40

In Reply to: What does the BBE Sonic Maximizer do? posted by Steve Lee on August 13, 2003 at 10:55:19:

The primary function of basic BBE processing is to retard the arrival at the ear of low frequencies, which in turn makes high frequencies arrive relatively earlier. The theory is that this compensates for the typical time-delay encountered by high frequencies when the high and low frequency elements of the speaker system are not time aligned. Beyond a corrective action, if the high frequency content of a musical tone arrive at the ear prior to the low frequency content the brain will psychoacoustically perceive the sound as having more high frequency content, or 'brighter', without an actual increase in high frequency output. This may be what your semi-informed salesman was referring to, and is part of BB's 'pitch', but even a quadrupling of high frequency (5kHz and up)content adds little stress to either amps or speakers as there is very little power being used at those frequencies anyway.