Music Reproduction Systems - what are we trying to achieve?

from

Barcus Berry Electronics BBE Model 462 Sonic Maximizer (made | Reverb

"The 462 Sonic Maximizer restores natural brilliance and clarity to an
audio signal by the use of two integrated functions.

First, it adjusts
the phase relationships between the low, mid and high frequencies
through adding progressively longer delay times to lower frequencies, creating a kind of mirror curve to neutralize the effect of loudspeaker phase distortion.

Second, the Sonic Maximizer augments higher and lower frequencies as loudspeakers tend to be less efficient in their extreme treble and bass ranges.

The end result is a dynamic, program-driven restoration which reveals more of the natural texture and detail in the sound without causing fatigue that is often associated with exciter effects, psycho-acoustic processors or excessive use of equalizers."
 
Yeah, the five stars are clearer than the words he is using in his review. Other than giving bass boost, is shifts phase in two wide bands by a large margin which you can mix with the original signal. It is an effects box, pure and simple. It will change the sound, no doubt.
Yes it will counteract the change that the sound goes through when played through speakers versus straight from the instrument.

Electronics can do very fast, what we find tedius and slow.

Part (certain freq ranges) of the electronic music signal is fed back i recall to the input side of the processor and compared for phase variance with the original source. Its a feedback loop of sorts within defined frequency limits.

During playback though a speaker system the phase of the music gets altered along the range of frequencies when a music piece is played back after recording.

Its just a realisation that music changes from the original instrument noise and once that manner was determined(measured), the corrections could be made electronically.

Ita an analytical way of looking at music but anyone who says a processor changes music away from its original state has lost the fact that the mere playing of instruments through a speaker system .. does itself detract from the sounf made by the instrument itself.


My old 2001 sanyo crt television had bbe with low medium and high.

Not that a tv is hifi but the processor does bring clarity to a sometimes muddy audio.
 
Tone controls cause phase shift and have to be used in moderation or the excessive shift can screw up the sound. Phase is important in the crossover region of drivers and should be corrected there.
Yes a phase shift at crossover point can lead to dropouts in frequency response. . True.

But more generally even when using one driver per channel without a crossover there are still phase shifts across the frequency spectum that the speaker is trying to replicate faithfully. It is these undesired phase shifts that are part of the lost character of a live instrument sound versus the played back recording.
 
Yes but the manual is missing a schematic(flow chart) to show how it works.

Those links.. while useful, aren't looking at it from a functional perspective.

There is a good fliw chart by Alpine on how the bbe processor sends the various components of the music signal through the pipeline.

I have it in hardcopy but cannot see it online for free download
 
There is a schematic at the end of the manual, and together with the chip datasheet, the information is there to show exactly how it works to anyone who is interested.
I was thinking not so much of a schematic but a data flow diagram.. they're less on the viltages n components and more on what pathwaus the signal goes through and what is dine to it from a phase n frequency viewpoint...