BBE Sound

I reaaaaly wanted to like this (knowing their hardware from back ... in the 80s ?!? - god - I'm old !).

Picked it up for super cheap in a sale but still I think it might have been too much :-(.

I tested it (Stomp Ware) a few years back and thought it was quite decent at that time so when it came on sale I didn't test again but just jumped on it. - Big mistake.

The thing is that this one might be just the single worst aged plugins that I know of (Stomp Ware which this is based on is over 10 years old I think).

Compared to todays standards the amp simulation is pretty much unusable. Plenty of free options out there that blow it out of the water.

Not realistic at all - not sound wise and especially lacking in the feel and feedback (to your playing) department.

The stomp boxes are all on the "nahh" side and the one that was my main reason for purchase - the Maximizer - doesn't hold up to either it's hardware counterpart (I only know the 19" version though) or vs other maximizer plugins. Pretty much everything I compared it with sounded better after minimum time of tweaking (Waves, PA just to name a few options).

Sorry, but to sum it up: Year 2010 called - it wants it's plugin back :-P.

Not worth paying for. I love BBE's Maximizer plugins, especially Harmonic Maximizer, but these pedals leave a lot to be desired. When compared to other similar virtual pedals by other developers, they rank pretty low in my book.

I only have use for the Sonic Maximizer so I'll not comment on the other plugins.

The Sonic Maximizer has been one of my go-to plugins since I first used it because it doesn't add to the sound spectrum like classic enhancers, it just delays lower frequencies a bit so you can make higher frequencies more audible, it really cleans and clears up sound.

I try it on every channel with knobs at zero. If it doesn't improve the sound, often happens with digital synths or sampled instruments with well-processed samples, I remove it, if it improves the sound I tweak the knobs. Low settings are for good recordings, high settings for trying to fix bad recordings. After that I put EQ in front of it. You need less EQ because the Sonic Maximizer solves problems you want to fix with EQ. I don't use it on the master because every channel needs its own setting, it takes anything to the front.

The new version just sounds better. Less brittle, more silk.

Just a heads up: version 3.00 has a bug, it starts in silence and adds a fade-in of less then half a second when it starts processing. Version 3.10 fixes that bug but the current uploader still installs 3.00, I tested the win32 and OS X installers, same problem.