does this improve the sound or color it.

Hi moose,

Under the audio features on my Cowon portable media player it has BBE+ and BBE and other tweaking options along with the custom equalizer. It does colour the sound and the improvement it makes is subjective. These features actually caused distortion on some songs with my headphones. Personally I do not use BBE or any of the "audio enhancement features". I also prefer my equalizer flat.

Would an eq help with some bad recordings or do you prefer to listen the way it was recorded? Because sometimes tone controls are not enough.

I do not use the tone controls, equilization or any of the auto setup features which Auddessy provides (all turned off) on my Axiom setup. With my headphone setup I have BBE+ turned off, equilizer set flat and any of the tone control features set to 0.

I have a couple of BBE Sonic maximizers I use in an instrument(guitar) amplifier application and it does add somewhat significant improvements to the sound. It is one of those things that kind of grows on you. I have on occasion, disconnected one and placed it in my A/V system to see what it would sound like and what, if any changes , it would make for the better.

In this application, because of the variables in surround sound choices PLUS the much wider frequency ranges, as opposed to a musical instrument amplifier, it is far less noticeable, especially since it is designed to correct phase relationships in less than adequate speakers. In quality speakers like Axiom's all it does is allow you to basically adjust a type of treble and bass response which is really not needed and you won't really hear much in the way of changes anyway unless you are just listening to two speakers in stereo.

Having said all that, however, one thing I am still contemplating is getting one for my center channel because after playing around with this several times, I found the maximizer will bring out the dialog somewhat better than usual without any volume change and without a disruption of the timbre between the left, center and right.

Hey, Casey01, I agree that you can become used to the bbe.I guess its up to the listner. Even when the bbe is set flat there still is a slight db change.It really seems to brighten the midrange. With the m80s Im really not interested. I agree a lower brand of speaker would benefit.I might use it for home theater, not sure what to do with it.