BACCH4Mac "Absolute Sounds Product of the Year 2024"

[tmtomh]

But I never said that. I said artists’ intentions and what the artists’ heard are unobtainium ….as a meaningful and useful reference. Big difference


The recordings themselves sure. We have them. They can serve as an objective reference for the audio signal. After that it gets dicey


The recordings are objective. The insight not so much. I will give you one example.

Years ago a friend of mine did a recording for Deutsche Grammaphone of a couple piano concertos down in Venezuela. The piano was in bad shape and sounded like crap. So much so that the whole project was nearly scrapped. The concert hall sounded like shit. The audiences were loud and disruptive and the woodwinds didn’t seem to grasp the idea of moderation. Brilliant performances that just sounded like crap in person.

The recording engineer was and still is a hard core audiophile. He did some extensive multimiking. The recording was monitored over head phones. I couldn’t tell you what was used to monitor the mix but I can tell you that the conductor used his “high end” foo foo system that would be scorned by most ASR members. My friend used her iPhone and ear buds to judge the final mix. They had notes and eventually signed off on the recording.

When I played it he CD it sounded great and it sounded nothing like the original live sound. Totally different in character. Piano sounded amazing. Orchestra sounded balance. Not a hint of the crap hall signature sound.

How would anyone, by listening to this CD gain that insight or any other insight into this recording?

Artists’ intentions? Do tell?

So when someone who wasn’t there plays this same recording using the BACCH and the sound stage goes from typical two channel stereo miniature with all the typical trappings to sounding amazingly life like in scale and specificity should they question the results based on insight that…that…..that we can find in the recording without knowing the back story?

The idea of “fidelity” is simple. Real life is messy and complicated. Of the tens of thousands of stereo recordings made since the mid 50s we mostly don’t even know what we don’t know.

Yes, we have the recordings. But we never have the whole story behind them and rarely much at all of their back stories. Each was a part of a unique journey



What matters is a personal choice. Objective facts are not. The recordings are objective. The artist’s’ intentions are unobtainium. Our ability to look at recordings and decipher their journeys based on the recordings themselves is vague and highly speculative.

What matters to each audiophile in their approach to their hobby is up to them.

But take my one example. If ASR members think they are getting any closer to what was heard in the concert hall or on the headphones by adhering to the Dr. Toole approach to stereo playback as opposed to a BACCH based system they are operating from somewhere in Wonderland.

Appreciate your response. Re artist's intention vs the recording, understood, and it appears we agree on that aspect.

The one issue I would take with this most recent comment of yours is the story of the Venezuelan orchestra. The recording, for the purposes of talking about the fidelity of an audio playback system, is the end product the consumer/listener gets. So in that example the CD is the recording. I'm not trying to force a definition of what a "recording" is; I'm merely trying to clarify what I - and I would most folks here - mean when they talk about an audio system enabling high fidelity playback of a recording.

 

[MattHooper]

I do think there is a case that can be made for chasing accuracy to the signal and, for lack of better phrase, artist's intent.

I mean, some of this is going to be obvious, but....

The more coloration you place on the signal, the more you will homogenize (at least some aspects) of the sound among different recordings. The more accurate your reproduction of the signal, the more different recordings should sound...different. You would be maximally reproducing the differences in recordings. And for that same reason, you are maximizing the differences in artistic choices to be heard in those recordings. The exact reverb effect chosen for the guitar or vocal will be more distinct from other recordings and albums. The exact amount or type of compression on the drums, or guitar will be more obvious. The exact differences in amplitude, placement etc of instruments. The exact differences in timbres, of why they chose "this" acoustic guitar over "that" one etc. You may not be hearing the track exactly as they heard it on their studio speakers. But you WILL be hearing more about the artistic choices they were making throughout the track, and that certainly helps you understand what they were getting at.

I'll never forget hearing a more accurate presentation than I was used to. It was a whole bunch of music (including songs I knew and loved) through the Quad ESL 63s. They aren't the most accurate speaker in the world, but they were distinctly more accurate in various ways than I had been used to. I had the sense of "really" hearing exactly the characteristic of each recording, changing from track to track, in a way I didn't remember noting before.

I also had a similar startling impression around the same time from some Dunlavy and Thiel speakers. There was this distinct feeling of "THAT is how this recording really is. Each and every one!" It was fascinating and intoxicating. (I ended up with Quad 63s after that, Thiel as well, and Waveform for a while which also had a similar neutral presentation).

This paean to accuracy may seem odd coming from the ASR member (me) who so often seems to be defending the joy of coloration (vinyl, tube amps, some verboten speaker designs). But personally I'm still concerned with accuracy to quite a degree, because it tends to be associated with lower distortion, which tends to sound better, and I adore the really specific differences between recordings and wouldn't want a system so colored it homogenized too much of those distinctions away.

 

[Blockader]

The more coloration you place on the signal, the more you will homogenize (at least some aspects) of the sound among different recordings. The more accurate your reproduction of the signal, the more different recordings should sound...different.

Both subjectively and mathematically, your point does not make sense.

Consider the scenario where an audio engineer fails to apply correction to his speakers, and his room has a 150hz dip. This means his mixes are overcompensated with too much 150Hz energy to make up for the lack in his room's response. His mixes are bad. His mids sound grainy when played with speakers like Neumann etc because of this excess 150hz energy.
Speakers with a fitting 150hz dip can make this recording sound better than before but another bad recording with a 150hz peak will sound even worse with these *colored* speakers.

Let me simplify my point for you even further:

(a bad recording with too much 150hz energy) + (speakers with a 150hz dip) = good~
(a bad recording with too little 150hz energy) + (speakers with a 150hz dip) = significantly worse than before.

how can 150hz coloration of this imaginary speaker can make all recordings homogenize? I fail to see that.

Colored speakers might enhance certain types of sounds, much like how adding more pepper can enhance a steak. However, adding pepper to a dessert is almost always a mistake. Similarly, adding the same "spice" to every dish cannot make each one taste better or more "homogenized."

On another note, an accurate speaker is not one that plays back a recording exactly as the artist intended. While this is a common assumption, it's practically impossible in sound reproduction, especially with two-channel stereo. So, what defines accurate speakers? Accurate speakers excel in delivering a sense of accuracy. This is achieved when reflections share a similar tonality with the direct sound, when the speakers do not have resonances that mask details around them, and when there is no significant distortion to cloud or muddy the presentation, particularly intermodulation distortion... and so on. In other words, accurate speakers(I prefer the use of term ''well designed) are psychoacoustically pleasing.

 

[MattHooper]

Both subjectively and mathematically, your point does not make sense.

How can that be? The statement is almost axiomatic. Look at it again:

The more coloration you place on the signal, the more you will homogenize (at least some aspects) of the sound among different recordings.

Let's try to make this principle as clear as possible: I do sound design for film and tv. Let's say I have 10 different recordings of a door closing. Each has a bit of the original acoustics in which it was recorded, so just a little bit of distinct room reverb from each recording allowing some distinction of the acoustics.

Now I add a coloration: I put it through my own reverb plug in. I crank up the "big hall" reverb. Now...the subtle distinctions are swamped and they all sound like they were recorded in the same big hall. Dial down the level of hall reverb in the plug in, you'll hear more of the original acoustic, dial it back up further - the MORE coloration I'm adding - the more homogenized the sound toward that coloration.

Is there some magic dividing line for why this same principle - the MORE coloration you ADD the more you will homogonize the recordings (reduce the influence of the original sound - would not apply anywhere in sound reproduction, speakers included?

Clearly it's a correct principle to state. When my son uses the car he plays his RAP songs and he cranks the highs and lows in to an exaggerated "smile" EQ. When he's left that EQ on and I play my stuff it sounds ridiculous: every track has booming bass and piercing highs, homogenized in that manner. As I say, the MORE coloration you add to the signal, the more you homogenize away some of the different characteristics of each recording.

Now, personally I don't think it's a big deal to depart somewhat from neutral - most of the recording qualities will come through. But the PRINCIPLE I'm speaking to is legitimate.

On another note, an accurate speaker is not one that plays back a recording exactly as the artist intended.

I was careful in the point I was making. As I said, while on a very accurate system you may not hear it exactly as they did on their speakers, in maximising the differences between recordings it does give you somewhat more distinct information about the choices made in the recording, of which I gave examples. And in that way you get insight in to those choices.

*(I do have a bit of a caveat but I don't think it's directly relevant to the point I'm trying to make).

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

Appreciate your response. Re artist's intention vs the recording, understood, and it appears we agree on that aspect.

The one issue I would take with this most recent comment of yours is the story of the Venezuelan orchestra. The recording, for the purposes of talking about the fidelity of an audio playback system, is the end product the consumer/listener gets. So in that example the CD is the recording. I'm not trying to force a definition of what a "recording" is; I'm merely trying to clarify what I - and I would most folks here - mean when they talk about an audio system enabling high fidelity playback of a recording.

I agree with that. Which in the case of this recording was quite different than the original live acoustic experience. And that the artists’ intent and what the artists heard is messy and can’t be discerned by the recording itself.

 

[dshreter]

This whole discussion of artist’s or audio engineer’s intent seems besides the point. Except for audio engineers, I don’t get the impression that many even try to setup their stereo and listening environment to be similar to a mixing and mastering environment.

Home listening is setup for enjoyment, and a mastering environment is setup for analysis.

Further, even if it were the case that you wanted to simulate the mastering environment and escape the circle of confusion, there is a good argument that reducing channel cross-talk in a reflective home environment does bring one closer to the experience of a studio with near or mid field speakers and loads of broadband absorption.

 

[STC]

We all have biases. But Edgar never claimed nor implied he had discovered binaural sound or crosstalk cancellation. What he did was fix the previous problems with crosstalk cancelation systems.

Hat exactly he fixed?

 

[goat76]

The recordings are objective. The insight not so much. I will give you one example.

Years ago a friend of mine did a recording for Deutsche Grammaphone of a couple piano concertos down in Venezuela. The piano was in bad shape and sounded like crap. So much so that the whole project was nearly scrapped. The concert hall sounded like shit. The audiences were loud and disruptive and the woodwinds didn’t seem to grasp the idea of moderation. Brilliant performances that just sounded like crap in person.

Yes, that's when close miking the performance, extensive use of EQ during the mixing, and applying suitable reverb can save the performance and the final audio production.

The recording engineer was and still is a hard core audiophile. He did some extensive multimiking. The recording was monitored over head phones. I couldn’t tell you what was used to monitor the mix but I can tell you that the conductor used his “high end” foo foo system that would be scorned by most ASR members. My friend used her iPhone and ear buds to judge the final mix. They had notes and eventually signed off on the recording.

I doubt the final mix was finalized immediately if everything sounded as awful as you described. If the mixing engineer had to mix all the individual uptakes, EQ the instruments, find suitable reverbs to get a good-sounding hall, and avoid the loud and disruptive audience.

In some/many cases, the artist will never hear the recording until the audio production is finalized. In this particular case with the type of music in your example, we can be pretty certain that the involved musician's intentions and hope in the end were that the final audio production was going to sound life-like and natural, and hopefully way better than how it sounded in that awful concert hall.

So the only important thing in this particular case was: Was the engineer using a monitor system with crosstalk cancelation when he finalized the mix or not? If not, we can be certain that the final mix wouldn't sound more accurate than what he heard while (most likely) finalizing the mix without crosstalk cancelation. You see, the only thing I'm arguing against is your previous comment that hearing recordings with BACCH will always be a more accurate way of hearing the audio production, but as most audio production is in most cases finalized without any crosstalk cancelation, the more accurate way to hear the finalized mix is in a sound system without crosstalk cancelation. Whether you, me, or even the mixing engineer would subjectively prefer hearing the mix with BACCH is not the point, I'm only arguing against your previous comments that using BACCH will give us a more accurate representation of how the mix is meant to be heard.

When I played it he CD it sounded great and it sounded nothing like the original live sound. Totally different in character. Piano sounded amazing. Orchestra sounded balance. Not a hint of the crap hall signature sound.

So you were there in the concert hall when the recording took place?

How would anyone, by listening to this CD gain that insight or any other insight into this recording?

It would be nice to hear the recording, can you please provide a link to it?

Artists’ intentions? Do tell?

Normally, I think we can be pretty certain that the artist's intentions for a recording like the one in your example are natural and life-like. If using BACCH in your system takes it all closer to what you subjectively think sounds more natural and life-like, it's all good.

So when someone who wasn’t there plays this same recording using the BACCH and the sound stage goes from typical two channel stereo miniature with all the typical trappings to sounding amazingly life like in scale and specificity should they question the results based on insight that…that…..that we can find in the recording without knowing the back story?

I hope you do realize that you are now talking about what people may or may not prefer subjectively, I have no problem with that as my view is that everyone should always go with their preference no matter if it's closer or further away from an accurate reproduction. It seems to me that you have shifted your focus from your previous comments that using BACCH will be a more "accurate" reproduction, and the focus is now aimed at what you prefer subjectively. Is that right? If so, we can stop this argument.

The idea of “fidelity” is simple. Real life is messy and complicated. Of the tens of thousands of stereo recordings made since the mid 50s we mostly don’t even know what we don’t know.

Yes, we have the recordings. But we never have the whole story behind them and rarely much at all of their back stories. Each was a part of a unique journey

Yes, every recording is unique and most of the decisions leading the the finalized sound are made by the mixing engineer. Most things in mixing are delicate matters and the engineer must be able to hear what he's working on to make all the right decisions. If he didn't hear the mix with crosstalk cancelation he had no chance to make mixing decisions according to that, so it far fetched to say that the listeners would somehow hear a more accurate reproduction than the mixing engineer himself heard if they used BACCH in their systems (but they may subjectively prefer it just like you do).

 

[onion]

Objectively speaking, people prefer the instruments/ voices that constitute a piece of music to emanate from discrete points in 3d space, rather than a 2d plane bound by two speakers. The former is less fatiguing than the latter. This is true irrespective of the artist's or sound engineer's intent. That is why most people with BACCH, especially those using head-tracking with in-ear mics, prefer BACCH over no BACCH for nearly all the songs that they listen to.

I have tried multi-channel vs BACCH and strongly prefer BACCH for 3d sound-rendering.

 

[Blockader]

How can that be? The statement is almost axiomatic. Look at it again:

The more coloration you place on the signal, the more you will homogenize (at least some aspects) of the sound among different recordings.

Let's try to make this principle as clear as possible: I do sound design for film and tv. Let's say I have 10 different recordings of a door closing. Each has a bit of the original acoustics in which it was recorded, so just a little bit of distinct room reverb from each recording allowing some distinction of the acoustics.

Now I add a coloration: I put it through my own reverb plug in. I crank up the "big hall" reverb. Now...the subtle distinctions are swamped and they all sound like they were recorded in the same big hall. Dial down the level of hall reverb in the plug in, you'll hear more of the original acoustic, dial it back up further - the MORE coloration I'm adding - the more homogenized the sound toward that coloration.

Is there some magic dividing line for why this same principle - the MORE coloration you ADD the more you will homogonize the recordings (reduce the influence of the original sound - would not apply anywhere in sound reproduction, speakers included?

Clearly it's a correct principle to state. When my son uses the car he plays his RAP songs and he cranks the highs and lows in to an exaggerated "smile" EQ. When he's left that EQ on and I play my stuff it sounds ridiculous: every track has booming bass and piercing highs, homogenized in that manner. As I say, the MORE coloration you add to the signal, the more you homogenize away some of the different characteristics of each recording.

Now, personally I don't think it's a big deal to depart somewhat from neutral - most of the recording qualities will come through. But the PRINCIPLE I'm speaking to is legitimate.



I was careful in the point I was making. As I said, while on a very accurate system you may not hear it exactly as they did on their speakers, in maximising the differences between recordings it does give you somewhat more distinct information about the choices made in the recording, of which I gave examples. And in that way you get insight in to those choices.

*(I do have a bit of a caveat but I don't think it's directly relevant to the point I'm trying to make).

Using the same analogy as before, adding pepper in large quantities to both dessert and steak will overwhelm them with the taste of pepper, yes. However, I wouldn't call it "coloration"; it's more akin to overpainting an already existing painting in red until nothing but red is visible.

If the coloration is so intense that it dominates and overshadows the music's spectrum, then yes, what you've described can occur.

Then perhaps we can conclude that the relationship between coloration on the X-axis and homogenization on the Y-axis is not linear. Up to a certain point, coloration can either improve or worsen the sound. Beyond that threshold, the intensity of coloration becomes so overpowering that it causes everything to sound similar, dictated largely by its own characteristics.

99.9% of the amps have no such coloration by the way. Even 3% distortion isn't enough to color the sound that much. 7%? maybe. As for speakers, if they are THAT colored, they either sound like handheld radio, car audio or cheap PA speakers.

 

[dshreter]

So the only important thing in this particular case was: Was the engineer using a monitor system with crosstalk cancelation when he finalized the mix or not? If not, we can be certain that the final mix wouldn't sound more accurate than what he heard while (most likely) finalizing the mix without crosstalk cancelation.

That could be true but is not necessarily true. It depends on what the comparison points are and how you define accuracy.

To take an example:

A: An untreated highly reflective domestic listening environment without BACCH, vs highly treated mixing environment with near field speakers.

B: An untreated highly reflective domestic listening environment with BACCH, vs highly treated mixing environment with near field speakers.

Which would sound more accurate, A or B?

 

[goat76]

That could be true but is not necessarily true. It depends on what the comparison points are and how you define accuracy.

To take an example:

A: An untreated highly reflective domestic listening environment without BACCH, vs highly treated mixing environment with near field speakers.

B: An untreated highly reflective domestic listening environment with BACCH, vs highly treated mixing environment with near field speakers.

Which would sound more accurate, A or B?

None of the alternatives will be accurate as long as the mix wasn’t done in a system using crosstalk cancelation.

 

[dshreter]

None of the alternatives will be accurate as long as the mix wasn’t done in a system using crosstalk cancelation.

Accuracy is not a yes/no matter, there’s more or less accurate. And steps are taken in a studio environments that reduce crosstalk, such as listening near field. That it isn’t done algorithmically to me isn’t necessarily important.

If you want to make such a concrete statement then you need to define accuracy.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

Hat exactly he fixed?

Tonal colorations that plagued every previous execution of cross talk cancellation and the subsequent extremely narrow sweet spot that was inherent in all previous cross talk cancellation systems

 

[Thomas_A]

-

Accuracy is not a yes/no matter, there’s more or less accurate. And steps are taken in a studio environments that reduce crosstalk, such as listening near field. That it isn’t done algorithmically to me isn’t necessarily important.

If you want to make such a concrete statement then you need to define accuracy.

How is nearfield reducing crosstalk? The bad effects of crosstalk as e.g. the 1.8 kHz dip inreases in nearfield. Detail increases in nearfield due to higher direct to indirect sound ratio.

I am not against crosstalk reduction but I guess the effects are best for purist 2-mic live recordings. For studio productions there is really no clear answer. One could prefer one or the other.

 

[goat76]

Accuracy is not a yes/no matter, there’s more or less accurate. And steps are taken in a studio environments that reduce crosstalk, such as listening near field. That it isn’t done algorithmically to me isn’t necessarily important.

If you want to make such a concrete statement then you need to define accuracy.

Okay, if we take the statement of @jimbill where he earlier in the thread said that he hears a hard-panned sound at 30 degrees directly from the loudspeaker position without BACCH, and the same sound about 60 degrees (30 degrees outside the speaker) with BACCH, then we can easily figure out that the accurate reproduction is the one without BACCH as a hard-panned sound can only come from the speakers position.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

Yes, that's when close miking the performance, extensive use of EQ during the mixing, and applying suitable reverb can save the performance and the final audio production.

Except it turns out the recording engineer didn’t use any EQ or add any artificial reverb. You see, you don’t know what was done without the actual participants telling us. I didn’t know that until I had a few email exchanges with the recording engineer and I was there for the recording.

I doubt the final mix was finalized immediately if everything sounded as awful as you described. If the mixing engineer had to mix all the individual uptakes, EQ the instruments, find suitable reverbs to get a good-sounding hall, and avoid the loud and disruptive audience.

You can speculate all you want. But no one can know these things without being told. Again, turns out the mix was done completely from the recorded tracks and without EQ.

In some/many cases, the artist will never hear the recording until the audio production is finalized. In this particular case with the type of music in your example, we can be pretty certain that the involved musician's intentions and hope in the end were that the final audio production was going to sound life-like and natural, and hopefully way better than how it sounded in that awful concert hall.

You are doing a fine job of proving my point. What you are offering here is pure speculation and much of it is plainly wrong. I assure you my friend had zero interest in the recording sounding “life like or natural” she’s not an audiophile and she did all of her evaluations from her iPhone using ear buds. Imaging? Sound stage? Not a consideration. Tonality and color if the piano. That was a priority. Balance between the levels of the piano and the orchestra were a priority. An edit that preserved her interpretation of the music was a priority. _________ (fill in the blank with any audiophile jargon) was not a priority

So the only important thing in this particular case was: Was the engineer using a monitor system with crosstalk cancelation when he finalized the mix or not? If not, we can be certain that the final mix wouldn't sound more accurate than what he heard while (most likely) finalizing the mix without crosstalk cancelation.

Completely wrong. As I mentioned earlier, all monitoring was done on headphones. What I heard on the headphones, what I heard in the concert hall and what I heard from the CD without the BACCH were all completely different.

However…. As much as the recording improved upon and fixed the sonic disaster that was the the original performances there was one characteristic that fell short from that original performance. The soundstage and imaging.

And that is a great universal truth for all recordings of live acoustic music. Any live acoustic music that has a physical scale larger than the space between one’s speakers and a concert hall larger than one’s listening room will always be too small and inaccurate due to the conflicts of the spatial cues of the recording and the spatial cues of the speakers thanks to the crosstalk and the spatial cues of the room thanks to the room reflections. And the Dr. Toole prescription of side wall reflections to artificially enhance the sense of spatiousness doesn’t fix the problem or make the playback more accurate.

The BACCH will in all cases increase the perceptual size of the soundstage and improve the imaging within that soundstage and better portray the ambient sound of the venue. And that will always be more accurate as well as vastly subjectively superior.

If that weren’t the case there would be no interest in multichannel audio for music

You see, the only thing I'm arguing against is your previous comment that hearing recordings with BACCH will always be a more accurate way of hearing the audio production, but as most audio production is in most cases finalized without any crosstalk cancelation, the more accurate way to hear the finalized mix is in a sound system without crosstalk cancelation.

And you are wrong. Two channel stereo will reduce the scale of the soundstage with all but a few super small scale recordings and will ALWAYS add conflicting spatial cues to the ones encoded on the recording. That is true regardless of how the recording is monitored.

The monitors and monitoring systems do not determine what’s on the recording. The recording chain and only the recording chain does that.

If the studio monitors are rolling off the bass below 100 hz and the mics are capturing actual content from the instruments below 100 hz is it “inaccurate” to hear that bass in our home playback?

We don’t know what they heard, we don’t know what they intended but we do know a 100 piece orchestra doesn’t fit in our home listening rooms between two speakers. WE KNOW THAT

So you were there in the concert hall when the recording took place?

Yes. I had prime seats for all three live performances and got to sit in the control room and listen along with the producer and recording engineer to the rehearsal on the headphones

Normally, I think we can be pretty certain that the artist's intentions for a recording like the one in your example are natural and life-like.

No you can’t

I hope you do realize that you are now talking about what people may or may not prefer subjectively, I have no problem with that as my view is that everyone should always go with their preference no matter if it's closer or further away from an accurate reproduction. It seems to me that you have shifted your focus from your previous comments that using BACCH will be a more "accurate" reproduction, and the focus is now aimed at what you prefer subjectively. Is that right? If so, we can stop this argument.

Wrong. The one thing we can be sure of when it comes to the accuracy of an orchestral recording is that conventional two channel stereo will fail to reproduce the scale and dimensionality of that orchestra and fail to sonically transport us to the original venue. And the BACCH will consistently do a far better job of both by eliminating conflicting spatial cues from the playback

Yes, every recording is unique and most of the decisions leading the the finalized sound are made by the mixing engineer.

You are once again speculating. You don’t know what happened with any given recording unless you are told by the people who made the recording

Most things in mixing are delicate matters and the engineer must be able to hear what he's working on to make all the right decisions. If he didn't hear the mix with crosstalk cancelation he had no chance to make mixing decisions according to that, so it far fetched to say that the listeners would somehow hear a more accurate reproduction than the mixing engineer himself heard if they used BACCH in their systems (but they may subjectively prefer it just like you do).

What is far fetched is your speculation. And that is all you have.
You don’t know what they heard.
You don’t know their intentions.

 

[tmtomh]

Okay, if we take the statement of @jimbill where he earlier in the thread said that he hears a hard-panned sound at 30 degrees directly from the loudspeaker position without BACCH, and the same sound about 60 degrees (30 degrees outside the speaker) with BACCH, then we can easily figure out that the accurate reproduction is the one without BACCH as a hard-panned sound can only come from the speakers position.

I generally agree with the position you've been taking here, and in that spirit of agreement I would like to proactively address what I am guessing might be a response or objection to what you write here: it is possible for a recording to be engineered/mixed such that sounds can appear to come from outside the speakers.

Here's an example: the Cars, "Heartbeat City," around 0:16, there's a decaying series of what I would call "walkie-talkie clicks" that sound like they're a bit to the right of the R channel speaker.

I experience this listening at 3M with my Genelec 8351b's in a semi-treated space, and I also experience it listening at 05.M on my 24" iMac (2021 M1 model) via its built-in speakers.

In my experience this is not a common occurrence, and it's more often used for "sound effect" sounds like this than for actual primary musical content. I assume some kind of phase trickery or maybe mid/side processing was done intentionally to achieve this effect on this recording. Heck, for all I know the mixing engineer applied some kind of crosstalk cancellation effect to just this sound! (Although the 1983-84 recording date for this album makes that seem unlikely.)

So I suppose there could be a scenario in which one or more musical sounds could "properly" seem to come from outside the speakers, and with speakers and/or a room that did not fully or properly produce that effect, BAACH could potentially bring it out.

But I would also say that this idea falls apart if one brings additional recordings into the equation: if BAACH is routinely creating the illusion that all kinds of sound are coming from outside the speakers, across a wide range of recordings, it is very unlikely that BAACh is revealing that degree of wide-panning info encoded in the original recordings.

With all that said, I still wold love to try BAACH out on my system in my space just to see how it sounds.

 

[Justdafactsmaam]

Okay, if we take the statement of @jimbill where he earlier in the thread said that he hears a hard-panned sound at 30 degrees directly from the loudspeaker position without BACCH, and the same sound about 60 degrees (30 degrees outside the speaker) with BACCH, then we can easily figure out that the accurate reproduction is the one without BACCH as a hard-panned sound can only come from the speakers position.

No doubt every hard pan was done with the intent of having the image land right on the speakers.

“Thank god for the limitations of two channel stereo! All I ever wanted as a recording engineer is to have any and all wide imaging come straight from the speakers. It would be tragic if the sound stage were to ever go past the speakers in depth or width!”

Said no recording engineer ever. Why do you think multichannel is even a thing?

 

[tmtomh]

No doubt every hard pan was done with the intent of having the image land right on the speakers.

“Thank god for the limitations of two channel stereo! All I ever wanted as a recording engineer is to have any and all wide imaging come straight from the speakers. It would be tragic if the sound stage were to ever go past the speakers in depth or width!”

Said no recording engineer ever. Why do you think multichannel is even a thing?

@goat76 's point here was about what the intention/design of the recording and mix were. Once again, if wider panning is more enjoyable, great. That's just not the same question as accuracy of reproduction. And I would say that a 30-degree vs 60-degree perceived soundstage location like the one Goat76 and the other member referenced is different enough that we can indeed speak of accuracy there.