BACCH4MAC Short Review / first impressions

[Gwreck]

May I ask what version of BACCH you are using, Gwreck? When I saw my friend's setup, it was only a control panel on his Mac.

The audiophile edition is the same as the pro version which I’m using. The control panel pops up in advanced for display settings.

 

[tjcinnamon]

The Polk L800’s reduce XTC phase cancellation. I own them and they are fantastic. I can use standard correction software via my AVR and they work well with movies. They have similar constraints like a small listening window (center/MLP) but the effect can be easily turned off. The room setup impacts the strength of the effect. One other constraint is they required a single ended output stage amplifier (that doesn’t mean RCA). It’s whether the black terminal gets power or not.

I can’t imagine going back to a “normal” speaker. I find it to work on the vast majority of music. It works great in a surround theater setup because the side speakers blend well with the “stereo dimensional array” effect.

If you ever get a chance to visit a showroom, I’d highly recommend auditioning them. I A/B’d them with speakers many times their cost and it’s like a 10/10 in terms of guessing what is playing. It’s VERY obvious when they are on.

I drove 4 hours to see them (luckily I had a family event in the area). I bought them site on scene. I had to make a solo trip back up alone to pick them up because they are approx 120lbs a piece.

 

[Dialectic]

View attachment 272379I am pretty proud of myself as I’m now getting 23db of crosstalk cancellation for each ear. What is anyone else getting with their set up?

I get 11-14 dB of cancellation using the Dutch & Dutch 8Cs in a moderately absorbent room.

Are you running 12.1.5?

 

[Gwreck]

I get 11-14 dB of cancellation using the Dutch & Dutch 8Cs in a moderately absorbent room.

Are you running 12.1.5?

Yes.
I’m running Sanders 10e’s in a moderately large room with 2 and 4 in thick panels on the wall behind the speakers to catch the back wave.

 

[Hayabusa]

"What BACCH-DSP does BACCH seems to be around since 2015, developed by Prof. Edgar Choueiri of Princeton Univ. His company Theoretica Applied Physics is now more present at HiFi shows demonstrating the effect. It is a DSP that eliminates speaker cross-talk (XTC) at the listening position by a sort of a cancellation pattern (similar to noise cancellation) while avoiding frequency artifacts due to the interference."

It s a nice technical trick but will make things that were not suppose to be there.
Why? The one who made the recording and made it sound like he thinks it should sound on a studio monitor system that also had these crosstalk effects.
Correcting for it is not needed any more..

 

[Gwreck]

"What BACCH-DSP does BACCH seems to be around since 2015, developed by Prof. Edgar Choueiri of Princeton Univ. His company Theoretica Applied Physics is now more present at HiFi shows demonstrating the effect. It is a DSP that eliminates speaker cross-talk (XTC) at the listening position by a sort of a cancellation pattern (similar to noise cancellation) while avoiding frequency artifacts due to the interference."

It s a nice technical trick but will make things that were not suppose to be there.
Why? The one who made the recording and made it sound like he thinks it should sound on a studio monitor system that also had these crosstalk effects.
Correcting for it is not needed any more..

I cannot find the article but Dr Choueri has acknowledged the levels of realism from both the playback side and recording side. The lowest level of realism I think was universal BACCH filter and stereo recording the highest level was (If I remember) anechoic room, personalized BACCH filter and binaural recording using the persons own HRTF.

Going down the rabbit hole of trying to listen to something exactly as the studio who produced it intended is futile. Each studio has its own different system in a different environment and the person mixing it has their own hearing limitations. We will never be able to recreate the exact experience of the persons mixing it in the studio. The nice thing about BACCH is it is not baked into the recording and if one doesn’t like what it does then one does not have to use it. Q-sound was crosstalk cancellation baked into the recording for example.

 

[fredoamigo]

Q-sound was crosstalk cancellation baked into the recording for example

You mean that what the Q-sound does for example with Roger Waters' on the album"amused to death" could be an example or a small preview of what BACCH can do ? maybe better ?

 

[Gwreck]

You mean that what the Q-sound does for example with Roger Waters' on the album"amused to death" could be an example or a small preview of what BACCH can do ? maybe better ?

Sound is a type crosstalk cancelation that add during the mixing/recording process but is not nearly as effective or versatile as BACCH.

 

[fredoamigo]

Sound is a type crosstalk cancelation that add during the mixing/recording process but is not nearly as effective or versatile as BACCH.

Forgive my neophyte questions about BACCH but the subject interests me a lot and I am not afraid of ridicule and I would like to get an idea of what BACCH can do since demonstrations in a show or users are really very rare to non-existent in my country.
The recordings with the Q-Sound process work quite well in my home(on the album I quoted above) and I just wanted to know if this was only the beginning of what BACCH can do.

 

[Gwreck]

Forgive my neophyte questions about BACCH but the subject interests me a lot and I am not afraid of ridicule and I would like to get an idea of what BACCH can do since demonstrations in a show or users are really very rare to non-existent in my country.
The recordings with the Q-Sound process work quite well in my home(on the album I quoted above) and I just wanted to know if this was only the beginning of what BACCH can do.

Forgive my neophyte questions about BACCH but the subject interests me a lot and I am not afraid of ridicule and I would like to get an idea of what BACCH can do since demonstrations in a show or users are really very rare to non-existent in my country.
The recordings with the Q-Sound process work quite well in my home(on the album I quoted above) and I just wanted to know if this was only the beginning of what BACCH can do.

BACCH does the crosstalk cancellation but is can do it for any speaker and does it without any coloration of the sound. With the head tracking it frees you from the “head in a vice” to get the sweet spot. Also BACCH does not require perfectly symmetrical speaker arrangements to get good effect.

Forgive my neophyte questions about BACCH but the subject interests me a lot and I am not afraid of ridicule and I would like to get an idea of what BACCH can do since demonstrations in a show or users are really very rare to non-existent in my country.
The recordings with the Q-Sound process work quite well in my home(on the album I quoted above) and I just wanted to know if this was only the beginning of what BACCH can do.

I hope you don’t get ridiculed for asking questions as definitely BACCH is not cheap or easy to audition. With the head tracking it frees up the sweet spot to be wider. Perfect symmetry for speaker placement is not needed either for it to work well. The headphone module will allow you to silently listen to your system through your headphones with head tracking. It has no sonic coloration and much better crosstalk cancellation than other types I have tried( sonic holography, ambiophonics, q sound, phased array systems ). With certain recordings BACCH can put sound all around you and even behind your head( if meant to be there). It’s about my favorite audio product ever. There are all sorts of possibilities it has for manipulating sound using HRTF when using the pro version the good news now is that the new m2 Mac mini can be had for $550 new and it will run BACCH as the memory requirements have gone down from 16gb to 8gb. My M1 Max book pro runs it without a hitch.

 

[Keith_W]

I was told that it is possible to pre-convolve music files in BACCH if you input some basic parameters, such as distance between speakers, and distance to listening position. You need the pro version of BACCH for this. Once you have the file, all you need to do is play it back. I was wondering if any ASR members would be kind enough to encode a file for me to listen? Maybe BACCH themselves should consider offering this service.

 

[tjcinnamon]

I was told that it is possible to pre-convolve music files in BACCH if you input some basic parameters, such as distance between speakers, and distance to listening position. You need the pro version of BACCH for this. Once you have the file, all you need to do is play it back. I was wondering if any ASR members would be kind enough to encode a file for me to listen? Maybe BACCH themselves should consider offering this service.

If it works, I’d PayPal someone for a few tracks.

Wonder how’d they’d sound with the SDA from my speakers

 

[Gwreck]

If it works, I’d PayPal someone for a few tracks.

Wonder how’d they’d sound with the SDA from my speakers

My thought was to compare the SDA effect on the LS800 vs BACCH on the LS800 with the SDA array disconnected. Measure the angle from your sitting position between your speakers and I could make a fixed uBACCH filter. uBACCH requires just the speaker angle anyway. Name a song and I could see what I can do. Then I could PM you with the song once I figure it out.

 

[Keith_W]

If it works, I’d PayPal someone for a few tracks.

Wonder how’d they’d sound with the SDA from my speakers

So would I

 

[Keith_W]

My thought was to compare the SDA effect on the LS800 vs BACCH on the LS800 with the SDA array disconnected. Measure the angle from your sitting position between your speakers and I could make a fixed uBACCH filter. uBACCH requires just the speaker angle anyway. Name a song and I could see what I can do. Then I could PM you with the song once I figure it out.

It might be easier for you to use a standard test track, one that you know demonstrates the spatial effect quite well, and then set it up for standard equilateral triangle listening. So, 30deg for each speaker. Put it up on Google drive, and then anybody who wants to listen has to set up their speakers at an equilateral triangle and sit at the apex.

 

[tjcinnamon]

My thought was to compare the SDA effect on the LS800 vs BACCH on the LS800 with the SDA array disconnected. Measure the angle from your sitting position between your speakers and I could make a fixed uBACCH filter. uBACCH requires just the speaker angle anyway. Name a song and I could see what I can do. Then I could PM you with the song once I figure it out.

That’s a fantastic idea. It’s blasphemy but I actually run my L800’s on a toe in. That’s because the general guidance is to have them 6’ or less apart relative to my seated position 8’ back. I have them 7’ apart due to my TV. The solution (for my room) is to toe them in. It’s very hard to argue with the results

The toe in makes it a bit tougher to measure the angle because the mid and tweeter are already angled.

You can pick the track but Kid A off RadioHeads Kid A or pretty much anything from Yosi Horikawa really shines. I know Yosi’s Bubbles and Wanderer tracks very well I’ve auditioned them to death with calibrations and tons of room tweaks for acoustic treatments.

 

[Gwreck]

That’s a fantastic idea. It’s blasphemy but I actually run my L800’s on a toe in. That’s because the general guidance is to have them 6’ or less apart relative to my seated position 8’ back. I have them 7’ apart due to my TV. The solution (for my room) is to toe them in. It’s very hard to argue with the results

The toe in makes it a bit tougher to measure the angle because the mid and tweeter are already angled.

You can pick the track but Kid A off RadioHeads Kid A or pretty much anything from Yosi Horikawa really shines. I know Yosi’s Bubbles and Wanderer tracks very well I’ve auditioned them to death with calibrations and tons of room tweaks for acoustic treatments.

I will work on it this weekend as I’m swamped with work during the week. The other thing I’m working on is making my HRTF trying the mesh2hrtf method. My goal is to using this with the audiopraise vanity pro to have virtual 7.1 surround with BACCH pro.