Has anyone heard the BACCH-SP "purifier" 3D audiophile imager?

A friend lent me the Bacch SP adio to use for about 6 weeks.  It is a fascinating device.  It is also hugely overpriced.  The  Bacch4Mac is a cheaper solution and probably nearly as good for a purely digital flow but it is still fairly expensive.

As for sound quality, the Bacch on many tracks makes a big difference in how the music is presented.  The soundstage may widen and deepen, different elements of the music may be more forward or recessed, and even the tonality sometimes seems to shift.  I would say I preferred the Bacch on about 90% of the music I listened to and I did have my system set up so Roon played the same track to the Bacch and to my DAC and I would switch between both from my  preamp.

The issue I had, besides the cost, is not all music sounded better or even correct through the Bacch.  For me I found it disturbing when certain tracks simply seemed wrong to me and I certainly didn't want to spend my listening life switching back and forth deciding which presentation I preferred.  So even though the Bacch was better, often much better, on the vast majority of music, sometimes it was worse and I didn't like that.  I think many people would find the tradeoff of 90% much better and 10% different in a way that seemed wrong, a very acceptable solution.  Certainly, my initial reaction was that I couldn't believe every audiophile with a 6 figure system wasn't using the Bacch at least some of the time.

Truly, the unit should be priced like a mid-range DAC at $2-5K and I think they would sell thousands of units.  The Bacch4Mac is an effort to do that but in a very kludgey and unsatisfying way.  With its current pricing and product offering I doubt they will ever achieve much success.

Great post!

The reason i still wait is because of price...

Now all recordings are not well done and certainly not better (10% in your evaluation ) if we suppress crosstalk with the BACCH among other things and make way more evident the spatial information balance  quality or akwardeness linked to all recordings...

The acoustic discovery of Choueiri with his filters implementation will stay though it is too much important ... But perhaps with another form in the near or much longer future...I hope a price decrease because i cannot justify this expanse on my 1000 bucks system...I am already very pleased for many reasons anyway... And as you said to be a success at this price will take a much longer time in this economic crisis era incoming...

Thanks for your well informed post and justified criticism ...

A friend lent me the Bacch SP adio to use for about 6 weeks. It is a fascinating device. It is also hugely overpriced. The Bacch4Mac is a cheaper solution and probably nearly as good for a purely digital flow but it is still fairly expensive.

As for sound quality, the Bacch on many tracks makes a big difference in how the music is presented. The soundstage may widen and deepen, different elements of the music may be more forward or recessed, and even the tonality sometimes seems to shift. I would say I preferred the Bacch on about 90% of the music I listened to and I did have my system set up so Roon played the same track to the Bacch and to my DAC and I would switch between both from my preamp.

The issue I had, besides the cost, is not all music sounded better or even correct through the Bacch. For me I found it disturbing when certain tracks simply seemed wrong to me and I certainly didn’t want to spend my listening life switching back and forth deciding which presentation I preferred. So even though the Bacch was better, often much better, on the vast majority of music, sometimes it was worse and I didn’t like that. I think many people would find the tradeoff of 90% much better and 10% different in a way that seemed wrong, a very acceptable solution. Certainly, my initial reaction was that I couldn’t believe every audiophile with a 6 figure system wasn’t using the Bacch at least some of the time.

Truly, the unit should be priced like a mid-range DAC at $2-5K and I think they would sell thousands of units. The Bacch4Mac is an effort to do that but in a very kludgey and unsatisfying way. With its current pricing and product offering I doubt they will ever achieve much success.

I have the Bacch4Mac and continue to enjoy it immensely. It is the real deal, worth every bit of the investment to me. I rarely play anything where i feel it is affecting the presentation negatively. If so, just bypass it with one click, easy.

While I believe the Bacch technology is a game changer, the recently introduced Optimal Room Correction (ORC) module may be even more so. ORC has been in my system for a couple weeks now and I could never go back. I've used several products aimed at HT enthusiasts, such as Dirac Live, ARC, Audyssey, MiniDSP, etc. in my separate HT setup, but ORC is specifically targeted to 2 channel listening with the in-ear measurements and head tracking capability. It is very simple to use and adjustments with updated in room measurements are quick and easy to compare on the fly. Bacch and ORC used together are a very powerful combination that have really improved my listening experience.

In terms of pricing, the SP ADIO box is about the same as the DAC, preamp, Mac Mini and software, with various cabling I have now. It also has a 6 channel DAC and 3-way crossover, if you need it, among other optional modules. The benefit here is simply better integration if that's what you choose to do.

This is one of those products you just can't listen to on paper or from your keyboard. You really have to experience it first hand. I would encourage anyone who is attending Axpona to give it a listen for yourself. The only way to do that properly is to go through the ~2 minute sweep/calibration process for each unique listener. Wandering in and out of the room is unfortunately not useful in this case. They do also offer a 14 day in home trial for those with serious interest.

What gear are you all using with the BACCH?  Mahgister is talking about a $1000 system??

There are reports (some quite credible) that one can obtain much of the benefit of the $30-50K BACCH products by moving speakers close enough to create a mostly nearfield listening experience.  That's suprrising to me b/c if merely eliminating acoustic crosstalk is the goal, why wouldn't headphones do exactly the same thing?  (OK, I can guess why, because hps eliminate the normal reflections that  our brains use as imaging & soundstage cues.  I think.)  And I realize that it's simply not possible, or even desirable, to sit that close to speakers in many setups.  But if I had more time on my hands, I think that trying that out might be a cool experiment.

I've found that, whenever I've had a system that has a sweet spot that is elongated along a listener's line of vision (that is along the line formed when you move your head forward & back while in a normala listening position), that moving your head to get closer to the speakers changes imaging and soundstage -- and for the better.  Maybe I should have recognized that as a clue that something was going on.

Acoustics is interesting.  Floor bounce, I think, is something that should get more attention.  I once had to move a bunch of boxes into my listening room while we painted an adjoining room. They were all over the floor & I expected them to disrupt the performance of my meticulously positioned Quad ESL-57s.  What I found, though, was that the Quads' imaging and soundstage improved dramatically.  And they had been pretty superb to start with in that smaller (10x12) room, which was loaded with pricey room treatments.  The only explanation I could think of was that the boxes, while not blocking most of the panels' output, disrupted reflections from the floor.

My system is up to date in my profile. You'll see it's rather modest by high end standards here, though not mid-fi level either. ~$5k investment in the Bacch4Mac is not out of line for it at all. The SP ADIO, though much more costly, easily co-exists in some very high end systems, certainly nicer ones than mine. There is also an intro level software only version that's ~$1k, and it goes up from there. My speakers offer it as a "u-Bacch" option and it installs simply and works quite well.

What gear are you all using with the BACCH? Mahgister is talking about a $1000 system??

There are reports (some quite credible) that one can obtain much of the benefit of the $30-50K BACCH products by moving speakers close enough to create a mostly nearfield listening experience. That’s suprrising to me b/c if merely eliminating acoustic crosstalk is the goal, why wouldn’t headphones do exactly the same thing? (OK, I can guess why, because hps eliminate the normal reflections that our brains use as imaging & soundstage cues. I think.) And I realize that it’s simply not possible, or even desirable, to sit that close to speakers in many setups. But if I had more time on my hands, I think that trying that out might be a cool experiment.

My system will benefit from the BACCH system no doubt...

But i am very happy and his value is 1000 bucks... I decided to wait a bit before buying the BACCH. My income will be difficult to imagine to sustain living for many here by the way... Many dont leave on the same planet as me ...😊

For headphone : I own one of the best designed headphone ever acoustically...

Modulo some modifications i introduced this AKG K340 create an "out of the head " experience when the recording reflect great hall recording, church and many smaller Hall but WELL RECORDED ...the reason : it is his designed internal dual acoustic chamber with a dynamic cell and an electrostatic one add to that 5 tuned passive resonators resonators..

When optimized, which i did my soundfield is extraordinary and timbre and bass ...Almost all headphone had no interesting and refined acoustic chamber design this is why i dislike headphone, no crosstalk yes, but no acoustic room shell tuned the right way ... ( too costly on research too little profit said Kennerton who know his work when i asked why not designing a new hybrid 😊)

Now i can answer you remark about nearfield listening...

I listen in nearfield, not only that  reading Choueiri genius article i implemented for experiment a mechanical crosstalk barrier in my nearfield set up which experiment  make more sensible to me  the astounding  loss of spatial information in ALL STEREO SYSTEM by design...

I can assure you that Choueiri is right if you read his articles, because i tested this mechanically; then i know why my completely imperfect method so revealing it can be (impractical for most user i used high  wood panels separating the speakers for each ear) this mechanical method cannot compared one iota to the BACCH .. I dont need to buy BACCH  to understand basic acoustics.. 😊

Now I'm curious and maybe I will shift things around to get more of a nearfield listening experience,

I'm dubious, though. My desktop planar magnetics produce a nearly 100% nearfiedl listenign experience and I don't hear the 3D-soundfield FX described in the BACCH reviews.

I'll have to looik into this $1000 software option, although I have no idea how I'd integrate it into my computer-less Harbeth system.

The BAACH software will need hardware to run like a MAC.

I too am looking at the BAACH 4MAC as their 20k+ hardware option is out of my budget. But since I have a DAC/streamer that connects directly to the Ethernet, not sure is BAACH can be used in my setup. I asked BAACH manufacturer Theoretica by email, but they never replied 

kennyc - They were quite responsive when I had some questions for them. This is the email address I used: info@theoretics.us

Hopefully a follow-up nudge helps if they have not gotten back to you as of yet.