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


I can't post a URL here, but you can find information about this device on the Theoretica Web site.

Robert Harley, John Atkinson, & .other celebrity reviewers (Andrew Quint in TAS as recently as last January) have given this box high praise.  Apparently, it's some sort of DSP that allegedly creates a breathtaking holographic 3D soundstage from two-channel content.

Yes, virtual surround processors have been around since, jeez, at least the 1990s, but this one purports to be a truly high-end device, including an audiophile-grade (whatever that means) DAC, 31-band equalizer, binaural recording capabilities, & ADC.  But for 25 grand, I'd expect it to also clean your records & wash your socks.

I'm kinda skeptical at this point, but better ears than mine have heaped high praise indeed.  Has anybody here actually heard a unit work on their own systems with familiar 2-channel content?

 

 

cundare2

Showing 2 responses by cundare2

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.

 

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.