@treepmeyer It sounds like you have many hesitations but are wanting to be convinced. You should follow your instinct and return it, perhaps with the intent to revisit it at a later date. You can also ask Edgar to extend the trial period, which he may be amenable to.
I was also in the room at AXPONA and was underwhelmed, but I have also heard both the BacchForMac and the Bacch-SP in a friend’s very high end (over $1MM) system with really great results. My consensus is that it basically eliminates the room, but it is really hard to get the staging to sound realistic, even if the individual performers sound clearer with more realistic presence. In the system I’m familiar with, when the Bacch is enabled, the stage depth flattens a bit, and the stage widens to the point where some performers are playing way off to the sides, leaving very big gaps between each of them. The end result was music that sounds and feels less cohesive and simply a very impressive sum of its parts.
That said, it is obvious that, especially while I was playing with its settings, the presentation it delivered is very configurable. In this case, it is exactly what my friend wanted. It became clear to me that while the intent of the software is to replicate and restore what the recording and mastering engineers intended, the levels of customization allow for a very personalized result which may not be “accurate” in its presentation.
I have heard many well-designed systems that sound as good or better without the Bacch, but I’ve also sound a few well-designed systems that sound really good with it. YMMV, and you need the time to properly evaluate it, so make sure you have that.
