BACCH Stereo Image Purifier

[m4gnus]

Thanks Alec! I realize that I should have placed my thread in tweaker's corner. I just didn't know the meaning of "tweaker" until now. HAF sounds interesting although I don't understand how it works, in fact I don't even understand what a filter is.

I still believe BAACH is worth discussing if anyone should have experiences from the product and I will try to get this thread moved.

By filters I mean digital filters applied "convoluted" with a digital audio stream  (that's what BACCH does). There are lots of solutions for speakers/room correction like Dirac, Acourate, Mathaudio... HAF actually does 1) room correction, 2) speaker directivity/reverberated field tone correction, and 3) has implemented a well thought X-talk cancellation algorithm. 

The huge advantage is that it doesn't require any hardware, but a digital player such as Roon, HQPlayer, Jriver, Foobar/Convolver... I don't think your streamer can do convolution so you would need a Mac/PC/NUC as audio server.

EDIT : keep us posted if you try BACCH, there are not so many reviews available!

The developer of BACCH produced the following comments over HAF's solution. I guess you get what you pay for and the question is how big difference it is between them.

1. Making a crosstalk cancellation (XTC) filter using point measurements (with a single microphone) is far inferior to doing one from a binaural measurement using the intended listener’s head. All that the former can do is give you some stereo image widening. It cannot give you an accurate 3D image. 

2. Unless they are using our patented technique for deriving the filter (which would constitute an illegal patent infringement) their XTC filter would almost definitely cause some tonal distortion, like all other attempts to do XTC. 

3. They cannot do head tracking. And with no head tracking the sweet spot is very narrow 

4. If the customer slightly changes the speakers location or the listener location or uses different speakers or components, the XTC filter will not only be void but wrong and would lead to severe tonal and imaging distortion. 

I will hopefully be able to try BACCH at home sometimes in the next two weeks and promise to keep you updated.