Total thread hijackers.
Your situation will be interesting VMAX as you already use room correction in your setup.
The ORC process is simple. You put the microphones in your ear and do the normal test signals. It creates the ORC filter first. Then it engages the ORC filter and the second pass creates the XTC filter with the room correction in place. It measures the change in volume at that time and compensates for it automagically.
The end result is, you can listen to your new filter and engage or disengage the room correction as you wish. The built in volume compensation insures that there isn’t any change in volume when you do this. You can also select bypass which now includes a button for ORC. So you hit bypass and the XTC filtering is disabled. Click on the ORC button and all processing is disabled.
The reality in my home is when I am listening now, if I disable the room correction the sound changes from “what the hell is this? How can this even be?” to “oh this doesn’t sound good at all”. And the “this doesn’t sound good at all now” level of sound is what you are hearing right now without ORC. What you hear right now sounds really good right? Sure, it does. But it sounds awful in comparison to what it sounds like with the room correction engaged.
For Vmax, who already uses room correction from some other company, this may be less pronounced. Bacch ORC will allow him to take another processor out of the loop. I strongly believe the ORC processing will be much better than whatever he is using now. I realize that some of his existing processing is for home theater needs and I don’t even want to think about that.
But for the rest of us who don’t use any room correction it will be a revelation. I notice it mostly in the sound stage size and depth. It is more of a piece than it used to be without it. The speakers completely vanish. The highs come alive to the point that it seem like they never actually worked before. When I turn off the ORC the highs disappear. Gone. Turn it back on and oh my.
A friend came to my house once and he thought he heard a center image, then a gap between the center image and the side images. We discovered that we could tune that with the Mono Correction settings. There are no gaps at all with the new setup. The sound stage is seamless and the left and right seem more pronounced and yet more natural at the same time. Seamless is the key word.
It is actually quite unnerving and somewhat frightening to me now. It is so much different than what I previously knew and loved. It is quite enjoyable, don’t get me wrong. In my system I believe the room correction is a larger improvement that the XTC filtering was. Having both is not subtle. And when you disable either the room correction and/or the XTC filters the change is quite a bit more noticeable.
I see the possibility that someone could believe it is all too much. I am guessing that will happen. One has to remember that the Bacch processing is not creating anything new. It isn’t some sort of AI processor that makes new sounds. It merely allows what is present in the recording to be be faithfully performed. I listen to some pretty odd music that does a lot of odd things in the far right and far left parts of the soundstage. These effects are way, way, way more pronounced now. But just for giggles I put on Harry Belafonte Sings The Blues. This recording shocked me the first time I heard it on a non-Bacch system. It is really well recorded and sounds like you are in a club with the band. With the ORC and XTC processing it is terrifyingly real. So if your musical taste is less radical than mine you should be pleased. Put on those old Pink Floyd records and wear a seatbelt.
It seems nice.
Thanks for explaining how easy it is to create the ORC filter. It sounds like we can just do it without needing any help from Edgar!
You could do it without Edgar, but he looks at what your results are after the creation of the filters and in my case he did some additional tweaks in the all important “Spectral Entropy” parameters. Those will become obvious to you as well. Which is amusing to me. 67 years old before I learned of the importance of Spectral Entropy. LOL
So I thought I spin this one with RoomPerfect and Bacch-dsp13 and MK2 massive final.
Not all the the songs are created equally the first was . Second one strap your self in.
Yes no speakers in the room. Harry was front and center voice at about 5’3” just below the top of my plasma TV. So I looked up his height. Right at 6’0” so believable with where would be. The Piano off to left behind front wall, Bass is left forward of Piano some songs but moves closer to center other. Sax usually more forward off to the right. Trumpet right, but in some songs with mute comes forward in room.
Look forward to ORC.
I was listening to “In The Evening Mama”.
It is an incredible recording.
Roon Radio took me to Carnagie hall with Harry it was better than I have ever heard it.
I am listening to Floyd now. I am getting 360 degree sound way more since the massive firmware upgrade. The entire song for awelcome to the Machine. Nolonger seems like a recording. I swear it can’t get better. Hope Edgar proves me wrong
The ending of Have a Cigar. The zapping sound effect with Bacch. Literally starts left of your ear. Approaches ear, feels as if traveling ear canal, and it feels like it zaps loudest inside your brain, then travels right exiting you right ear and off into the distance. I am not drinking or under the influence of anything.
You are doing it wrong.
Most impressive! AL once set-up how much readjusting and tinkering are you doing with the Bacch interface, vice just listening to music. Your summarized experiences have resulted in my buying an Axpona pass to check out the Bacch demo. That is a considerable commitment on my part as Axpona fall right after my knee surgery. Here’s hoping.
I don’t mess around with it much.
I really like to look at it though.
There is actually a lot of stuff you can mess with to alter the current reality. Sometimes I try a little of this and that. When I first see the consoles I think “I am not a scientist!”. But just looking at things, getting and idea of what is possible, it all seems to just make sense.
I imagine 50% just set it and forget it. That is actually a good way to relax and enjoy.
You have choices.
Just pinged Vintage King Audio about tracking details for the AVAA C214 - it is scheduled to be received in their warehouse this Friday (1/19). So the earliest I can get it is next week.
I found this youtube video by New Record Day posted today to be rather informative - long but helpful.
FedEx tracking says the AVAA C214 will be delivered tomorrow 1/22.
The AVAA C214 arrived today. First impression is that it absorbs low frequency sound waves as advertised.
Setting it up couldn’t be any easier, plug it in, turn it on, and either leave the gain level at 0dB (as calibrated) or adjust between a -12dB to +6dB. I set mine up center-line between the FR20s about 8 inches behind the speakers’ back edges, right in-front of my equipment racks (this is where I have a considerable bass node). In this location the C214 is on the floor 8 feet from my listening position facing directly at the listener.
Since my room is very excitable, I decided to set the gain at +6. My first reaction was this is the fastest bass I’ve heard from the FR20s – the more I listened though it sounded thin and unbalanced, almost like I created a null at the listening position. After checking the instruction manual, PSI Audio recommends lowering the gain (less absorption) for extremely reverberant environments. To me this seems counterintuitive but now I understand why and I currently have it set to -1.5dB.
I still have some fine tuning before I do A/B and, A with B, testing.
Found a new video. The best explanation of how an AVAA works I’ve encountered so far. It works like a low frequency vacuum to absorb excess bass
Looking forward to getting more impressions
To my ears, the A/B comparison has a clear winner as far as bass absorption goes – the AVAA C214. The C214 has a rudimentary phone app via WiFi that let’s you turn the C214 on/off and adjust the gain level while seated in your listening chair. In my set-up with just one C214 I can establish something like a “cone-of-silence” around the listening position where the trap has an effect. However, at volume levels above 80dB the room boom works its way to the listening position.
I’m thinking about adding a second C214 to expand the “cone-of-silence” and raise the level I can play at without the room boom mudding things up. The good news is I rarely play above 80db so I am enjoying the mud removal provided by just the single C214.
The more I listen and as I get accustomed to speedier bass the higher I am turning the gain, I now have it set at +4.5dB. This ability to adjust the gain is a really neat feature along with its relatively small size.
A quark that I uncovered accidentally, the C214 can make sounds. When I blew on it to get a dog hair off the front grill I heard a sucking sound like it was blowing back at me, and when I moved it while it was on it kind of groaned.
I will do a separate post on the C214 with the Black Box when completed.
The irony of all this is I may want to add subs after removing all this muddy bass. What a hobby!
Mark, please do me a favor. As the differences are so readily heard, please download even a simple app like Analyzer and do OFF and ON scans with the C214. I’m tempted to try one, but as you already have it and have heard clear differences, I’m hoping I’m not the only one who’s really curious to see what it may show it’s doing on a room FR scan. Standard pink noise. Thanks for any help.
I bought a MiniDSP UMIK-1 Measurement Microphone a couple of years ago to use with REW but never took it out of its box and used it. What slowed me down was downloading the unique calibration file from the UMIK-1 product page as instructed, I just never got around to it. And wrestling with PC apps is not fun to me.
I like looking at graphs when other people do them, it’s just, did I say I don’t like wrestling with PC apps? Anyway, curiosity is getting this cat, I will attempt to graph OFF and ON state scans. It could take a while though.
Thanks, it’d be appreciated. Like I said, especially if you don’t like messing with bits and pieces and software, since what’d be measured is relative (no absolute accuracy needed) use Analyzer if you have an iPhone. Set it up as follows:
Program: FFT Plot
Weight: Flat
FFT Size: 16384
Window: Blackman
Average: Slow
Graph: Simple
Scale: Decade
Position the microphone side of your iPad at your ear position, in a way so that it doesn’t move between measurements. Should be pretty straightforward.