Sorry, I am back with an update on my BACCH4Mac installation. Mail with Edgar left it unclear as to when I can get the proper headphone mics over to Germany and through a customs office that is on Summer holiday. I might wait til I am over in the Americas in October.
In the meantime, I picked up an inexpensive Prime Day Behringer pair of matched stereo XLR microphones that run on 48V phantom power from the MOTO M4 interface and ran a headtracking filter calibration. I can hear and appreciate the difference between default (no filter), u-BACCH and the microphone-based filters. Will test it on neighbours and children tomorrow too.
I expect I have a problem of excess reflection from the walls as the ribbon tweeters in my speakers are known for a wide dispersal. I still have not started with wall treatments since the departure of a teenager made a larger, but concrete room available to be my new sound room. I understand the BACCH filters work better with sound only from speakers to ears and not secondarily at all via walls and windowsā¦
If side walls are close to speakers absorbers at first reflection and most o the way past your ears is better than diffusion. But too much absorber need to be balanced. I had to hang a few flat reflective surfaces to get right balance. Since my room has asymmetries. You can get by with no absorbers behind you and some diffusion and reflections. You can then get some sounds behind you with live crowd recordings.
Thanks very much. I ordered some nice absorbers to mop up at first reflection left and right. The BACCH effect in my room is less strong on the right side. Maybe this is because of a glass door on the left side though. Donāt know. Does not matter for now. Only later matters after the absorbers are here.
In the meantime, friends and family results are in. My 21-year-old had the best comments. He said, āI am normally skeptical of your tech upgrades. But BACCH makes everything sound more natural. I approve.ā
So, while waiting on the absorbers, I just still am considering improvements for the Mac Mini. There are tracks that definitely are cleaner when listening with my Euphony setup. The timbre of a voice or a bass line is not as natural sounding as with BACCH. But there are details that come across clearer with the Euphony.
One consideration is to move the Mac Mini from SMPS to LPS. But I am also getting some good results putting a DDC in between the Mac Mini and the PSA MK2 DAC. Need to do some more comparison listening though. Any views out there on changing the Mac Mini to LPS (a hassle) vs. putting a DDC between the Mac Mini and the DAC (easy)?
I had crashes of Bacch4mac using a matrix spdif2 DDC. The mini DC conversion is cheaper an easier HDMI. The USB sound beats the DDC with a AQ dragon using LPS. My USB cord was expensive pure Silver air dielectrics though.
My friend who came to listen to my system the other night had a nagging issue keeping him from relaxing and enjoying the music. He explained that he hears a solid but not deep center image, and massive amounts of far left and and far right sound. (I told him he may never have heard far left and right before) The problem he said was there were audio gaps between the sides and center images.
That reminded me that BACCH offers a control to deal with such issues:
In the above image, in the lower left corner is a setting called āMono Correctionā. For a short time I had this disabled which made things sound really fugly. Edgar said always have it and Bass Correction enabled.
Anyway, I always had Mono Correction set at the default of -6. After playing with it I now see its usefulness. -6.0 gives me a wide center image but not very deep. Iāll call it the BHK setting. You are always not too far away from the action, and the action is bold. If you switch it all the way down to -3 depth increases dramatically. The width of the center image narrows some. But as my friend discovered the āgapsā between the center and side images fills in. Going to oppsite direction all the way to -9 narrows the soundstage to just between the speakers. Iāll call it the āFocalā setting.
Right now I am set at -4.5 and I really like it. But I like -6 and -3 as well. -9 is unlistenable hence the name.
I donāt know if you BACCH4MAC folks have this control but I am happy to have finally played with it.
Sidenote, in -3 I have to tweak the volume up a bit. In -9 mode having the amp powered down seems best.
This effect of an impressing but non consistant stage was something I also heard at the High End Munich BACCH showroom. So maybe they could have done better, considering their own technical optionsā¦
What happens if you have BHK feeding Focal? Do they even out?
With all seriousness, I have this combo and do not have a soundstage limited to just between the speakers. But I will say the depth is not great. not bad but not great. I always wondered if I need more space between the front wall and speakers. 4ā or so now, and its a false wall with sound dampening which I want to swap out with Vicoustics diffusers. just a ton of work I am not looking forward to to doing. Is it the BHK instead??? I am looking for a AR LS28SE right now.
Thank you for that info! Was looking at the Mono thing last night in BACCH4Mac and wondering, āWhat does that do?ā Have just been playing with it between -3 and -6. Indeed useful both for different people (with their different preferences) and for different music tracks.
I have not had my BACCH fulfilment session yet, as I am waiting on sidewall absorbers to be produced and shipped. Am curious what you make of the electronic track Kalim & Marim by Da Iguana on your system / setup with and without BACCH. I think you like Felix Laband, right? Should be suitable music if so.
It is a track that is sounding really good with the latest FPGA for the DS MK2. I have been playing it simultaneously into USB without BACCH and into I2S with BACCH. I can tell the difference. But it is very close and I do not have a preference at the moment (especially not when on Mono -3). But like I said, my BACCH setup is still in progress. And, besides, as someone with three DACs, I have no issue with preferring some material streamed and reproduced some ways and other material streamed and reproduced other ways.
Other notes for folks looking at BACCH4Mac:
ā¢ I got both HQPlayer NAA in and DDC out to work with the Mac Mini. I was using HQPlayer to serve everything to the Mac Mini as 24-96 so that it had less processing to do, as it only has 8GB RAM at present vs. 32GB RAM in each of my two HQPlayer machines.
ā¢ I switched to 24-192 though as downscaling from DSD64 was giving occasional glitches; I understand that downscaling is more intense (prone to playback errors) than upscaling. Hit the limit again, downscaling from DSD256 to 24-192. I may just put pre-processed SRC FLAC conversions on the server for those. I do not have too much DSD256. But my SACD collection is still 500GB at 24-96 in FLAC8. And the SACDs are on there already with 1TB.
ā¢ Theoretica added an upgrade option from Intro to Audiophile for $1950 in their store. Before was only available to Audiophile-Plus Headphone at $2950. So, one can buy and play without ordering hardwareā¦ very helpful for folks far from the US.
PS: If using the BlackHole Audio Loopback Driver with a Mac Mini, list BlackHole first in the Mac Audio Device Aggregate and the DAC second. Otherwise it can happen that music sent to BlackHole for going to BACCH4Mac bypasses BACCH and goes to the DAC unprocessedā¦ The clock setting should be from the DAC though and not from the Mac.
Hello @vmax, just want to double check that you had no problems powering the Mac Mini / TeraDak LPS combo from the HDPLEX 300W. The 12V output base rating of the HDPLEX is 10Aā¦ below the 12.5 needed for 150W. But the 13A āover-currentā rating should be enoughā¦ Has it been all good for you??? Thanks!
Yes it works exceptionally fine never a hiccup. I had them wire the 19v rail for 12Volts. I am running two High Current 12Volt rails. The other powers my Streamer from SGC. Plus letting one 3amp 9Volt rail power the Baby Face FS. This takes further load off the M-1 using USB 5volt. You can hear the difference when making dSP microphone filters and pulling the 9 Volt power to BabyFace. I use Ghent GothamDC power cables.
I run a 10 amp AM M-1 Fuse and I installed AB 7050HF over all the chips in the HDPLEX300. My background is so Black with new Massive firmware and my Inakustik Pure Sliver USB air cable. I run the Babyface with a a Inakustik Referenz USB cable. It is a awesome setup with all the tweaks.
This guy does a good honest review. He however has not enabled head tracking yet.
Nor has he tweaked it by powering the M1 Mac or babyfface with LPS yet. He also appears to use the supplied USB cable. But does offer good advice on its usage.
I havenāt enabled head tracking yet either.
I was on the floor, petting my bunny in front of the right speaker and I noticed the soundstage image was still remarkable that far away from the intended listening spot. Itās a nice piece of gear.
@Vmax Thanks much for the HD Plex info. I have a demo unit HD Plex coming. A local dealer ordered one to check it out. But he was not so happy with it SQ-wise for the mainly lower amp applications of his customers, e.g., for Sonoreās and for switches. He will keep with stocking only Ferrum and Keces LPSās. Opportunity for me! Might just make my own Neutrik XLR to Oyaide DC cables.
I also have a Teradak unit on the way for inside the Mac Mini.
While I have the Mac Mini opened upā¦ Any views on how much RAM a Mac Mini needs for BACCH4Mac? The 8GB is not cutting it. But maybe there is no point in going beyond 16GB to 32GB.
Or, any views on the following other alternativeā¦ I could get a new Mac Mini with more RAM onboard already as well as a more powerful processor. After all, maybe the Mac Mini i5 is choking from lack of horse power as well as from a dearth of memory.
If it were a M1 you can get by with 8GB. Older sliwer need at least 16. The DSP13 wa optimized supposed to rn smooer than DS012.
I didnāt like HDPLEX300 on switch had better luck with Rcore transitor controlled 12V high current DAC. The HDPLEX300 did good job supplying 12VDC to DSMK1. The best power cord is a silver Signal with upgraded plug. Was only aanout 275 dollars.
We still feel the $1K spent on BACCH4MAC INTRO was the best bang for the buck ever.
We would love to know what the next step would sound like compared to the intro, and what would the minimum amount needed to make a nice sonic improvement.
According to the website the first step was $1K second step maybe $4K moreā¦ our system sounds great right now ā¦ is there a good reason to upgrade?
