Has anyone tried u-BACCH ? For those who aren’t familiar with it ,it is a $399 plug in BACCH filter for Windows 10 and above and works with J. River 30 and above. I won’t post any impressions at this time as I am still playing around with it . This is a very basic plug in and I believe offered by a company other than Theoretica Applied Physics.
I have J. River 31 so after getting installation instructions for J. River from the vendor , I got it up and running. One caveat is once it is installed and you want to calibrate it you must be playing music which the pink noise will override it when you click on L or R. You might want to have the volume turned down when you do this .
I have been looking at BACCH for awhile but the stand alone units are somewhat costly and will require additional cables upping the price. The software is less expensive but is all MAC based. After spending good money on a Wolf Audio streamer/server I really don’t want to put a noisy laptop back into my system so I am hoping that the u-BACCH plug in works out. I will post my impressions at a future date if this topic generates any interest.
I suggest posting your impressions now if you want your topic to generate interest.
Hi Elk : Good point. I haven’t had enough seat time to give the software a fair evaluation. I have the feeling that it is a small company and a review either way could have an impact so I want to be careful and I also want feedback from them as to what I have heard to date. I forgot to mention they have a free 14 day trial for anyone interested.
A very fair and thoughtful approach.
I look forward to your review.
Looking forward to your thoughts!
Edgar is in charge of both companies. Have no fear.
OK ,I have finally had enough time to dial in the u-BACCH software to a point where I am comfortable with my findings.
During the last century I had a Carver C9 Hologram Generator so I was expecting a similar experience. With the Carver as long as you kept your head in a very tiny sweet spot you got a fairly consistent sound hologram but that was not my experience with this software. It is very song dependent but compared to the Carver everything else is better.
You have to spend some time dialing the software in. As stated previously, I used J. River 31 as the DAW. Once installed I left the window open so that I could engage or disengage the software by checking or unchecking the u-BAACH box which made comparison easy.The softwares final screen is a setup box with a slider that you can move left to right to dial it in.
I watched the video posted on the website and when I couldn’t get the pink noise beside my ears ,I went for the second option which was to have the pink noise to the left and right of my speakers. During this time I was trading emails with Cole Boillat at u-BACCH who was extremely helpful. The major stumbling block for me was the pink noise graph and the speaker placement graph were in opposition. The pink noise was very narrow and the speaker placement was much wider. I thought the pink noise setting was a little too much whereas the speaker placement wasn’t enough. Eventually, I settled on a setting of 28.
At a setting of 28 I got a a nice concert hall ambiance with the soundstage forward and outside the speakers. Occasionally sounds would appear to the left or right of my ears but this effect wasn’t consistent. Compared to the Carver unit I had the sound presentation was cleaner and the sweet spot is much wider which wasn’t that hard to do.
In summation, I like what the u-BAACH does. I did not hear any negative effects on the sound quality once it was dialed in . It is easy to engage or disengage to see what the software is or isn’t doing. I plan on purchasing the u-BAACH software and I encourage others to take advantage of the 14 day free trial and if you do ,please share your findings. Please bear in mind that my gear , it’s placement and room had an effect on what I heard and your results might be different from mine.
Thank you for the excellent write-up. I still plan to try it when it is released for the Dutch & Dutch 8cs. I had some cross-talk convolution filters for Roon from Home Audio Fidelity which made a big improvement. I moved houses so I have to have them redone. I plan to compare those to the uBACCH filters to see which I prefer.
Edit: I am currently using the REW room correction filters for the 8cs which help as well.
I’m waiting as well. Have you heard anything about timing?
No. I tried to sign up for the beta but it was full. They did take my serial numbers and put me on the list for early field trials in late summer, which should be soon.
@tmurray1 I would be interested in hearing what your findings are when you compare the u-BACCH and the cross talk filters for Roon.
I just downloaded U-Bacch for Mac trial and installed in Jriver. (I had to update Jriver from V28 to V31 and unfortunately none of the settings or libraries was retained)
While using the pink noise slider, I was able to get my Right speaker to image outside the speaker, I could not get my left speaker to image outside.
Any thoughts? My tad’s have coincident drivers and the speakers are no where near any room boundaries.
I haven’t been listening long, It seems to give more depth to the image.
I updated J. River also.I don’t know why your libraries weren’t retained. I have updated J. River several times and it always retained my libraries. They should still be there. I would reach out to J. River to see what you can do. No matter what ,spend some time with u-BACCH and switch it on and off to see what it is or isn’t doing. I could not get the pink noise outside my right speaker but it is only two feet off the wall. You don’t have that issue. This might be why I couldn’t get a more consistent holographic effect even though I have an absorber panel beside the right speaker. You might want to contact Cole Boillat to see what he has for suggestions, he was very helpful to me. Please keep us updated.
If J. River can’t help you get your library back you can always go into Windows recovery but before that make sure you have saved your new J. River license number. After the recovery try to play some music to make sure it is working. The only downside is you won’t have u- BACCH so you might want to make a decision before doing this as to whether or not it is a keeper.
I plan to. The problem is I have a phono pre directly connected to the 8cs so it bypasses roon. I can use the uBACCH filters for this as well. uBACCH will also allow me to adjust on the fly without sending files off to have new filters built. It will allow me to have filters for my main listening seat plus at my desk at the back of the room. I can do this with HAF but it will take many measurements and back and forths with Thierry.
Hi Thierry you got me thinking because I like u-BACCH enough that I would like to use on my vinyl playback. I think what I might be able to do is send the analog signal from my phono preamp to to my SweetVinyl SugarCube Plus and convert the analog to digital and then send it to my PS Audio DAC. Sounds a little convoluted but it just might work.
My audio guru who helped me put my system together was horrified when I told him I added the BACCH-SP adio to my system.
“You have completely altered what you had!”.
Sure.
“You don’t feed the output from your phono preamp to be digitized by the BACCH I hope!”
Yes I do.
[Anguished scream!]
I like it both ways, but prefer using phono through BACCH. Analog Analog Analog.
The horror!
Very funny ! I like your attitude. Anything that will make my system sound better I am willing to use.
Just wondering if U-Bacch sounds as good as Bacch for Mac? Has anyone compared?
Hmmm, does a $399 plugin sound as good as a $7k hardware and software setup?