Good question. I would love to know the answer. Amgen is right in his response but how close does it get you ? I would love to read a good comparison.
After extensive listening to uB I have found it to be very much song dependent. Some songs you get holographic effects and others nothing. Part of this could be my room and part could be my gear and setup. Your results may differ.
I recently had one of my audiophile buddies visit and we spent some time playing around with the software . What we found surprising was we could sit side by side and enjoy the music. The holographic effects were gone but the live concert hall ambiance was still there. My buddy thought the 28 degree setting was fatiguing but 60 worked just fine.
For my personal playback I have now settled on 32 degrees. At this setting ,I get some holographic effects but also the live ambience.
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u-BACCH issued a software update 1.3.0 last month. The update was free for subscribers. I have spent a couple of weeks listening to it. The live concert hall ambiance is still there but the holographic effects have improved. It is still song dependent but I am getting holographic effects on some songs I didn’t get before. Songs with reverberations or echo usually result in good effects as well as a background chorus. As far as I can discern there are no negatives only positives with this software. Some songs really pop when using this software. I really like Boz Scaggs , Harbor Lights off his Silk Degrees album as a demonstrator. The BACCH posting has a ton of song/album recommendations.
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Yesterday I did a little tweaking of my system by adjusting the placement of my speakers. I have company visiting in a couple of days and I wanted to make sure that my side by side chairs each had a halfway decent balanced soundstage. Although my system has only one true sweet spot, I like my guests to have the same presentation that I do. I found that the left channel was off so I spent an hour moving my speakers and listening. Once I got them adjusted to my satisfaction I moved one chair out and put the other in the sweet spot which is exactly between the two chairs. After adjusting the speakers ,I did the same for u-BACCH and sat back for an extended listening session.
The holographic presentation was more prevalent than before. One song I played ,I know extremely well and that is Third Stone From the Sun by Hendrix. I first heard this song in Vietnam which will require a brief side story.
In 1969 I was part of D company 168th combat engineers. We were down in the Mekong Delta. When I arrived, I was briefly station in Rach Kien and we were supporting the 9th infantry. From there we relocated to Lai Khe which was part of the Michelin Plantation. There was a strong Air Force presence there for which the Army was providing security. We were amazed to learn the Air Force had a base radio station that played contemporary rock music. One of the disk jockeys used the Hendrix song as background music when he talked. Yesterday when I played it with u-BACCH engaged I was in disbelief. I had never heard the song like that, not even close. It is easily the best track I have played that demonstrates what u-BACCH does. I encourage anyone who has BACCH or u-BACCH to give it a listen. You won’t be disappointed.
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Awesome story. I was in the draft but didn’t get called. Many friends did and some didn’t make it back. Glad you did.
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Thanks Baldy for the kind words. I am sorry to hear that you lost friends to the needless conflict. I believe you are also a car buff . What is your current current chariot?
The most fun car I have now is a 2016 Z06. It is unbelievable how far car tech has come since we were kids.
My first road car was a 1962 Corvair which was a genuine POS and I never got it licensed.
The next one was a 1957 Chevy with a worn out 283 and power glide. Manual drum brakes, manual steering, worn out front suspension.
It got 50 miles to the quart of oil so I just bought recycled oil from Super Par for $1 per gallon and put a gallon in when the oil light came on. 
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Speaker optimized placement and acoustic panels help take bacch to next levels. As does DC LPS running processors. Plus crazy good digital cables. I am keyed up to start beta testing Edgar’s Optimum Room Correction with head tracking He thinks it is his most significant development since bacch 10 DSP released. Bacch is the gift that keeps giving.
I will try that tonight with full bacch4mac. The electric ladyland album is really great too with bacch dsp
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Thanks Baldy I too had a 62 Corsair that ran great until the bottom literally fell out. It was a fun car. A C7 Z06 is quite a car and if it isn’t already it will soon be a collector;
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Hi Vmax I would love to hear your impressions of Third Stone From the Sun. My listening room is well treated with GIK Acoustics diffusers and absorbers. Initially , I had built a shelf to hold 4 of GIK’s Gotham Diffusers to go in front of a large television between my speakers but it wasn’t practical from a safety standpoint. Last week. I installed a pocket door system that allows me to slide them together for music playback and to the side for TV viewing.
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I have a selection of GiK Gothams, some Gik bass traps snd absorbers and the leaf diffusers on the back wall. I found difusers only work front and back wall snd absorbers side walls with Bacch dSP
I listened to third stone with my headphones before the Bacch4MAC dsp. Definitely a keeper. Jimi’s guitar stays in the middle. But his voice first lyric is six inches from left ear. Later he transitions to left side middle of room speaking like a God coming from the clouds or ceiling. Not as much artificial panning as Electric Ladyland but definitely a Bacch playlist addition! Thanks for sharing.
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The u-BACCH Plug-in (now priced at $980 after a brief promotional period) is an audio plug-in offered by Theoretica’s sister company, BACCH Labs, for Windows or Mac, and requires a third-party DAW (or a similarly acting platform) in which to be instantiated. Like many plug-ins intended for pro audio monitoring, mixing, and content creation applications, the quality of the audio depends on many factors that are outside of the plug-in itself. On the other hand, BACCH-dSP, the Mac application at the heart of all of Theoretica’s BACCH4Mac editions, is a standalone application, intended for audiophile listening, that can be configured to process audio from any source on the Mac (or connected to the Mac via hardware or the network). BACCH-dSP has full control of the critical audio processes (up-sampling, dithering, buffering, multi-threading etc.) and is optimized to yield the best audio quality possible.
Moreover, the u-BACCH Plug-in relies on a set of generic factory-loaded BACCH filters which assume that the speakers 1) act like perfect sound sources; 2) are perfectly matched in phase and frequency response; and 3) are placed symmetrically with respect to the listener. u-BACCH also assumes no sound reflections to occur in the listening room, and u-BACCH filters were produced using generic head-related transfer functions (HRTFs) of a dummy head. Departures from these ideal conditions, which inevitably occur in real life, would lead to a degradation of the level of crosstalk cancellation (therefore 3D imaging) that can be achieved for a given room, with an individual listener and particular pair of speakers. When these departures are minimized, u-BACCH can approximate the 3D imaging of a measured BACCH filter.
On the other hand, BACCH4Mac Audiophile Edition (and higher editions of BACCH4Mac) rely on actual acoustic measurements done with the BACCH-BM in-ear microphones, which take into account the particular relevant acoustic properties of the speakers, the room, and the listener’s head, outer ear morphology, and location. The custom BACCH (c-BACCH) filters that are automatically derived by BACCH-dSP are optimized to yield the highest level of crosstalk cancellation (3D imaging) for a given room, with an individual listener and particular pair of speakers. Additionally, BACCH-dSP incorporates advanced head tracking technology to adjust the custom BACCH filters in real time so that the optimal 3D imaging is maintained as the listener head is moved over a large area (while a u-BACCH filter is restricted to an area limited to a few inches left and right of the central sweet spot). The u-BACCH Plug-in offers the lowest-cost entry to the world of BACCH 3D Sound (on both Mac and Windows machine).
The Intro version of BACCH4Mac, which is limited to u-BACCH filters, offers the same audio technology as the u-BACCH Plug-in but in the form of an optimized standalone audio processing application intended for critical audiophile listening, and for the Mac platform only. It also includes a number of built-in utilities that are useful for audiophile listening (equalizer, Linkwitz-Riley crossover network, binaural recorder, basic file player, etc…) Unlike the u-BACCH Plug-in, BACCH4Mac Intro offers an upgrade path to the higher editions (BACCH4Mac Audiophile, Audiophile+, Pro), which can be upgraded to from the Intro edition for the difference in price.
Apologies for the long text, but I hope that it helps clarifying some aspects of the u-BACCH plugin discussed on this forum.
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Thanks for the explanation. I use the BACCH plugin on my Dutch & Dutch 8cs with a 7 foot triangle to the listening chair. The effect is amazing. I now have a holographic soundstage on most tracks. I like to let people try it out to see their reaction. My daughter’s reaction was the best, “What manner of audio sorcery is this?”.
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Thanks Edgar for the detailed explanation on the differences between BACCH and u-BACCH. I am really enjoying what it does for my system and I love to see and hear the reactions from visitors that I place in the sweet spot. I have a surround sound system so I make a point of stating before my demonstration that the only speakers playing are my towers and the subs behind them. I think at least half the listeners believe I am playing a trick on them.
I encourage everyone to take advantage of the free fourteen day trial. If you are hesitant because the installation might take you out of your comfort zone; don’t worry the online instructions are well done and customer service is excellent should you need it.
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Yesterday I tried moving my listening chairs around while playing the pink noise for u-BACCH adjustment . I finally got the pink noise to move beyond the sides of the speakers to almost the sides of my ears but unlike the Carver Sonic Hologram it was a distance to either side. The end result was a near field presentation. I was closer to my 220 pound tower speakers than I prefer but I tried it for a 4 hour listening session.
This setup presented a little more 3D information without any loss in the you are there sound that I really enjoy.
My dedicated media room is approximately 23’ x 19’ and my speakers are 5’ from the front wall and 9’ apart.At a seating distance of 9’ I don’t get the pink noise to the left and right of my ears but at 8 ‘ I do. One would think the equilateral triangle would have done the trick.I am not sure if I will keep the near field position but I encourage other listeners to experiment and I would love to hear about your findings.
Thanks to Frank Doris I did find another interesting demo song. In the 200th issue of Copper magazine he listed 200 of his favorite songs. Most of them I was familiar with but those I wasn’t ,I listened to. The group Quill and their song Thumbnail Screwdriver is a quirky rocker that plays well through u-BACCH .
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After much experimentation I have finally arrived at my final setup. My speakers are 10 feet 3 inches apart and my listening chair is the same distance from them. If I move forward a little for a near field presentation I lose a little bass. As I suspected my right speaker that is a foot from the wall was stopping me from getting the full effects of u-B. Unfortunately ,I tried positioning the speaker further away from the wall but it just didn’t work. To overcome this I purchased a stand up absorbing panel from GIK Acoustics which solved the problem. I placed the panel directly to the right of the speaker.
u-B is now engaged all the time at a setting of 7 to 8. I keep it engaged when I have company but slide it out to about 21. I am also using a Synergistic Research Atmosphere system that plays well with u-B. When I am in the sweet spot I have on the holographic setting but when I have company I use one one of the expansive settings.
There is a lot of great music listed for playback and I don’t know if Boz Scaggs , Harbor Lights off his Silk Degrees album is one of them but it is worth a listen.
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I found panel placement helps the bacch-SP and ORC applications also first reflections and absorption vs diffusion on side and rear Walls is important with images to sides and behind you
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I was a little concerned that I might be overdoing it as I have quite a few GIK absorbers and diffusers in my music room but the final piece was the icing on the cake.
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Are you saying that you get an even better/flatter response over the frequency spectrum with ORC, when you have “flattened” the room first with diffusers and absorbers? Did ORC lead you to the make the room adjustments or did you go by ear? I guess what I am trying to figure out is how far ORC can go on its own in making a bad room sound good, or will physical tuning always be required.
Well the ORC goes crazy taking away the peaks but the standard it is limited to adding 2 dB to any frequency band dips. My issue is lots of bass and a bass suckout from a six foot doorway by Right channel and left channel close to a corner. My speakers can’t use the 1/3 rule. If you pulled speakers out to far then its a battle of suckout bs boost from front wall and symmetry. The other issue was impulse response having to sit close to rear wall. Side and rear diffusers created nasty impulse response as did a brick fireplace with glass doors off the right speaker.
The trick becomes what sort of absorbent panels to put on rear wall to even out frequency response but keep left and right ear impulse response and bass response to track before the ORC foes its thing. The good thing if you get rid of the echo from diffusion panels or bare walls the impulse response improves and you are not hearing this abnormality created liveliness you ned for two channel. It was to hard to figure before ORC ad to what was going on. Your fooling yourself if your not an orchestra maestro to think you can do it by ear.
It becomes easy with ORC graphs and The XTC graphs of bacch. I would get a left to right effect all of a sudden going across my right shoulder and exiting right rear corner. Fix it with panel placement in right bands and right absorption. 360 degree sound improves as does solidity and position of all images. It only involved buying another set of panels that were thicker 4 vs two inches and removing another diffusion plate from a two inch panel the experimentation to have dome 4 inch thick or two inch thick panels on back or side walls to even out the bass where ORC can handle it with using much at all of 2dB band boost. You get left and right channel frequency to overlay exactly within a kitty wampus room pior to OrB. Killing impulse response echoes came along with the ride. Bacch got crazy better too.
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