All Software SM?

[chucky3042]

@chucky: How is the situation at Involveaudio? For more than a year, the announced fresh layout of the decoding boards is not visible; very sad. Any now even the SM V3 ist not in stock. Does not sound that good?

Hi Asklia

What a question!

Yes we are all alive and well but in so many ways this has been the worst and most difficult year of my 66 years. It got off to a bad start when a hospital test induced stroke (happens to 1 person in 1000) where I lost the ability to talk and half my face was paralyzed, all fixed 100% in with the wonder mega blood thinner and my ticker is 100% clear! Then months later I was in a knife fight for a total on/ off period of 1 Hr with a 10 inch long knife as I was eating punches and headbutts to the head- I was not cut - the bad guy was. I had to pour another $120 K into my solar battery company www.zenaji.com and only could pay myself $53k. My blood pressure went nuts after one meeting it was 200/ 130. My Atrial fibrillation came back because of the stress of the knife fight and I had my 4th ticker operation followed by 3 zap resets (all good finally).

Here is a pretty picture of my gob the day after the knife fight. All I can say is you ignore the punches and headbutts and keep focused on the knife that on occasions was 1 inch from my eyeball. I have a particularly thick skull fortunately.

Note the Y4 rear speaker!!

My blood pressure is great now 114/ 75....heart rate 52. (You guys wont believe how I did it).

Then things got worse. Due to stupid politicians on both sides we had multiple interest rate increases in Australia after a stupidly high property boom that meant everyone with a mortgage had to cut spending or lose their houses. This combined with even more stupid government regulations on inverters (enabling the state to take power out of your batteries when they want at a glorious $0.03 cents per KWh) meant that our batteries were only compatible with the most expensive inverter on the market. Combined with many reported fires due to LiPo batteries (NOT OURS- we are Lithium Titanate!!) resulted in our battery sales dropping to 25% of the previous year after doubling sales 3 years running.

Then Involve Audio my other (and most loved company) suffered a $650K bad debt to top off the challenge. This then left us with zero funds for manufacturing more stock! It has been a struggle to keep all the staff and doors open which we have done. I have been very occupied chasing investors (most are big noters and tyre kickers) for both companies for the whole year and hopefully we might have the green lights in a few weeks time, I have been assured its 99.9% there but hey I like chasing pots of gold at the end of rainbows. I believe we will then have sufficient funds to create a bunch of stock and marketing for both companies.

We did better than expected on sales 2 months ago and pulled in sufficient funds to pay a mountain of bills and do another run of SM3 and decoder evaluation boards- and my pet project the huge electrostatic super speaker electronics. I am expecting them to arrive in a week or two. Given Australia takes a long holiday over Xmas the completion of these will be late January. I am really sorry for this delay but its been challenging. If any of you guys can link to investors I would be pleased to cut you in!

Then our beloved Dave the Bi#%h (some moderator has censored that previously) has been really tied up researching our new pre amp that includes hiss noise removal (working great), vinyl click removal (working great) and finally crackle removal (really hard but its working and we are just refining it).

We still have good stock of our encoder evaluation modules and our Y4 surround system. We have taken the price down on our website on this system as our advice is to put the price way up, so get in fast if you want any. I use it for my home cinema setup. My SM is used for my separate HiFi setup.

There were more and worse disasters but I will bore you with it another day, meanwhile ......patience we are still here!!

Oh on the good side, I figured our how to reduce weight- I have dropped from 123 Kg (270 lb) down to an anorexic 109.4 Kg (241 lb) in 2 months. The trick is ZERO SUGAR. It really is everywhere, its boring but works. Even my tubby wife has dropped from 49 Kg to 46 Kg (101 lb), see below with our new wild / domesticated Lorikeet.

 

[par4ken]

Some thoughts for "software decoding"

IMHO its not necessary to decode "on the fly" like an old Tate-II or a newer SM V3. We all can do a decoding of an already recorded and Matrix encoded file offline on a computer. Output is simply a WAV or FLAC file, containing 4 channels.

Such a file can be played back on devices like a Media Player even without 4 or 6 analog outputs. HDMI to any kind of Cinema receiver is lossless. If somebody needs analog out for his old Quad receiver, an OPPO or compatible player is necessary for D/A conversion. There are even (not that bad!) multichannel 7.1 converters at Ali Express for really low money available.

So a good offline software conversion is all we need. And rumor has it, that there is a huge collection >10TB of old quad recordings is going around...

If you search hard enough you will find many different threads here about software decoding. Usually it involved the use of the center channel extractor run in Adobe Audition 3. A number of different scripts were developed along the way, some were better than others. One main proponent of software decoding used to post here, sadly he was difficult to get along with and kept getting banned. He has his own blog The Matrix where he used to post his decodes or "releases".

Myself I played with script decoding for awhile but it was a lot of work. The Tate (Space and Image Composer) decoder that I had used regularly for forty years was acting up, it has a blown chip. I ended up finding another and then another so I'm fine again with decoding on the fly. I also have the Involve SQ and the regular Involve evaluation modules. I also use the Sansui QSD-1. While you can do things with software decoding that would be impossible with an analogue decoder I still love (prefer even) decoding on the fly.

For me on the fly decoding is esential, I never listen to stereo without "decoding" it first! That got me through the very long drought of no new quad releases.

 

[Asklia]

Dear Chucky

It seems Australia is still a dangerous place to live: Fights with a 25 cm long knife? Wow. My congratulations that you survived this and all the other health attacks. We have the same age: So I wish you and all the other staff members of your compynies all the best and lots of success!

May I talk a dream about your pre-amp? For me, a good phono preamp with all these anticlick enhancements would be more interesting than a "full" stereo preamp. You know, we are all quads her ;-)

And especially a phone preamp with future capabilites of CD-4 decoding...

My best wishes
Klaus

 

[DuncanS]

Hi Asklia

What a question!

Yes we are all alive and well but in so many ways this has been the worst and most difficult year of my 66 years. It got off to a bad start when a hospital test induced stroke (happens to 1 person in 1000) where I lost the ability to talk and half my face was paralyzed, all fixed 100% in with the wonder mega blood thinner and my ticker is 100% clear! Then months later I was in a knife fight for a total on/ off period of 1 Hr with a 10 inch long knife as I was eating punches and headbutts to the head- I was not cut - the bad guy was. I had to pour another $120 K into my solar battery company www.zenaji.com and only could pay myself $53k. My blood pressure went nuts after one meeting it was 200/ 130. My Atrial fibrillation came back because of the stress of the knife fight and I had my 4th ticker operation followed by 3 zap resets (all good finally).

Here is a pretty picture of my gob the day after the knife fight. All I can say is you ignore the punches and headbutts and keep focused on the knife that on occasions was 1 inch from my eyeball. I have a particularly thick skull fortunately.

View attachment 111705
Note the Y4 rear speaker!!

My blood pressure is great now 114/ 75....heart rate 52. (You guys wont believe how I did it).

Then things got worse. Due to stupid politicians on both sides we had multiple interest rate increases in Australia after a stupidly high property boom that meant everyone with a mortgage had to cut spending or lose their houses. This combined with even more stupid government regulations on inverters (enabling the state to take power out of your batteries when they want at a glorious $0.03 cents per KWh) meant that our batteries were only compatible with the most expensive inverter on the market. Combined with many reported fires due to LiPo batteries (NOT OURS- we are Lithium Titanate!!) resulted in our battery sales dropping to 25% of the previous year after doubling sales 3 years running.

Then Involve Audio my other (and most loved company) suffered a $650K bad debt to top off the challenge. This then left us with zero funds for manufacturing more stock! It has been a struggle to keep all the staff and doors open which we have done. I have been very occupied chasing investors (most are big noters and tyre kickers) for both companies for the whole year and hopefully we might have the green lights in a few weeks time, I have been assured its 99.9% there but hey I like chasing pots of gold at the end of rainbows. I believe we will then have sufficient funds to create a bunch of stock and marketing for both companies.

We did better than expected on sales 2 months ago and pulled in sufficient funds to pay a mountain of bills and do another run of SM3 and decoder evaluation boards- and my pet project the huge electrostatic super speaker electronics. I am expecting them to arrive in a week or two. Given Australia takes a long holiday over Xmas the completion of these will be late January. I am really sorry for this delay but its been challenging. If any of you guys can link to investors I would be pleased to cut you in!

Then our beloved Dave the Bi#%h (some moderator has censored that previously) has been really tied up researching our new pre amp that includes hiss noise removal (working great), vinyl click removal (working great) and finally crackle removal (really hard but its working and we are just refining it).

We still have good stock of our encoder evaluation modules and our Y4 surround system. We have taken the price down on our website on this system as our advice is to put the price way up, so get in fast if you want any. I use it for my home cinema setup. My SM is used for my separate HiFi setup.

There were more and worse disasters but I will bore you with it another day, meanwhile ......patience we are still here!!

Oh on the good side, I figured our how to reduce weight- I have dropped from 123 Kg (270 lb) down to an anorexic 109.4 Kg (241 lb) in 2 months. The trick is ZERO SUGAR. It really is everywhere, its boring but works. Even my tubby wife has dropped from 49 Kg to 46 Kg (101 lb), see below with our new wild / domesticated Lorikeet.

View attachment 111707

What a <bleep> <bleep> year you have had! Glad you're Ok and things are working out, albeit slowly (& investors always want to be the winners), but............ attacked by a crazy with a knife (snakes, spiders, salties I'd expect), what on earth happened?

The tame Lorikeet is great, but is your dog standing behind looking at it and thinking lunch?

 

[par4ken]

Chucky, that is an incredible story. I hope that the perpetrator was caught and is awaiting trial. I also hope that your country doesn't have a catch and release policy toward these violent offenders. With that attack coupled with your health problems you've been through so much.

You point out the pitfalls of being in business, a single bad debt or boneheaded government policy could easily put an otherwise viable company under. Looking at the products that you have produced you must be very proud of your accomplishments!

I share your concern over the recent censorship that this site has been going through. They actually installed a profanity blocker, even though there was no real problem to begin with! You can't even use an innocuous word like bitch. Another thread was renamed because the word political was in the title! Utter ridiculousness!

 

[Owen Smith]

There were more and worse disasters but I will bore you with it another day, meanwhile ......patience we are still here!!

Worse disasters than you've described? I shudder to think what they might have been.

 

[Owen Smith]

I share your concern over the recent censorship that this site has been going through. They actually installed a profanity blocker, even though there was no real problem to begin with!

That's the sort of thing that causes people living in the UK town of Scunthorpe problems entering their address.

 

[barfle]

That's the sort of thing that causes people living in the UK town of Scunthorpe problems entering their address.

Imagine if Matsushita had an office there!

 

[barfle]

Hey, @chucky3042, thanks for the rather harrowing update.

I had my own shop for a few years, and keeping the doors open is far harder than designing, manufacturing, and shipping products. Business is not for the faint of heart, although yours seems quite robust. Criminal attacks are terrible. Glad you were able to get the upper hand, and that the no-good, dirty, rotten, lousy scoundrel doesn’t see the outside until we are both long gone.

 

[ssully]

Why bother?

Because DPLII was (and still is, if you can find it) awesome?

If you're really interested in its history and not just snarking, see here. Its original purpose in 2007 was to decode Dolby-encoded (and to a lesser extent other-codec-encoded) 'stereo'.

 

[par4ken]

Because DPLII was (and still is, if you can find it) awesome?

If you're really interested in its history and not just snarking, see here. Its original purpose in 2007 was to decode Dolby-encoded (and to a lesser extent other-codec-encoded) 'stereo'.

Yes but it does a terrible job!

 

[ssully]

At what? I've used it as an upmixer in foobar2000 and it definitely served that purpose well.

I don't have much actual Dolby encoded 'stereo' content to decode, and I couldn't care less about its QS/SQ emulating powers.

It also went through a number of substantial upgrades, so version matters too.

 

[Owen Smith]

Yes but it does a terrible job!

DPL II Music mode does a much better job (to a 5.0 speaker system) on stereo music than anything modern AVRs have, like Dolby Surround Upmix, DTS Neural:X or Auro 2D. DTS Neural:X is too 4 corners and centre oriented. Dolby Surround Upmix is less offensive but still uses the centre way too much. And Auro 2D doesn't really do anything.

My Arcam AVR31 has no multi channel analogue ins so I can't use any legacy quad decoders or a Surround Master. If I could pay a licence fee to get DPL II Music on my AVR I would gladly do so.

 

[ssully]

Dolby Surround Upmix is less offensive but still uses the centre way too much.

I assume you've tried turning DSU Center Spread on/off?

(It's still not as good as DPLII Music mode, but it's at least something user-adjustable)

 

[chucky3042]

Dear Chucky

It seems Australia is still a dangerous place to live: Fights with a 25 cm long knife? Wow. My congratulations that you survived this and all the other health attacks. We have the same age: So I wish you and all the other staff members of your compynies all the best and lots of success!

May I talk a dream about your pre-amp? For me, a good phono preamp with all these anticlick enhancements would be more interesting than a "full" stereo preamp. You know, we are all quads her ;-)

And especially a phone preamp with future capabilites of CD-4 decoding...

My best wishes
Klaus

Hi Klaus
And the knife was 5 cm wide at the end, twice we were rolling around on the ground as I tried to talk to him, calm his psychotic state. Then I had to stop him committing suicide, fun afternoon.

Actually Australia is pretty safe, guns are gone but there is a youth knife culture. And every critter will kill you.

Here is a link to the thread talking about our soon to be pre amp. It really does do the noise / click/ crackle removal thing. With the current craze of vinyl I am hoping it will draw some attention to us. Also when you consider the loony prices some people get suckers on some mythical garbage while ours will be REAL!

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/coming-mini-black-box-pre-amp-master.31261/

Chat anytime on this.

Regards

 

[chucky3042]

What a <bleep> <bleep> year you have had! Glad you're Ok and things are working out, albeit slowly (& investors always want to be the winners), but............ attacked by a crazy with a knife (snakes, spiders, salties I'd expect), what on earth happened?

The tame Lorikeet is great, but is your dog standing behind looking at it and thinking lunch?

Actually the Rhodesian Greyhound likes the bird and is trying to make friends. Long story on the crazy guy, I am still getting over it.

 

[chucky3042]

Chucky, that is an incredible story. I hope that the perpetrator was caught and is awaiting trial. I also hope that your country doesn't have a catch and release policy toward these violent offenders. With that attack coupled with your health problems you've been through so much.

You point out the pitfalls of being in business, a single bad debt or boneheaded government policy could easily put an otherwise viable company under. Looking at the products that you have produced you must be very proud of your accomplishments!

I share your concern over the recent censorship that this site has been going through. They actually installed a profanity blocker, even though there was no real problem to begin with! You can't even use an innocuous word like bitch. Another thread was renamed because the word political was in the title! Utter ridiculousness!

I really agree with your comments.

In Australia unfortunately its two paths either criminal charges and jail or they release you into the community under "supervision" that does not work.

Australia has a Fred Flintstone economy , we do rocks and sheep, property, health care, tourism, education, public service, import and distribution. If it was not for our mining and farming we would be a basket case. We have zero local technology investment culture.

 

[chucky3042]

Hey, @chucky3042, thanks for the rather harrowing update.

I had my own shop for a few years, and keeping the doors open is far harder than designing, manufacturing, and shipping products. Business is not for the faint of heart, although yours seems quite robust. Criminal attacks are terrible. Glad you were able to get the upper hand, and that the no-good, dirty, rotten, lousy scoundrel doesn’t see the outside until we are both long gone.

I have been unemployed since 1986, I knew nothing then and I know fractionally more now.

The bad guy is still out there.

 

[Owen Smith]

I assume you've tried turning DSU Center Spread on/off?

I can't find any such setting on my Arcam AVR31. If anyone knows where it is please let me know.

 

[barfle]

Hi Klaus
And the knife was 5 cm wide at the end, twice we were rolling around on the ground as I tried to talk to him, calm his psychotic state. Then I had to stop him committing suicide, fun afternoon.

Actually Australia is pretty safe, guns are gone but there is a youth knife culture. And every critter will kill you.

Here is a link to the thread talking about our soon to be pre amp. It really does do the noise / click/ crackle removal thing. With the current craze of vinyl I am hoping it will draw some attention to us. Also when you consider the loony prices some people get suckers on some mythical garbage while ours will be REAL!

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/coming-mini-black-box-pre-amp-master.31261/

Chat anytime on this.

Regards

I have an old “Esoteric Audio” Surface Noise Reducer that used to be pretty darn good at removing clicks and pops. One of my records (bought used, cheap) sounds a bit like a popcorn machine when played directly, but is pretty listenable through the device (devise). And one day, it was no longer effective.

I haven’t actually been able to play vinyl since the movers busted my tonearm mounts six years ago, although I got a text that my new Pro-Ject is at the store yesterday.

Once your cleaner-upper hits the market, I’m pretty sure it will be the nexr shiny sparkling thing in my system. Will there be an equivalent to the SM evaluation module?