Are They 4.0 or 5.1 SACD Surround Sound?

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It’s just a typo guys, 4EW pulled that list from Mark Anderson’s quad discography. Yes, Streetlife is out on SACD, but Piano Man is SQ/Q8 and Turnstiles is only SQ. No digital reissues yet of those yet.

Sony Japan doing 52nd Street does give me hope though...
 
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I so implored Marshall to do "Turnstiles" but he would not pursue it because MFSL had already done it. Very sad. Same with Piano Man, but for me, Turnstiles would have been THE TICKET. Not sure if the Billy Joel's would be in D-V's price range, but if they were those two would be instant sell out titles I am sure.

Heck, I'd buy multiple copies myself!
 
I so implored Marshall to do "Turnstiles" but he would not pursue it because MFSL had already done it. Very sad. Same with Piano Man, but for me, Turnstiles would have been THE TICKET. Not sure if the Billy Joel's would be in D-V's price range, but if they were those two would be instant sell out titles I am sure.

Heck, I'd buy multiple copies myself!

Hopefully, SONY Japan will release both Turnstiles and Piano Man in their elegant 7" packaging.

Get your credit card ready, Jon. We're ALL suckers for those 7" 'beauties!'
 
I'm just dying to know what Turnstiles discrete mix actually sounds like. The SQ LP is kind of weird in places, very un-Columbia type mix with instruments appearing simultaneously at near-equal volume in all four speakers (piano in "New York State Of Mind", vocals in "James", etc). Yet at other points there is some very obvious hard-panned discrete information (sax left rear in "NY State", harmonizing saxes isolated in each rear speaker in "Summer, Highland Falls, backing vocals and percussion effects very prominent in the rears during "All You Want To Is Dance", etc).

Obviously all SQ decodes are flawed to some extent, but if there's no suppression on the vocals in the rear channels and you're using an advanced decoder or audition script, it probably means that vocal is intended to be audible to some extent in the rear channels. My theory is some cuts have reverb on the vocals in the rears and it's screwing with the decode. The quad mix of Paul Simon's debut album has the lead vocal at a slightly lower volume in the rear in some tracks, maybe the only time I've seen that in a Columbia quad mix, so maybe the Turnstiles quad has that kind of effect.

The other two BJ quads are obvious 4-corner mixes (Piano Man in particular is really extreme). This last one it seems is a bit more subtle and sophisticated. Unfortunately, SQ doesn't really do well with subtle and sophisticated :(.

So let's have that discrete mix now...;)
 
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I'm just dying to know what Turnstiles discrete mix actually sounds like. The SQ LP is kind of weird in places, very un-Columbia type mix with instruments appearing simultaneously at near-equal volume in all four speakers (piano in "New York State Of Mind", vocals in "James", etc). Yet at other points there is some very obvious hard-panned discrete information (sax left rear in "NY State", harmonizing saxes isolated in each rear speaker in "Summer, Highland Falls, backing vocals and percussion effects very prominent in the rears during "All You Want To Is Dance", etc).

Obviously all SQ decodes are flawed to some extent, but if there's no suppression on the vocals in the rear channels and you're using an advanced decoder or audition script, it probably means that vocal is intended to be audible to some extent in the rear channels. My theory is some cuts have reverb on the vocals in the rears and it's screwing with the decode. The quad mix of Paul Simon's debut album has the lead vocal at a slightly lower volume in the rear in some tracks, maybe the only time I've seen that in a Columbia quad mix, so maybe the Turnstiles quad has that kind of effect.

The other two BJ quads are obvious 4-corner mixes (Piano Man in particular is really extreme). This last one it seems is a bit more subtle and sophisticated. Unfortunately, SQ doesn't really do well with subtle and sophisticated :(.

So let's have that discrete mix now...;)

That is an excellent description of how the BJ quad mixes actually sound. (y)(y)(y)

I find Turnstyles to be my favorite of the three BJ quads, because of content and mix.

I think the "all channel vocals" production technique is often a conscious choice on the part of the artist/mixer. Several surround albums which I enjoy quite a bit use that technique. Natalie Merchant's Tigerlilly and more recently, Styx's The Mission.
 
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Thanks Moderator for the honor of putting my name on the start of this thread. 6 new DV's arrived yesterday, all 4.0.
Someday I can learn how to start/write my own thread, but not necessary yet. I don't want to get a big head.

Press the yellow button!

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Yes 4.1 SACD's are great
Still made at the same old Sony Factory in Austria that used to make the 5.1 for Sony SACD disc's, Its 4 Channels and the bass so it should be called 4.1. I have Billy Cobham Spectrum on 6.1 DVDA and Now the 4.1 SACD and they are both great. On the SACD the Guitarist Tommy Bolin gets his own rear speaker. By being 4.1 its costing them less to transfer the Original Quadraphonic tape into DSD 4.1 SACD.
 
Wasn't there a thread about this some time ago about it being a matter of your system setup causing the sub to activate rather than anything to do with the disc? My sub activates on all my 4.0/5.0 discs and I've just taken it to be something in the way I've got my system set up. True? Partly true?
 
hello Colin London - and welcome to QQ!

aren't those SACDs great!

just little things but fwiw the Spectrum DVD-A is 5.1 rather than 6.1 and the Spectrum SACD 'technically' 5.0. rather than 4.1.

I say technically because in a similar way to Dutton Vocalion, Audio Fidelity didn't muck about with 4-channel masters when they tackled them (the way Sony and DTS futzed about with them when they reissued Quads) so a 5th channel in any AF or DV SACDs utilising Quad/4.0 masters would have a silent/blank Centre channel for player/receiver/processor/DAC compatibility.
i'm not 100% sure if any of the AF Quad SACDs had a .1 channel but if they did it would almost certainly also have been silent/blank.
 
All quad SACDs from Dutton and AF are straight 4.0, with no Center or sub.

not to muddy the waters since they do indeed all have only 4 x channels of actual content but many are not assigned as 4.0, rather some from both labels have been 5.0 or somesuch other configuration. i'll run thru the discs, check for examples and post back here.
 
hello Colin London - and welcome to QQ!

aren't those SACDs great!

just little things but fwiw the Spectrum DVD-A is 5.1 rather than 6.1 and the Spectrum SACD 'technically' 5.0. rather than 4.1.

I say technically because in a similar way to Dutton Vocalion, Audio Fidelity didn't muck about with 4-channel masters when they tackled them (the way Sony and DTS futzed about with them when they reissued Quads) so a 5th channel in any AF or DV SACDs utilising Quad/4.0 masters would have a silent/blank Centre channel for player/receiver/processor/DAC compatibility.
i'm not 100% sure if any of the AF Quad SACDs had a .1 channel but if they did it would almost certainly also have been silent/blank.
hello Colin London - and welcome to QQ!

aren't those SACDs great!

just little things but fwiw the Spectrum DVD-A is 5.1 rather than 6.1 and the Spectrum SACD 'technically' 5.0. rather than 4.1.

I say technically because in a similar way to Dutton Vocalion, Audio Fidelity didn't muck about with 4-channel masters when they tackled them (the way Sony and DTS futzed about with them when they reissued Quads) so a 5th channel in any AF or DV SACDs utilising Quad/4.0 masters would have a silent/blank Centre channel for player/receiver/processor/DAC compatibility.
i'm not 100% sure if any of the AF Quad SACDs had a .1 channel but if they did it would almost certainly also have been silent/blank.


I guess its my Pioneer system making the extra bass speaker work , then.
 
Wasn't there a thread about this some time ago about it being a matter of your system setup causing the sub to activate rather than anything to do with the disc? My sub activates on all my 4.0/5.0 discs and I've just taken it to be something in the way I've got my system set up. True? Partly true?[/Q
By setting some or all of your speakers to "small" you've activated bass management. This re-directs frequencies below a certain point (in those "small" speakers) to the sub-woofer.
 
By setting some or all of your speakers to "small" you've activated bass management. This re-directs frequencies below a certain point (in those "small" speakers) to the sub-woofer.

I guess that's what's happening then. I don't remember actively making a choice of large or small for bass management - my sub is active no matter what I put on, even stereo, and I like it that way so I haven't tried to change anything. Thanks for the reply wavelength...
 
For the Vocalion SACD's, Foobar always says 6 channels, but of course shows the physical representation as 4.
My Oppo shows them as 5.1 in the onscreen display also, but here again only sound from the corners (unless I change the Onkyo's settings and derive some bass for the sub).
No wonder people get confused, for the love of Quad!
 
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