Cosmic Ground - Quad (4.0 mixes, download for free)

[bloop]

Hi fellow quadraphonicquad members,

Normally I am distributing my own music via bandcamp. Sadly, bandcamp doesn't support surround files and manufacturing a DVDA or Blu-Ray would not be good selling product.
So I decided to make my 4.0 quad mixes official at least, in this nice forum here where I wasn't writing that much, but reading a lot in the past 15 years.
I have chosen some personal favourites from my 4 studio albums for these 4.0 quad mixes.
no aggressive mastering for car, radio or mobile. I think you are all here have very good setups your living room, so these tracks provide full dynamics.

If you like 70s style, dark electronic, psychedelic and ambient music, made with analogue equipment, give this a surround mixes listen.
Download it for free from this link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1d27M953Ua4TPxy7DAWyTCCO3SHkSftZT
You will get 100 minutes in 7 tracks

4.0 and not 5.1 some people may ask?
At home, I am listening to 4.0 with an old Sansui quad receiver from the 70s, 4 speakers, no center or sub (had some different receivers in the past, but all of them were quad)
In the studio it's much easier to produce a 4.0 mix, than a 5.1. I am using digital recording, but my mixes are always analog.
I am not a big fan of center speakers. For me they only work in a cinema or for movies, but at home I don't need a center. A voice can also be placed in the middle front without a center speaker. But that's just my point of view.

 

[GOS]

You are most generous. Thanks for doing this, I'm downloading now. Cannot wait to hear the music.
I'll let you know.

 

[Glenshoreham]

Thankyou very much, Mr. bloop. I'll try to keep an evening free this week to listen. Looking forward to it!

 

[GOS]

Hey Bloop! Again, I do appreciate you offering these up. I find the music very interesting. While I might be the last guy to fully understand what it means to be dynamic, but I thought I knew. A few of the songs do appear to be dynamic in nature, but the 2nd song (Progeny) seems horribly compressed. (LOUD)

Am I not understanding what you mean by dynamic? I only ask, to help me understand all the terminology. Here are waveforms for the 2nd song, Progeny. It does seem brickwalled, in part. Right? (particularly from 5:00 - 17:00) Or maybe Audacity does a poor job of visualizing this....

 

[bloop]

by dynamics, I am talking about these quiet passages you can see in your screenshot.
If this track would have been brickwalled, these passages would be much higher in peak.

I only used a bass compressor to compress some peaks. You will see it, when you zoom in the loud passages.
A zoomed out screenshot like yours this always looks bad and doesn't really show what's going on.

this graphic shows the loudest passage in the track and the waves are all fine and not cut

really brickwalled would look like this (just did this for the graphic!)

But I posted this, not to discuss mastering.
It's about the music...

 

[mlrocker]

awesome MR Bloop! Can I interest you in allowing me to add you as a featured artist in my HOUSE of QUAD Ebay store? I specialize in Quad reel to reel tapes.

 

[bayards]

Downloaded and will listen today. Many thanks!!

 

[Glenshoreham]

I listened to the tracks last night. I play multichannel flac from USB stick in my Oppo 103D, through my Denon processor & Rotel amp, and I should point out that my front and rear speakers are not the same. (I have floorstanders for fronts, and bookshelf speakers for rears, which I have learned isn't ideal for quad.) I increased volume levels of the rear channels slightly for these tracks, so the rears would be about as audible as the fronts. I found this to be a very cool listening experience. Each track made me think of either ambient cinemascapes (70s-80s sci-fi, for instance), or dystopian video game music. I don't have much ambient music in my collection, and most of it is 1990s dance stuff, such as System 7. This is a great addition, and I appreciate your making it available to us.

Many thanks again, Mr. bloop!

 

[CRWSurround]

Hi fellow quadraphonicquad members,

Normally I am distributing my own music via bandcamp. Sadly, bandcamp doesn't support surround files and manufacturing a DVDA or Blu-Ray would not be good selling product.
So I decided to make my 4.0 quad mixes official at least, in this nice forum here where I wasn't writing that much, but reading a lot in the past 15 years.
I have chosen some personal favourites from my 4 studio albums for these 4.0 quad mixes.
no aggressive mastering for car, radio or mobile. I think you are all here have very good setups your living room, so these tracks provide full dynamics.

If you like 70s style, dark electronic, psychedelic and ambient music, made with analogue equipment, give this a surround mixes listen.
Download it for free from this link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1d27M953Ua4TPxy7DAWyTCCO3SHkSftZT
You will get 100 minutes in 7 tracks

4.0 and not 5.1 some people may ask?
At home, I am listening to 4.0 with an old Sansui quad receiver from the 70s, 4 speakers, no center or sub (had some different receivers in the past, but all of them were quad)
In the studio it's much easier to produce a 4.0 mix, than a 5.1. I am using digital recording, but my mixes are always analog.
I am not a big fan of center speakers. For me they only work in a cinema or for movies, but at home I don't need a center. A voice can also be placed in the middle front without a center speaker. But that's just my point of view.

I just downloaded your file. Thank you! I look forward to listening to it. I am a new member to this site and forum and still have much to learn. How do I play back the file from my computer and get quad channels to feed to my 6.1 surround sound system? I have been buying the Quad SACD's from DuttonVocalion and they sound great on my system but I do not know how I can play your files and get the Quad I want to hear. Thanks and pardon my lack of knowledge.

 

[mlrocker]

I play downloaded surround files too. I'm generally using the VLC media player (freely downloadsble from the internet). Configure the computer sound output to the HDMI port. The HDMI cable goes to the HDMI input port on my Yamaha surround sound receiver.
Then it's just a matter of selecting the right input source on the Yamaha to hear the multi-channel music in the speakers.

 

[CRWSurround]

Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately my Yamaha Surround Sound Receive does not have an HDMI input. It is probably just a bit too old. It does have numerous optical inputs but my computer does not have an optical output for sound. I suspect the age of my receive my be the limiting factor. However, you did give me an idea - - - I will try using the HDMI input to the Smart TV which does feed into my receiver and the receiver does pick up the surround sound signals from the TV in both ES(DTS) and Dolby Digital formats - - maybe that will work.

 

[mlrocker]

Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately my Yamaha Surround Sound Receive does not have an HDMI input. It is probably just a bit too old. It does have numerous optical inputs but my computer does not have an optical output for sound. I suspect the age of my receive my be the limiting factor. However, you did give me an idea - - - I will try using the HDMI input to the Smart TV which does feed into my receiver and the receiver does pick up the surround sound signals from the TV in both ES(DTS) and Dolby Digital formats - - maybe that will work.

yes good. When you come to a dead end you get frustrated, then you go looking for connector/converters, external soundcards on ebay...and doing research on QQ.

 

[beerking]

I found this in my download folder on the PC and realised I hadn't added it to my hard drive.
Just highlighting it for new and existing members who may have missed it
I think its cool

 

[bayards]

Hi Beerking. I can't see a link in your post. Could you help? Thanks.

Doh! Saw it...thanks!

 

[beerking]

No problem