May 13, 1972
At AES Meet: 'Q' Systems' Battle
LOS ANGELES-
The dogfight between matrix and discrete quadrasonic advocates broke out here at the 42nd annual Audio Engineering Society convention, although the debate was in general more intellectual than previous meetings except when Ben Bauer, head of CBS Laboratories, referred to discrete advocates there as "skunks."
In general, the AES convention was highly loaded with matrix people, hut the excitement and the fever seemed to be with discrete.
After Lou Warren of Quadracast Systems and James Gabbert of
KIOI-FM radio, San Francisco,
delivered their presentation - the one that prompted Bauer to state he would not engage in a certain type of contest with skunks-engineers crowded around them in the hallway.
The Victor Company of Japan, manufacturer of discrete record playback equipment, was on hand and demonstrating not only some of the CD-4 albums made in Japan, but RCA Records' new discrete
releases by Hugo Montenegro and Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra. But, on the matrix side, Sansui, Electro-Voice, and CBS' SQ could be found in other demonstrations.
At one point during the sessions at the Stater Hilton Hotel here, a chairman referred to the sessions at the "quadrasonic follies." Howard Durbin, senior vice president of Electro-Voice, said in his presentation May 3 that he hoped the industries could work together to make quadrasonic a positive thing. .
that manufacturers should forget their own egos ... that all had something to offer. But, at the same time, he felt it "quite unlikely" that you could get a full orchestra out of four discrete channels.
Sansui's presentation, read by Sid Silver, pointed to the development of a variable matrix system to provide better separation in matrix records, a flaw in matrix product, he said, even though an "outstanding advantage of matrix systems is the relatively simple hardware."
Bob Ashley, a professor at the
AES-Quadrasonic Dogfight
University of Colorado, pointed out that the dollars of any music system would be in record sales-and AM and FM radio station programming. Though he felt a better sound could be had if the consumer invested the same amount of money in a higher-quality stereo system than a quadrasonic system, he did state that he felt contemporary music was better in 4-channel sound.
Bauer, in his second talk on May 4, did admit that the SQ system did not permit the placement of a voice or instrument in dead center at the back, but that
"you still have 320 degrees to work with." He said that record producers had been informed of this; he stated that there was no loss of signal in monaural playback of an SQ record. The SQ system, he said, had been adopted by some of the largest record companies in the world and "by June, two dozen leading manufacturers of records will begin intensive marketing of SQ product."
The potential benefits of quadrasonic sound are now available to FM broadcasters, he said, because of the growing libraries of music available in SQ. In the question and answer session, he said that every matrix system has its blessing and its curses. Lou Dorren, discrete advocate, and John Mosley, consultant for the Sansui matrix system, countered many of Bauer's claims from the audience.
Peter Scheiber, inventor of a matrix system, took Bauer's side and denied that matrix was a ripoff, a claim that Gabbert had earlier made.
Schieber, head of Audiodata Co., had stated in his own May 3 presentation that the RCA Records discrete disk "may turn out to be a marvelous audiophile medium but he didn't think the discrete disk would put the stereo disk out of business. He said that he personally wanted to see how much music could be gotten out of a stereo record . . . that the stereo record had always had more capabilities than had been exploited.
Jim Gabbert, detailing experiments in 1969 with quadrasonic broadcasts from ½-inch master tapes, said he'd become an "in-stant convert" to discrete quadrasonic sound and that matrix systems were totally inadequate for broadcasting. . .
"matrix is basically a ripoff, not for real. Why build limitations into a system in regards to matrix that isn't there in the discrete system?" The SQ system, for example, he said was not compatible with monaural.
KIOI-FM has filed for a declaratory rulemaking regarding broadcasting in the Lou Dorren discrete broadcasting system, he said, and that he may launch quadrasonic discrete broadcasts on May 10.
Dorren, pointing out that RCA Records unveiled a discrete disk system at Billboard's International Music Industry Conference in Acapulco last week, said that all matrix systems did not provide valid enough separation. In the technical presentation, he outlined aspects of the broadcasting system, which is currently pending approval of the Federal Communications Commission. In the question and answer session, he stated that the SCA band would have to be moved and Gabbert added that very few successful FM broadcasters today even used the SCA band.
As a rule, it seemed that all matrix advocates measured themselves to discrete. Bauer, for example, in his May 3 talk stated that more expensive SQ equipment will provide "more-nearly discrete capabilities"; this, through a new logic system which will boost sounds in certain of the four speakers. Many of the matrix advocaters spoke of trying to capitalize on acoustic phenomenons.
Previous matrix vs. discrete debates came during the annual conventions of the National Association of
Broadcasters and the National Association of FM Broadcasters recently in Chicago. Aside from a myrid of smaller confer-ences, usually on college campuses, the next matrix vs. discrete clash will be during the coming Consumer Electronics Show June 11-14 in Chicago.
