Is it possible that some LP's have been released recorded with matrix SQ/QS or other modern matrix surround and not designated as Quad/surround?

[Bakerman]

This past year I pulled my vintage late 70's JVC component audio system out of storage for many years, as I finally made myself a mancave to set up all my audio/video gear, vintage and new. I also have a decent Pioneer turntable from the same era and I upgraded the needle to a quality $300 one (it sounds fantastic). The JVC Amplifier (150 watt per channel, 200w peak) is Quadraphonic, though the right channel amp is bad. So in the meantime I bought a decent quality Pyle amplifier (50 watt per channel, 75w peak) with 5.1 surround until I get around to repairing my JVC amp.

Anyway, this past year I have been getting back into Vinyl in a big way, purchasing quite a few remastered LP's in the audiophile 180-200g, with DMM manufacture technique, and some even double LP format for superior sound quality too.

But I have noticed that while playing a couple of these remastered LP's, like Rush's 2112 remaster, that while listening to them through my 5.1 amp, that there are distinctly different sounds/instruments sounding like they are coming from the rear speakers and not just what is coming out of the front speakers. And in a few of Neil Peart's drum solos on the album, when he runs the gambit of drum kit surrounding him, that it's seems to be going in a full 360 degree circle around me and not just panning from side to side. Now this could just be incredible sound scaping on the remastered stereo recordings, along with my precise speaker arrangement to maximize the sound stage/scape, but it really seems like I'm getting true surround/Quad sound.

So this leads me back to the question posed in the title of this thread...?

 

[ndiamone]

Well you have to remember a few things:
A) Really good stereo mixing and mastering done by guys from the early days of stereo can sound profoundly well through a surround system regardless of vintage or whether the matrix mix was performed on purpose or not.

1 Most people have only heard the grunged-up million-plus-seller LP masters of whatever it is - regardless if it's on LP or CD or the STEREO layer of an SACD which is way too often the same tired old master used a million times.

2 When a mastering engineer does e.g. a 45-RPM Super-Sonic or Half-Speed remaster, he's going to get a tape that's a lot better sounding than your run of the mill master everybody's heard for e.g. 50 years.

3 Case-in-point (from her 60th anniversary of her plane crash earlier this month on the way back from the Cactus Jack DJ benefit show she participated in from his own death earlier that year in a car crash).

4 The normal 15 IPS 2-track LP master that has been around for 55 years has the vocal slightly off to the side and all kinds of muddiness from having too many generations applied to the original 3-track session masters from 1959-63.

5 Before the 1991 box set, they went back to the original 3-track session tapes and mixed afresh - eliminating probably 2 or 3 generations of crap - and used that resulting 2-track digitally-remixed master for the MCA UltraDisc for the 20th anniversary of the original release.

6 Play that through any vintage quad decoder amp, especially set to QS and blow all your neighbor mens' minds.

B) When you take the 45 Super-Sonic or Half-Speed Mastered or 200G or whatever vinyl and play that through the same matrix surround system, it's going to sound even better because generally those audiophile engineers will take advantage of the thick lacquer coating on the master disc and
i) come close to maxing out its' 100-and-some micron depth
ii) space the grooves out to probably a third over from what you'd get on a standard cut
iii) that decoder will pick up more of the L-R vertically modulated signal than it would have had access to on a conventional LP or CD pressing.

C) And then there's the mixing and mastering engineers that had no access to an e.g. Quad-Eight CompuMix or whatever but knew that a fairly close approximation of all the engineering principles could be accomplished via other means - and then cut their lacquers in the same extra-deep fashion we are talking about that would later be done by all the Half-Speed-Mastered and 45 Super-Sonic and etc people.

There's a couple others to check out, one being Laura Nyro's first album. ``Discovery''. Get a normal period-specific 140-gram copy that came out in 1966 and then get a normal copy on Columbia retitled `The First Songs' and hear the difference.

Then get another Columbia copy cut deep-and-wide-grooved on a Westrex that runs nearly to the label and compare that to an 80s Columbia pressing cut on a Neumann via CompUDisc (you can tell because the grooves migrate over once a revolution instead of being a normal spiral) and give that a listen.

Same for Judy Collins ``Wildflowers''. Period-specific original, remaster from `72 the Half-Speed-Master from `76 and the 200G from 1983 just to name a couple.

The new `Supertramp Breakfast in America' is another fine example that's removed a lot of the grunge we've been listening to even on CD for over 40 years.

The new Air Supply `Greatest Hits' is another example, although the original single mixes with their nice deep wide grooves lends itself very well to matrix quadraphonic reproduction all by themselves as does the single to `Love's Theme' by Barry White, ELO `Greatest Hits' Steve Miller `Fly Like an Eagle' (promo on blue vinyl) and tons and tons and tons of others.

So if some little junior engineer made himself a QS or SQ mix off a master that was left laying out one night because the real engineers were coming back in six or eight hours to pick up where they left off at - and then somebody else discovered it later (especially true in the run-up where guys were still experimenting with matrix mixes - as well as in the run-out days after quad had ``officially died'' in 1978 - who knows.

 

[ndiamone]

D) Other times, the remixed front channels of a mix intended for CD-4 discrete will escape and become an actual plain stereo LP master for other countries. Acts produced on CD-4 in the US often times escaped to e.g. England or Germany or somewhere as JUST STEREO LPs -.but using the front half or the Front-plus-Rear remix. With that redone Front-plus-Rear mix intended for CD-4, the perfectly centered vocal intended for holophonic-in-your-lap reproduction in CD-4 lights up the matrix like you wouldn't believe. A lot of Melissa Manchester, Gordon Lightfoot, Barry Manilow, Roberta Flack and so on acts that were on CD-4 here are some good examples.

E) Rarely will you get any decent matrix surrounds off of a DMM - although there are a few noted exceptions from the early 80s most of which are Teldec cuts and most of which are either classical or Broadway/concept albums. This is because for the most part, DMM grooves are very shallow, around 50 or 60 microns. Noplace to live for a decent L-R or `difference' signal upon which all matrix quad depends.

A decent 45 or LP cut on a lacquer with normal-depth grooves should be in the 80s or 90s. Hot 45s like they used to send to AM radio are in the high 90s sometimes even crossing 100 - which is alright because most lacquers have padding enough to where you won't crash into the aluminum if you do a 100-mil cut.

But get a German Teldec DMM of the Chess concept album from 1984 or their Les Mis concept album from around the same time with the purple cover. There's also a DMM for ABBA: The Singles - The First Ten Years which despite using inferior quality 2-track master tapes (listed on the ABBA Website as well as their better alternatives) and you will see just how good a DMM can sound. Too bad they almost never cut deep enough to get it.

F) Some others you can prove this with.
Get a normal ordinary run of the mill 140 gram 1969 copy of ``The Peppermint Rainbow'' and play the opening cut `Will You Be Staying After Sunday' with the opening drum track panning across the stereo stage. See if you don't hear that same sweep starting off in the rear, sweeping across the front and ending up in the rear on the other side. When the girls come in, see if they're not a little left and right with each other with the boys in the rears.

Try the re-cut Lemon Pipers on their `Green Tambourine' and see if the electric sitar doesn't have echo returns coming from the rears just like they were placed there on purpose. `Ring of Fire' album by Johnny Cash is another one - especially for a Civil War track called`` The Big Battle'' (I think sir the battle is over etc). The boys and their ``broom broom'' should be all over the rears and the banjo should move around a little bit.

Start picking up odd bits of here-and-there and see what decodes well.

 

[kfbkfb]

Fun fact:
The Sansui QS matrix was originally developed to create fake surround sound from any stereo source (only later were QS encoding equations developed):

https://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/sansui/qs-1.shtml
(IMHO, some of the claims are a little OTT though)


Kirk Bayne

 

[ndiamone]

Glad you brought that up. Brings to mind the perfect example of the 1970-`72 remaster for the vast majority of the Glen Grey/Casa Lomans Ray Anthony's Glenn Miller Orchestra from the late 50s and the newly contracted Billy May tracks from ten years later cut specifically for Time-Life `The Swing Era' and `As You Remember Them' box sets that have been clogging thrift shops across the county for 50 years.

If you listen to the five Glen Grey tracks featured on the original flexidisc advertisements torn out of the magazines, they have an extra line that says ``If you'll take a look at our letter, we think you'll be fascinated by the Stories and Pictures of The Swing Era as well.''

The ``Letter'' (printed on the back of the magazine flexidiscs - states that ``we fooled you into thinking the first samples were from original shellac 78s'' when in fact they were also the new recordings, piped through a similar processor and having the rest of it stripped away (all the reverb and ambience and such) and then scratchy-record sound effects mixed in after the fact to create the ``scratchy old 78s''.

You can do the same thing yourself but only on the original run of 3-disc sets with the bi-color labels. The Capitol Maxi-Flex series with the grey labels will absolutely not decode, nor will the CDs. It's as if they ran it through the aforementioned decoder and then threw half of it away to make the remaster.

Enormous amounts of late-50s stereo-demo records will also decode fabulously in their original incarnations. Drag around for an original Somerset Sound copy of the 101 Strings `Spain' and play Chabrier's Espana (Hot Diggety Dog Diggety) and see if you are not smack in the middle of an orchestra.

Same thing for the 1957 recording of `Charmaine' by Mantovani that heads up his 1957 collection of Greatest Hits. Same with `Way Back Home' from Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians `In Hi Fi' (and Stereo).

Same with all the RCA Camden ``Living...'' (Brass, Strings, Voices, etc) that populated the 60s fairly heavily and for a fairly late edition, Phil Bodner's Brass Ring doing Lennon/McCartney `Theme from `Family Affair' (Love in the Open Air).

My personal experience is of course with classical, jazz, light rock and easy listening (WQSO, Easy. Quadraphonic. FM 99 Surround Yourself with Grace and Elegance. 24 hours a day 7 days a week.''
back when most of the harder stations either switched off at night or changed formats to lighter fare.
(spoken with a voice that could put King Kong to sleep). but there are all kinds of examples from
harder-edged genres of music - and we'd be here for weeks listing them all.

See my other thread about guys doing upmixing with old QSD-1s and 5s and 10s (no 20s or 50s though)
tracking them onto 4-track quad reel to reel and hawking them as if they were the real thing produced by the radio station production library houses.

 

[jaybird100]

D) Other times, the remixed front channels of a mix intended for CD-4 discrete will escape and become an actual plain stereo LP master for other countries. Acts produced on CD-4 in the US often times escaped to e.g. England or Germany or somewhere as JUST STEREO LPs -.but using the front half or the Front-plus-Rear remix. With that redone Front-plus-Rear mix intended for CD-4, the perfectly centered vocal intended for holophonic-in-your-lap reproduction in CD-4 lights up the matrix like you wouldn't believe. A lot of Melissa Manchester, Gordon Lightfoot, Barry Manilow, Roberta Flack and so on acts that were on CD-4 here are some good examples.

E) Rarely will you get any decent matrix surrounds off of a DMM - although there are a few noted exceptions from the early 80s most of which are Teldec cuts and most of which are either classical or Broadway/concept albums. This is because for the most part, DMM grooves are very shallow, around 50 or 60 microns. Noplace to live for a decent L-R or `difference' signal upon which all matrix quad depends.

A decent 45 or LP cut on a lacquer with normal-depth grooves should be in the 80s or 90s. Hot 45s like they used to send to AM radio are in the high 90s sometimes even crossing 100 - which is alright because most lacquers have padding enough to where you won't crash into the aluminum if you do a 100-mil cut.

But get a German Teldec DMM of the Chess concept album from 1984 or their Les Mis concept album from around the same time with the purple cover. There's also a DMM for ABBA: The Singles - The First Ten Years which despite using inferior quality 2-track master tapes (listed on the ABBA Website as well as their better alternatives) and you will see just how good a DMM can sound. Too bad they almost never cut deep enough to get it.

F) Some others you can prove this with.
Get a normal ordinary run of the mill 140 gram 1969 copy of ``The Peppermint Rainbow'' and play the opening cut `Will You Be Staying After Sunday' with the opening drum track panning across the stereo stage. See if you don't hear that same sweep starting off in the rear, sweeping across the front and ending up in the rear on the other side. When the girls come in, see if they're not a little left and right with each other with the boys in the rears.

Try the re-cut Lemon Pipers on their `Green Tambourine' and see if the electric sitar doesn't have echo returns coming from the rears just like they were placed there on purpose. `Ring of Fire' album by Johnny Cash is another one - especially for a Civil War track called`` The Big Battle'' (I think sir the battle is over etc). The boys and their ``broom broom'' should be all over the rears and the banjo should move around a little bit.

Start picking up odd bits of here-and-there and see what decodes well.

I don't think it's the depth of the groove that matters; rather, the amount of out-of-phase information in the mix. Matrix-encoding, for quad, utilizes phase shifting in precise amounts, applied by the encoder, according to the quad mix of the recording. Any quad effect you get from stereo records, CD's, etc. are purely at random. They weren't planned for. Decoders for the QS/RM work best for extracting a surround effect from stereo recordings, I use my Surround Master, in the Involve 4.1 setting, for this, and the results are quite interesting. Some records deliver more of an effect than others, but more of the detail in the music is revealed, too.

 

[etzeppy]

Hendrix's Electric Ladyland is pretty well known for fake quad when played on a QS system or Pro Logic II. The basic CD version through a Pro Logic II system has interesting separation that almost sounds intentional.

 

[ndiamone]

I don't think it's the depth of the groove that matters; rather, the amount of out-of-phase information in the mix.

A) The latter is generally the cause of the former BUT
B) Mastering engineers can choose to enhance leave the same or suppress the vertical information by their cut.

So that explains as discussed above why shallow-cut versions of the exact same stereo mixes - and some CDs decode very flat and two-dimensional compared to their deeper-grooved counterparts? I perform the exact same playback AND RECORDING demonstrations discussed above and more every year for the junior college sound engineering kids I teach.

Every year they accuse me of playback manipulation behind the scenes til I make `em play the same records in the front of the room themselves without touching anything other than the disc and the tonearm. The same holds true for cutting on the lacquer. As everybody knows, not only can you set the groove depth of a cut on any stereo lathe/head, you can also adjust the ratio between lateral and vertical - especially on the Fairchild lateral-and-vertical lathe we have which goes through the same L+R/L-R matrix to convert to 45/45 stereo.

I've cut pieces on there that do MARVELOUS upon matrix playback, and the same exact master tape in the same exact condition cut on the e.g. stereo 45/45 Westrex head on a Scully lathe with no other differences whatsoever are back to sounding flat and boxy.

The reverse has proven to be true as well. Some cuts on the Scully/Westrex with the groove depth set to normal have decoded alright - nothing spectacular - but then you take the depth up a little bit and leave everything else alone and WOW.

The aforementioned Patsy Cline's Greatest Hits (1967 - recorded between 1959-63) at the top of this page is the perfect example for the reasons stated - and the results are visible in the disc itself. Perform the playback test as I indicated it above. Start off with a normal 140-gram 1967 Decca pressing, then go to the 90-gram MaxiFlex series vinyl which sound very flat and boxy when decoded - and then play the aforementioned 45 RPM Super-Sonic 2-disc edition.

If you look at the pictures of the latter, you can see how much more vertical information is there compared to all the other pressings - and when you play the disc, it shows up in how well the decoder works.

Keeping with the Patsy Cline theme - the conventional MCA masterings/pressings of the `Sweet Dreams' soundtrack - albeit including the fact that some numbers have a new backing track added in to the classic vocal performance - the difference is striking from the normal MCA commercial release cut on the Neumann at Sterling Sound which has very shallow grooves and barely decodes at all and the RCA Record Club edition cut on the Scully at Columbia Nashville and pressed at RCA in Indianapolis which was cut deep as it would have been back in the 60s.

Exact same mix, one cut with a deeper groove and one cut with a shallower groove and no other difference. You perform the same test the same as I do every year in class and you see what you think.

Matrix-encoding, for quad, utilizes phase shifting in precise amounts, applied by the encoder, according to the quad mix of the recording. Any quad effect you get from stereo records, CD's, etc. are purely at random. They weren't planned for.

No argument there. But like I said - there can be VAST differences in the type, quality and depth of these ``accidental surrounds'' depending on the cut, as I prove to the music engineering kids every year in class.

Decoders for the QS/RM work best for extracting a surround effect from stereo recordings, I use my Surround Master, in the Involve 4.1 setting, for this, and the results are quite interesting. Some records deliver more of an effect than others, but more of the detail in the music is revealed, too.

Again - between the extraction just discussed, all Lt/Rt combination matrices all work off the same principal. If you work in a movie theatre in the classic days of Dolby Surround cinema, you know about the four trim-pot adjustments on the back for Left, Right, L+R and L-R.

Even though Dolby Surround in the 70s never had split surrounds/5.1 and was built to enhance center channel dialogue, you can take any Dolby Stereo test film (or any similarly mixed stereo music with or without the Dolby Surround matrix encoding) and turn the L-R trimpot all the way down.

You will still get perfectly fine 3-channel Left, Center and Right stereo, but the surround channel(s) will effectively be turned off or rendered very low by comparison. The reverse is also true. An operator can increase the trimpot value for L-R and leave everything else alone and all of a sudden theatre patrons are drowning in surround.

Some prints would even come in from other theatres in or out of the same chain with little white cards in suggesting a percentage setting for the surrounds trimpot (/, \, |, etc). Doing so would often increase attendance and therefore revenue at our theatre the same as they would in the bigger movie palaces.

We used to get in all kinds of trouble from theatre brass for running the normal stereo intermission music with normal amounts of L-R signal, and
A) piping it through the Dolby Surround decoders
B) cranking the L-R trimpot up to max in doing so
til we forgot to turn the trimpot back down again for the feature

After the third or fourth time getting caught doing that, we'd do the same thing as the guys on eBay are now trying to hawk their own upmixes by simply playing normal stereo material through a Dolby Surround or other matrix decoder the same as we did and turning up the L-R in the process.

The resulting 4-track inline 4-channel tapes most people can't tell the difference, since the ones we'd choose would have the most active surrounds compared to other music - regardless of maxing out the L-R decoder trimpot or not.

Discrete 4-track playback was easy enough in the theatre as every house had provisions for discrete 4-track magnetic surround that hadn't been used in 20 years - but the discrete 4-track amps were still there. So we'd wire it up to take the hots from the left and right for the center amp and blend the two rear channels we made back into one and pipe that through the surround amp.

Once 5.1 came around and we had split surrounds after that, we just left the center channel off and piped the 4 discrete tracks of our 4-channel inline tapes we made through the 4 discrete amps and let the public enjoy their intermission music in synthesized quad.

What the eBay guys are doing on the other thread is nothing different - except they are trying to SELL theirs as ``authentic record-label engineered quadraphonic-on-purpose'' with artist involvement and the whole nine yards when all they did was the same as we did and the same as the radio music library production houses did -
i) run the normal stereo feeds through one decoder or the next (sometimes simultaneously and choosing the best surround channels of all of them for the final 4-channel mix),
ii) max out the surround settings on each one
iii) record the result on 4-channel inline tape
and send them out to the radio stations which would then re-encode the matrix on their end prior to broadcasting.

40 years later I'm still amazed at the number of ``REAL'' i.e Drake Chenault etc produced in the fashion discussed above ``quadraphonic'' programming reels floating around that have nothing to do with
a) the real period-specific quadraphonic mix by the label if there was one
b) later versions that would be remixed from the multitracks by e.g. Dutton Vocalion UK etc.

So groove depth DOES make a difference and you'd be wise to try the above comparisons yourself before you judge. yes they are still all ``accidental'' surrounds, but that doesn't change the fact that different mastering and cutting techniques do affect the results coming out of the decoder just the same as different matrices.

So try it and see what you find out.

 

[Bakerman]

Thanks for all the replies guys and more new-to-me knowledge and great answers to my question about Quad/surround sound coming from what I thought was a purely stereo recording. At least I know my ears and brain are still good and not playing tricks on me. I've listened to plenty of stereo recordings, from the gambit of media; vinyl, several magnetic tape formats and CD and heard only the expected front L/R channels from the rear on my Quad and surround amps.

But several new Rush anniversary re-issues though, all on 180-200g vinyl, remastered from original analog masters, and cut at half-speed DMM (one album is a double LP to boot!) all seem have audio not on the front speakers coming out the rear speakers through my 5.1 surround. They are all the best sounding LP's I've ever owned and are totally silent between tracks. And though I always clean my LP's and needle before playing, these albums also have a decided lack of pops and crackles too than my non DMM records.

I guess the combination of the quality records (manufactured by Quality Records but the remastering was done at Abbey Road, not at Acoustic Sounds) incredible remastering and sound stage/scaping, and throw in reasons you guys mentioned I might hear quad/surround sounds from a stereo recording, and a pretty decent sound system, if I do say so myself, along with proper sound staging of my own speakers for the optimum soundscape for the room has apparently all converged to give me some decent sounding surround audio decoding from these anniversary RUSH albums, whether it's a bunch of happy mistakes or great forethought from some incredible Master Engineers.

 

[barfle]

One of my favorite demos is a handful of “Wind in the Trees” ambient records played through an SQ decoder. The uncorrellated pink noise (pretty much what wind in the trees is) has so much phase wandering that the rears are just as full of sound as the fronts. I notice that after a couple of releases, some of the companies started branding their records with “stereo/quadraphonic” on the covers, so I figure someone at the record company noticed that, too.

I have another record that has a 300Hz tone on one side and a 303Hz tone on the other. That causes the phase relationship to rotate full ciircle three times a second, causing the tone to sweep around the room three times a second.

Both very cool effects, and certainly not anything intended by the recording team at the time. Artifacts can be both amazing and annoying.

 

[kfbkfb]

From my casual observation, the MQA remastered CD of "The Best of Joe Walsh" (as compared to the original CD) has the bass and treble turned up and I believe the remasterers (is this a word?) converted the stereo to L+R and L-R, turned up the volume of the L-R and converted it back to stereo.

The MQA CD sounds more "spacious" and decodes with more content routed to LB and RB with DPL2 music mode.


I doubt if the people doing vinyl disc remastering spend money to do an L+R & L-R conversion, raise the volume of the L-R signal and convert it back to L & R though.


Kirk Bayne

 

[jaybird100]

One of my favorite demos is a handful of “Wind in the Trees” ambient records played through an SQ decoder. The uncorrellated pink noise (pretty much what wind in the trees is) has so much phase wandering that the rears are just as full of sound as the fronts. I notice that after a couple of releases, some of the companies started branding their records with “stereo/quadraphonic” on the covers, so I figure someone at the record company noticed that, too.

I have another record that has a 300Hz tone on one side and a 303Hz tone on the other. That causes the phase relationship to rotate full ciircle three times a second, causing the tone to sweep around the room three times a second.

Both very cool effects, and certainly not anything intended by the recording team at the time. Artifacts can be both amazing and annoying.

Pretty much any matrixed quad LP could be labeled "Stereo/quadraphonic", indicating the record will sound great, whether or not it's decoded. Syntonic Research released a series of albums in their "Environments" series of ambient recordings, that claimed to use a "proprietary" encoding system. They sounded good in stereo, and fully enveloped the listener when played through any matrix decoder.

 

[MidiMagic]

There are quite a few ways that records labeled "stereo" can have sound in what seems to be matrix quadraphonic.

- Movie soundtrack albums made after 1977 may actually be in Dolby Surround if the sound was taken from the film. I have quite a few of these.

- Many sound mixers liked to create "wide stereo" by feeding some of the part made wide into the other channel out of phase. This is essentially the same as encoding the LB or RB channel in QS.

- Likewise, many sound mixers put the reverb in these wide positions, again making QS back channel encodes.

- Likewise, some live performances were recorded with audience pickup mics that were fed out-of-phase into the mix.

- Live performances with many microphones can pick up sounds entering multiple mics with phase relations that make signals that encode either QS or SQ.

- Recordings using the Blumlein pair of mics or the Mid-Side method pick up a lot of out-of-phase material from the audience and the concert hall acoustics.

- The Haeco method of reducing the oversize center solo in a stereo recording puts parts into the SQ LB and RB. I have "SQ" recordings made before quadraphonics existed.

- I know of several recording artists and engineers who recorded in Dolby Surround or SQ without telling their record companies they had done so. I know that Meco Monardo and Vangelis did this.

-The Beach Boys made tracks in the Hafler Diamond system. Originally the albums were labeled as playing on Dynaquad, but the the record company removed that because the records were being put in a quadraphonic bin instead of the Beach Boys bin.

 

[barfle]

Pretty much any matrixed quad LP could be labeled "Stereo/quadraphonic", indicating the record will sound great, whether or not it's decoded. Syntonic Research released a series of albums in their "Environments" series of ambient recordings, that claimed to use a "proprietary" encoding system. They sounded good in stereo, and fully enveloped the listener when played through any matrix decoder.

Those are, indeed, some of the records I was referring to. Of course, a “proprietary” encoding scheme means absolutely nothing with the sounds they are recording. Matrix decoders have a field day with that sort of signal, and there’s really no need to encode anything.

 

[par4ken]

-The Beach Boys made tracks in the Hafler Diamond system. Originally the albums were labeled as playing on Dynaquad, but the the record company removed that because the records were being put in a quadraphonic bin instead of the Beach Boys bin.

That is a long standing misconception, Stephen Desper used the "Spatializer" on the Beach Boys. Check this thread, it it a very long read!

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/fo...s-about-sunflower-so-called-quad.22469/page-2

 

[jaybird100]

Those are, indeed, some of the records I was referring to. Of course, a “proprietary” encoding scheme means absolutely nothing with the sounds they are recording. Matrix decoders have a field day with that sort of signal, and there’s really no need to encode anything.

I gotta disagree there! Encoding from a quad mix allows the different sounds to be placed where the producers and mixing engineers intended. Relying on a stereo mix, randomly being decoded, which is the case with playing stereo recordings through a decoder, doesn't do that. Yes, encode! QS, all the way!

 

[barfle]

I gotta disagree there! Encoding from a quad mix allows the different sounds to be placed where the producers and mixing engineers intended. Relying on a stereo mix, randomly being decoded, which is the case with playing stereo recordings through a decoder, doesn't do that. Yes, encode! QS, all the way!

All true, but those particular recordings were never intended to put a saxophone in the left rear. As I originally noted, the sounds they were recording were pretty much uncorrellated pink noise (ambient wind sounds), with an occasional bird chirping. That made the matrix decoders find all sorts of phase relationships they could “decode” and put sound in the surrounds. I personally found the claim of “quad” in later releases to simply being tha taking advantage or a fortunate accident, and not any deliberate encoding. Someone who produced one of those records could convince me I was wrong.

 

[MidiMagic]

Who needs a quad discrete mix? I encode directly from the sound sources. Feed the multitrack or live instruments into my encoding mixer and out comes a matrixed recording.

Probably the worst aspect of any matrix system is the "four corners encoder" to convert a discrete recording into a matrix recording. Sound sources on the discrete recording that are panned between the speakers are often mis-panned by four-corners encoders.

 

[jaybird100]

All true, but those particular recordings were never intended to put a saxophone in the left rear. As I originally noted, the sounds they were recording were pretty much uncorrellated pink noise (ambient wind sounds), with an occasional bird chirping. That made the matrix decoders find all sorts of phase relationships they could “decode” and put sound in the surrounds. I personally found the claim of “quad” in later releases to simply being tha taking advantage or a fortunate accident, and not any deliberate encoding. Someone who produced one of those records could convince me I was wrong.

There was a series of albums, put out by Olympic/Everest Records, of some vintage recordings that were deemed of historical value. For some unknown reason, the records were claimed to be quad, even bearing the QS logo on the back cover. The records were, in fact, mono! When Sansui got wind of this, they sent Everest a cease-and-desist letter. Everest had no choice but to comply. Although this example goes in the other direction, it shows the lengths some record companies would go to, in order to use quad as a marketing tool. Billingsgate did just that, too, with some albums, by Lucifer's Friend, that were tagged as SQ quad on the cover and label, but were, in fact, just stereo. As a Surround Master user, I've played a lot of stereo records through the decoder, using the Involve 4.1 (QS) setting. There were some that came across as very close to discrete quad, some that offered almost no effect at all, but most gave a pretty impressive surround effect, with more detail revealed in the recording. I wouldn't dub those records as quadraphonic, but they're still a pleasure to listen to. By the way, this applies to CD's, too.

 

[jaybird100]

Who needs a quad discrete mix? I encode directly from the sound sources. Feed the multitrack or live instruments into my encoding mixer and out comes a matrixed recording.

Probably the worst aspect of any matrix system is the "four corners encoder" to convert a discrete recording into a matrix recording. Sound sources on the discrete recording that are panned between the speakers are often mis-panned by four-corners encoders.

I use the Involve Evaluation encoder module to do exactly that; encode from discrete quad sources. The results are quite excellent. Panned sounds pan accurately; at least, to my ear, they do.

Your idea of encoding directly off your mixer works, too. Which matrix does it use?