Longines did, however, have some very good sets that were, in fact, real quad. They used QS.
Yes. BUT they didn't remix from e.g. 8-track, 16-track or 24-track masters like the majors did.
Their process was simple - to take the original half-inch 3-track and 4-track production masters and encode that straight across the same as a lot of the early catalog RCA or Columbia titles (most of which showed up only on Q8 or Japanese CD-4).
The only difference here is the Longines masters at least all the in-house productions (Michel Piasto et al).- were recorded at 30 IPS instead of the industry standard 15 so - same as the deep-grooved 45 RPM SuperSonic LPs - the 30 IPS gives a lot more ``air'' and ``space'' to a session that wouldn't be there on 15 IPS.
So all that air and space would envelop the listener WITHOUT the QS encoding, but would just bring it out into the forefront for masters that were originally intended for quad.
If you listen to the original session masters and you listen to their 15 IPS dub-downs, the difference is often striking and that's NOT counting the loss in generational quality - because the handful of 30 IPS 2-track quarter-inch dub-across's have a LOT less loss of the aforementioned ``air'' and ``space'' compared to the same thing at 15 IPS.
Also, one of the other major reasons that even the re-encoding for QS from e.g. original 4-track production stems even flew at all at the time without remixing on purpose is because of the original e.g. Bill Justis-type arranging where the talent was also the producer/engineer.
In his case, and in many other similar `wore-a-lot-of-hats' guys in the late 60s and early 70s - they would score things on purpose to be as diverse as possible while maximizing the use of the 3 or 4 tracks they had in ways that sound strange to modern ears the same way as a lot of studio multi-tracks sound (not counting all the bounce-across's and bounce-downs from different recording stages) sound strange.
If you have access to some of these multi-stage tapes where a session is spread across three or four reels from basic tracks and overdubs there-onto - the basic tracks might sound totally normal to modern ears, but then again even the basic tracks reel might be using the aforementioned style of arranging where it maximizes sonic diversity making 3 or 4 tracks sound like 7 or 8 or even more.
I have a session where the brass is featured having two sets of trumpets/coronets and two sets of trombones/tubas etc where the tubas and the coronets share a track (but never at the same time)_ and that trades off with trumpets and trombones.
A modern digital editor can separate out those two into their original four without much digital artifacting because they operate in diffrerent sonic spectrums and then remix into something more pleasing to the ear which a lot of producers are doing anymore to give all these old ``wild'' mixes a new tamer lease on life.
I have one set of the aforementioned Bill Justis sessions from Radio Recorders where the basic tracks bounce in and out of each other in sections sometimes as short as two bars long - just enough for the ring-out on one channel to subside before something else chimes in on the same track.
This is not only repeated on all the remaining tracks for THAT stage, but of you look at the scoring sheets and listen to the overdub tracks, those spaces are filled in with something else on the first overdub reel, and then whatever they missed filling in on THAT pass gets filled in AGAIN on a SECOND overdub reel and so on and so forth.
By the time you get three or four reels in trying to cram as much as you can inbetween spaces on other tracks - of course in its' originally-intended final mono mix - it's going to sound as full and blended and terrific as the original LP it was intended for (these sessions and plenty of others were never released - or they were never released until the Quad Era).
But in normal ordinary stereo, the few that WERE released like that and attempted to remix and have various instruments placed as they normally would be on a soundstage - it never really did work all that well because it ended up to be very ping-pongy like the early stereo demonstration programs of the mid-and-late 50s.
Nobody bought those for casual listening - and if they did, they either bought the mono versions if they had mono counterparts, or they summed it to mono on their stereos upon listening.
So - enter quad where people EXPECT to be CASUAL LISTENERS to mixes that are ping-pongy and bounce around the room.
Later on when a lot of these sessions with multiple stages could be VSO'd to sort-of-sync with the absence of either sync-tone timecode or 35 MM magnetic full coat film - it was able to open the whole session up to all kinds of possibilities that existed in quad that didn't exist previously.
Then in the case of 35MM full-coat multitrack since that would sync regardless - instead of having to bounce across or bounce down or both in order to continue with the technical realization of their musical fantasy - they could run all the stages at once on a series of e.g. Westrex film dubbers on e.g. a film scoring stage and create a number of different possibilities in quad that didn't exist in stereo.
A lot of times they tried a straight mix, just as if the listener were sitting in the concert hall or theatre and put that out, but just as often they ended up going back to the same style of surround quadraphonic demo or show-off type mix as the half-inch guys were doing 5 or 10 years earlier.
Now in a lot of these, especially in the medley sections, at least they were smart and let the ending arrangement of one part of the medley finish off on one set of tracks before the other part of the medley would start off on the remaining tracks.
In stereo, if you listen to some of these, one half of a medley will trail off on the left and a new section will overlap and start off on the right. The only thing you can do with that to make it palatable to modern ears if all you have is the 2-track LP master is do a momentary Stereo Field Rotate and convert what is basically a 2-track mono recording into Mono Center and Mono Surround.
So for a couple of bars between sections, your original element moves from e g the left to the center and your new element starts off in the surrounds before moving to the e.g. right.
Most of the time the overlapping instrumental elements aren't repeated for several bars before the end of one section or after the beginning of the new section, so by the time the instrument left off from appearing before the end of the first section or reappears after the beginning of the second section, listeners have already lost track so it doesn't sound strange anymore.
Now you CAN get away with that by doing the stereo field rotate for a few bars like I said - but when you have the master 4-track, that makes for an even better effect - or even modern surround remix - because apart from both sections being in stereo vs mono - one medley section might end in a call that's on the same or related note or chord as what would start off another part of the medley, such as a subdominant (IV) or dominant (V) chord leading into a tonic (I) chord etc. being responded to at the beginning of the next section.
Then you leave the subdominant or dominant in the front and put the overlapping tonic in the rears and then put the rest of the second half of the medley back into the front and it doesn't sound that strange for that long to modern ears.
In stereo, those momentary rear channel elements simply play to the extreme left and extreme right of the mix just the same as mixes that weren't intended for quad but play as if they were, so it's nice to be able to take these ``crazy'' ``maximizing technological resources'' productions and make something pleasing to the modern ear.
Now when they try and do it with their isolation booths and digital technology and people recording their parts by themselves to a click track - you can have the exact same arrangement and the production will sound flat boxy and uninteresting WHY because none of these guys are in the same room vibing off each other - and you can totally hear the difference.
