New Surround Master coming! Its a jump to the left and a step to the right

[chucky3042]

You may need to explain Pauline to our international friends Chucky!

Sent from my K5000 using Tapatalk

Indeed

Very right wing, anti Asian, Anti Muslim, ant gay, anti anything non white, right wing working class grass roots politicial. Think Trump, Brexit etc

 

[chucky3042]

The Pspatial Audio CD-4 Decoder uses Ambisonics to (among other things)
reroute the original (intended for a square 4 speaker array) quadraphonic input
content for correct playback imaging using the ITU 5 speaker arrangement.

Do the Surround Master Decoder 5.1 modes do any sort of rerouting or is it
intended for the (classic quadraphonic) square 4 speaker array with an added
center speaker (and possibly a subwoofer)?

Kirk Bayne

I am a classic kind of guy

 

[chucky3042]

I have to agree with Adam (@fredblue) on this one. A good QS LP (think very discrete ABC titles like Can't Buy A Thrill or Rags To Rufus) through this unit can honestly stand up to a Q8. The vocals are almost completely wiped from the rears, and discrete rear channel content barely leaks to the fronts. It performs at least as good, if not better, than my Sansui QSD-2, which is a very well-regarded QS decoder.

Unfortunately, the SQ decoding leaves me a bit underwhelmed. It was a considerable upgrade from my old Lafayette SQ-W that would produce audible volume "pumping", but the lead vocals still leak to the rears enough to the point where it can be distracting.

What's really interesting (and Adam has pointed this out on numerous occasions), is that the lead vocal crosstalk is wiped out when you sum the rears to mono. When I would do an SQ conversion with my SM, I would blend the rears slightly in Audacity before exporting: this would increase the front-center to back-center separation at the cost of slightly reducing the wide stereo spread in the rears. Columbia quad mixes intentionally had isolated instruments in each rear speaker, as they were designed to be encoded to SQ and then decoded back, so the slight blending wasn't all that noticeable.

I was recently lucky enough to pick up a Fosgate Tate II, and I'm sorry to say it bests the SM at decoding SQ material. The lead vocal is wiped from the rears, with only some minor artifacts left behind. Some titles come strikingly close to their Q8 equivalents. Aerosmith's Toys In The Attic, an oddly-mixed Columbia quad title that the SM struggled with, decodes extremely well with this unit.

Now I definitely don't want to dissuade anyone from picking up one of these units: Involve is doing us a real service by taking the time to create such a niche product. This is a decoder specifically designed to work with obscure material that's been out-of-print for over forty years! Just wrap your head around that. Not to mention it's two decoders in one (SQ and QS), and the stereo-to-surround synthesis is very impressive. I haven't done a careful comparison yet, but I seem to prefer it to both the Sansui's "synthesizer" setting and the Fosgate's "surround" setting.

Now the Tate might be better at decoding SQ, but those units are extremely rare (to say the least), expensive, and have all the baggage that comes with vintage gear. Mine was sold to me in an in-person exchange by the original owner, who said it hadn't been powered on since the late-1980s! I paid more than the SM for something that I didn't even know would work. Luckily the gambit paid off, but I'm sure folks have been burned on used Tates in the past.

So I do think this is a great product, but the SQ decoding could be improved. I have to assume that the folks at Involve were conscientious of inducing artifacts and fidelity loss by pushing the separation envelope (some software-decoded SQ conversions I've heard sound very "phasey" or "metallic"), but I think even something as simple as a "blend" function for the rears, as Adam has advocated for in the past, would improve an already excellent product.

Interesting comment. I will have to check that out. On my listening A/B with the Tate (I listen for different aspects) I heard a "muddling" of the sound, imaging issues and found it relatively easy to pick the differences to Tate. Yes I know I am biased but Dave (the Bitch) heard the same thing. He has really great ears and is 20 years younger!!!!

Yes we do prefer clarity and fidelity to numbers.

 

[karlkastner]

No. I should clarify I was referring to a phono preamp. If your phono circuits aren’t balanced, you’ll get less (or possible no) channel separation from a vinyl source, no matter what decoder you're using.

Phono circuits don’t degrade uniformly, so it’s best to use a newer preamp when you’re playing matrix quad LPs. I dropped around $80 on a Project Phono Box and the increase in separation was very noticeable.

Great to know. I have some SQ albums. Will remember that when I fire up my Marantz 6300. Thanks.

 

[sjcorne]

Interesting comment. I will have to check that out. On my listening A/B with the Tate (I listen for different aspects) I heard a "muddling" of the sound, imaging issues and found it relatively easy to pick the differences to Tate. Yes I know I am biased but Dave (the Bitch) heard the same thing. He has really great ears and is 20 years younger!!!!

I'd agree the Tate can sometimes dirty the sound a bit, especially on the inner groove tracks. Some of this may be the fault of the records themselves: Columbia's quad pressings weren't exactly high quality. I've picked up a few new/sealed SQs and even those can be noisy and/or sibilant.

If you ever get some spare time, for evaluation purposes or even just for kicks you should check out that Toys In The Attic quad album. It's a really interesting quad mix that, unlike most Columbia titles, does not seem to be mixed with "the rules of SQ" in mind. It's full of cross-channel echo/ambience, and for long passages almost all the music is upfront with nothing in the rears other than very subtle percussion. It makes for a good SQ decoder "torture test".

 

[chucky3042]

I'd agree the Tate can sometimes dirty the sound a bit, especially on the inner groove tracks. Some of this may be the fault of the records themselves: Columbia's quad pressings weren't exactly high quality. I've picked up a few new/sealed SQs and even those can be noisy and/or sibilant.

If you ever get some spare time, for evaluation purposes or even just for kicks you should check out that Toys In The Attic quad album. It's a really interesting quad mix that, unlike most Columbia titles, does not seem to be mixed with "the rules of SQ" in mind. It's full of cross-channel echo/ambience, and for long passages almost all the music is upfront with nothing in the rears other than very subtle percussion. It makes for a good SQ decoder "torture test".

Will do, thanks

 

[ar surround]

I'd agree the Tate can sometimes dirty the sound a bit, especially on the inner groove tracks. Some of this may be the fault of the records themselves: Columbia's quad pressings weren't exactly high quality. I've picked up a few new/sealed SQs and even those can be noisy and/or sibilant.

If you ever get some spare time, for evaluation purposes or even just for kicks you should check out that Toys In The Attic quad album. It's a really interesting quad mix that, unlike most Columbia titles, does not seem to be mixed with "the rules of SQ" in mind. It's full of cross-channel echo/ambience, and for long passages almost all the music is upfront with nothing in the rears other than very subtle percussion. It makes for a good SQ decoder "torture test".

That's what I recall - many of the quad pressings were of poor fidelity. That's what prompted me to abandon quad for a decade and subsequently embrace DSP synthesis of 7.1 multichannel sound from high quality 2-channel sources. Then along came the discrete quad reissues on optical discs and all was well with the world again. It would be interesting if we had some high-quality SQ encoded downloads to audition. Barclay James Harvest's Once Again DVD has the SQ encoded version of the album included on the disc, but that is the only one that I know of.

 

[Scott65]

Indeed

Very right wing, anti Asian, Anti Muslim, ant gay, anti anything non white, right wing working class grass roots politicial. Think Trump, Brexit etc

And ... Xenophobic - the word that made her say please explain...

 

[chucky3042]

And ... Xenophobic - the word that made her say please explain...

In could elaborate considerably, essentially she is a bigoted cretin.

 

[Scott65]

In could elaborate considerably, essentially she is a bigoted cretin.

You may be insulting cretins there....

 

[sjcorne]

Barclay James Harvest's Once Again DVD has the SQ encoded version of the album included on the disc, but that is the only one that I know of.

There was a box set of Deep Purple's Machine Head that had the SQ-encoded stereo mix on a plain CD. The discrete version of that mix has since been released twice: once on a U.K. SACD, and again as a DTS DVD in the same box set.

 

[Glenshoreham]

Whoa. OK, slightly embarrassing disclosure for me, now. Only slight, though, because I'm new here. I was unaware of the Surround Master until now. It's a double dose of good news for me, actually, because not only am I excited to save up and purchase one in a couple of months' time, but as luck would have it, Involve Audio is located just 10 km from my workplace! I wonder if I could visit, one day. In any event, I'm suddenly really looking forward to buying one. If I may quote a snippet of internet lore, never in my life have i needed something so much, and never known until i received it. I knew just a little while before receiving it in this case, I guess.

 

[chucky3042]

Hi Chucky, How's the pre-pro looking and do you know an estimated cost? Thanks

Hi Mac44

Actually whole slabs of it has been designed - from a schematic point of view its at 80%, software around 40% and zero work on schematic yet. Serious work will be say 6 months off. Its just that we are overloaded

 

[chucky3042]

Whoa. OK, slightly embarrassing disclosure for me, now. Only slight, though, because I'm new here. I was unaware of the Surround Master until now. It's a double dose of good news for me, actually, because not only am I excited to save up and purchase one in a couple of months' time, but as luck would have it, Involve Audio is located just 10 km from my workplace! I wonder if I could visit, one day. In any event, I'm suddenly really looking forward to buying one. If I may quote a snippet of internet lore, never in my life have i needed something so much, and never known until i received it. I knew just a little while before receiving it in this case, I guess.

Hi

Actually I demand that you visit us (not today as I am reworking the studio monitor- it really is worth hearing!) Say any time next week 2 Shearson Crescent Mentone , my mobile is 0438698325

 

[chucky3042]

Dear quaddies

After a heap of chatting, yelling, abuse, crying and irrational behaviour we have finally settled on wording on the front and rear panels (I lost- hate democracy)

I did listen to comments that just having INVOLVE decode mode made it less obvious that we actually decode QS (and others). The compromise is that we list the actual decoded formats on the rear panel. Hope you guru's agree.

 

[Scott65]

Dear quaddies

After a heap of chatting, yelling, abuse, crying and irrational behaviour we have finally settled on wording on the front and rear panels (I lost- hate democracy)

I did listen to comments that just having INVOLVE decode mode made it less obvious that we actually decode QS (and others). The compromise is that we list the actual decoded formats on the rear panel. Hope you guru's agree.

View attachment 38601


View attachment 38602

looks good to me

 

[chucky3042]

Oh

As promised (a day late). Here is a 3 D view of the new board......with more stuff!!

 

[Sonik Wiz]

Except for anyone on QQ they won't know what QS is. Involve 4.1/5.1 is good. But how many newbies will know what SQ is?
Technology held ransom by nomemenclature.

 

[Scott65]

Except for anyone on QQ they won't know what QS is. Involve 4.1/5.1 is good. But how many newbies will know what SQ is?
Technology held ransom by nomemenclature.

Perhaps provide an explanation in the manual?

 

[hobie1dog]

Outstanding job Chucky.