INVOLVE SQ - IS COMING

[ChristopherLees]

yes after all, the battle for the ashes is about a time ,when ashes were created, by burning a set of wooden cricket bails to symbolise the death of "English cricket"...when they were originally beaten by Australia.... hardly qq stuff....but it's always nice and comforting to remember how this battle started (especially when we are in a bad position ...like right now)...

I think Cook's goal of winning the game, is not for a quick victory but to bat for so long as to make it impossible to loose....a common English Captain's trait....(and one Steve Waugh used after the Indian follow on disaster) just as long as he remembers and learns from the screw up in Adelaide (a few years back...a similar disaster but we won...although we had a recognised decent batting lineup in those days) he should be ok...but that sort of tactic can take so long it's just plain boring to watch all day...

No English team has ever lost a match from enforcing the follow on...then again most English teams are too scared to do it..

 

[proufo]

The taking over of the thread by sports fans is... not cricket.



Just kidding. Keep on giving us all a glimpse of what goes on in that alien world.

 

[Quadwreck]

Please move the game discussion to its own thread.

 

[Soundfield]

One of the major advantages of a core QS matrix is that the surround or "ambiance" information hidden within standard stereo recordings has a great correlation to it. The SQ matrix just does not resemble any "naturally" encoded ambiance and as such is a poor decoder of stereo and in my humble opinion is one of the major reasons of its eventual failure to unite the music community to a standard- universal surround format. ON the other hand the biggest problem with QS was the image compression of encoded format material when played back on standard stereo equipment.

It is really central to our thoughts that INVOLVE encode offers the best of both the QS and SQ formats with a FULLY stereo compatible encode and a surround decode (we claim ) indistinguishable from discrete.

Hi Chucky -This is an interesting follow up to the chat about the capability of the SQ decoder in the role of synthesiser we had a few days ago. I listen to a lot of classical music and any format and / or decoders abilty to recreate the ambient environment is very important to me. I will be judging the SQSM very critically on this aspect. Despite the vast wealth of classical material available in SQ, ambience recreation is not something that a lot (or indeed any!) simple 'gain riding logic' based SQ decoders have done particularly convincingly and it will be very interesting to see if the Involve unit has cracked this (I suspect that its three band processing will be a huge advance here). Given that any SQ decoder cannot perform well as a synthesiser or stereo ambience extractor it will be useful to have the QS core available for this function. The performance of the SQSM unit in this key area for me will, of course, be crucial in any future decission on purchasing the 'pro' unit - speaking of which, any advance photos / any more info on this yet?
Thanks.

 

[chucky3042]

Hi Soundfield

Prior to this Involve SQ special edition encoder our team have actually never listened to a SQ decode! We rejected it on theoretical reasons and decided it was incapable of behaving as a stereo decoder and would always struggle in a full encode / decode - requiring additional signal processing. I think in retrospect we were correct but upon trialling various SQ decodes at "Rustyandie's" dungeon I was amazed at how good the Tate unit performed considering it is a single band device. I was even more pleased that in our biased opinion we out performed it in areas of top end clarity and detailed imaging. I now have a grudging admiration for aspects of SQ and what Tate had achieved.

The tri band should help it slightly in extracting some more detailed ambience from Stereo recording but it is still a long way from being useful unfortunately.

With regard to the studio encoder/ decoder and the consumer high end Involve pre amp, I will publish some initial details in a day or so. Its slow going due to a massive amount of other projects and distractions. The studio unit is closer to completion than the pre amp. Good news on the pre amp is I have decided to include MC and MM phono stages, strangely these are missing from most pre amps these days.

Regards

Chucky

Hi Chucky -This is an interesting follow up to the chat about the capability of the SQ decoder in the role of synthesiser we had a few days ago. I listen to a lot of classical music and any format and / or decoders abilty to recreate the ambient environment is very important to me. I will be judging the SQSM very critically on this aspect. Despite the vast wealth of classical material available in SQ, ambience recreation is not something that a lot (or indeed any!) simple 'gain riding logic' based SQ decoders have done particularly convincingly and it will be very interesting to see if the Involve unit has cracked this (I suspect that its three band processing will be a huge advance here). Given that any SQ decoder cannot perform well as a synthesiser or stereo ambience extractor it will be useful to have the QS core available for this function. The performance of the SQSM unit in this key area for me will, of course, be crucial in any future decission on purchasing the 'pro' unit - speaking of which, any advance photos / any more info on this yet?
Thanks.

 

[Q8]

Secondly, and it humbles me to say this, but OxfordDickie was right about one thing he pointed out to us quite early in the process, which was that using 45 degree shifts in order to create a more symmetrical image and for more sensitive steering turned out to be the wrong path.

I seem to remember that he thought there was a similar issue with your QS/Involve decode. Some part of me hates to go here, but do you think the QS decode could be improved on?

 

[chucky3042]

Hi Q8

We do not use any 45 degree shifts in either unit and we found no areas to improve the standard Involve QS core unit.

Regards

Chucky

I seem to remember that he thought there was a similar issue with your QS/Involve decode. Some part of me hates to go here, but do you think the QS decode could be improved on?

 

[rustyandi]

Charlie took my SQ Decoder back today to put it in the final
box he will bring it back in a couple of days to test it with both
QS and SQ decoders in the one box
Will let you know if it works out as well as he thinks it will

Money for nothing get your chicks for free

I want my SQ D
I want my SQ D

 

[leevitalone1]

Charlie took my SQ Decoder back today to put it in the final
box he will bring it back in a couple of days to test it with both
QS and SQ decoders in the one box
Will let you know if it works out as well as he thinks it will

Money for nothing get your chicks for free

I want my SQ D
I want my SQ D

You! have been a bust little beaver checking this stuff. I'm watching-waiting to have it-lucky!

 

[Q8]

Talk about seperation anxiety.

 

[Overture]

Talk about seperation anxiety.

You win the internet today. Congratulations.

 

[kfbkfb]

Regarding creating 4 speaker Surround Sound
from Stereo with an SQ Decoder:

CBS devised a system to pre-process Stereo
so that a standard SQ decoder would place
Stereo Left at Quad Left Back, Stereo Right
at Quad Right Back with Quad Left Front and
Quad Right Front containing the remaining
Stereo content.

I recall a technical paper from CBS about this
special pre-processor, but I haven't found a
copy of the paper online yet.

Kirk Bayne

 

[Overture]

Regarding creating 4 speaker Surround Sound
from Stereo with an SQ Decoder:

CBS devised a system to pre-process Stereo
so that a standard SQ decoder would place
Stereo Left at Quad Left Back, Stereo Right
at Quad Right Back with Quad Left Front and
Quad Right Front containing the remaining
Stereo content.

I recall a technical paper from CBS about this
special pre-processor, but I haven't found a
copy of the paper online yet.

Kirk Bayne

What would be left if you put the stereo in the rear channels? Or do you just mean channel replication?

 

[steelydave]

He's basically saying that the stereo image would end up in a horseshoe configuration with the sounds panned hard left or right appearing in the rear speakers, and the content in the centre of the stereo image appearing in the front speakers.

The Fosgate Tate 101A has a mode that does this, it's been a while but I think it's called 'cinema' or something similar.

 

[Soundfield]

He's basically saying that the stereo image would end up in a horseshoe configuration with the sounds panned hard left or right appearing in the rear speakers, and the content in the centre of the stereo image appearing in the front speakers.

Hmmm, can't imagine why that never caught on....!

 

[Q8]

Hmmm, can't imagine why that never caught on....!

I was thinking the same thing.

Sounds like one of those useless custom Pro Logic modes on a surround receiver.

 

[steelydave]

It's actually not a bad mode on the Tate, I often preferred it to having random phase-inverted stuff thrown in to the rear speakers for non SQ-encoded material because the soundfield was more consistent.

 

[Overture]

Ah ok. Pardon my ignorance - I've never really thought of content in the centre of the stereo image being a separate thing to the stereo content itself.

 

[Q8]

Ah ok. Pardon my ignorance - I've never really thought of content in the centre of the stereo image being a separate thing to the stereo content itself.

It took me a good second to wrap my head around this idea too.

Upon first reading the posts about this, i figured that it would give a wider and more consistent sound field, but other then to expand the stereo image and create a wider consistent field, it would be unjustifiable.

Then I thought about it more though, and it makes sense primarily with recordings where the vocals are near center or hard center on the stereo image. I guess that's why the Tate called it something like "cinema", cause with most soundtracks, the person speaking who is the focal point of the scene will be mixed hard center, sound effects and stereo dialog would likely be mostly in the rears. I can see this sounding okay.

Also, I imagine when listening to music where the vocals are dead center or close to center, it would be like having the singer in front of you and the band behind you.

I get it now.

 

[Overture]

Ah - I often wonder how many soundtracks had the vocals mixed to centre as a result of Dolby, and not the other way around. I think the mixes get lazy these days.
I can understand back when stereophonic recording in film was a matter of filming on set or on site, and not so much overdubbing later, if the people were the focus when there was voice in the track, then yeah, they'd be close to front and centre. But deliberately recording it / mixing it into a mono channel seems counter-intuitive to me because then the natural ambience of the vocal reproduction becomes a product of the environment the loudspeaker is in, not the environment the voice was recorded in, making it sound more artificial as a result.

Oh don't mind me, I'm just not a fan of centre channels.