I'm brand new to this site, but hardly new to quad (nor to this planet, as I'm 62 years old!). Still, I find it a bit odd that, at least as of yet, I've seen no mention anywhere of Lafayette-branded quad equipment.
Lafayette made some very good electronics, and was the industy leader (insofar as retailing) to promote quadraphonic sound in the 70's. All of its stores converted their sound rooms to 4-channel rooms (I had the "luck" to actually do many of these conversions myself), and Lafayette had, for many years until the Tate decoder became available, the best SQ decoder anywhere.
I personally sold many of Lafayette's outboard SQ decoder to the managers, and salespeople, of many of my competitors, as all knew that this $99.95 device was a minor miracle, insofar as effectively decoding SQ records. The last edition of it had a feature called "Vari-Blend," which was never adequately explained either by Lafayette to the public, nor to me by several of Lafayette's engineers, but it did a wonderful job of maintaining decent separation, without the customary "pumping and breathing" so common with full-logic circuits (which, incidentally, were available only in Lafayette-branded equipment for several years).
Lafayette also had a circuit in some of its quad receivers (and in the outboard decoder) called, "Composer A." This circuitry was designed to simulate quad effects from 2-channel sources, and did such a good job, that many such simulations actually sounded better than SQ-encoded material did. The Composer A circuitry was also tested (I don't remember by whom) to be the BEST QS decoder on the market, and that was entirely by accident! I'm sure Sansui didn't much like this either.
Lafayette's LR-4000 was the company's first quality 4-channel receiver, and the first in the industry to incorporate full-logic wavematching SQ circuitry (and the terrific Composer A circuit). The 4000 was slightly improved with the "A" version a year or so later, and then the LR-5000 was introduced. While the 5000 had more power, and included the "Vari-Blend" circuit, the Composer A circuit gave way to the FTC-mandated "Regular Matrix" circuit, which did a very poor job of simulating quad effects from 2-channel sources. Adding the company's outboard decoder solved all this, but from a marketing standpoint, that wasn't what the company preached. And, to be blunt, Lafayette's CD-4 module (which was a royal pain to insert into the receiver) was the worst in the industry.
We had quad receivers from several other manufacturers in our stores, and the Lafayette units held their own against the best of them. Just thought I"d add this to the forum as a bit of history.
Lafayette made some very good electronics, and was the industy leader (insofar as retailing) to promote quadraphonic sound in the 70's. All of its stores converted their sound rooms to 4-channel rooms (I had the "luck" to actually do many of these conversions myself), and Lafayette had, for many years until the Tate decoder became available, the best SQ decoder anywhere.
I personally sold many of Lafayette's outboard SQ decoder to the managers, and salespeople, of many of my competitors, as all knew that this $99.95 device was a minor miracle, insofar as effectively decoding SQ records. The last edition of it had a feature called "Vari-Blend," which was never adequately explained either by Lafayette to the public, nor to me by several of Lafayette's engineers, but it did a wonderful job of maintaining decent separation, without the customary "pumping and breathing" so common with full-logic circuits (which, incidentally, were available only in Lafayette-branded equipment for several years).
Lafayette also had a circuit in some of its quad receivers (and in the outboard decoder) called, "Composer A." This circuitry was designed to simulate quad effects from 2-channel sources, and did such a good job, that many such simulations actually sounded better than SQ-encoded material did. The Composer A circuitry was also tested (I don't remember by whom) to be the BEST QS decoder on the market, and that was entirely by accident! I'm sure Sansui didn't much like this either.
Lafayette's LR-4000 was the company's first quality 4-channel receiver, and the first in the industry to incorporate full-logic wavematching SQ circuitry (and the terrific Composer A circuit). The 4000 was slightly improved with the "A" version a year or so later, and then the LR-5000 was introduced. While the 5000 had more power, and included the "Vari-Blend" circuit, the Composer A circuit gave way to the FTC-mandated "Regular Matrix" circuit, which did a very poor job of simulating quad effects from 2-channel sources. Adding the company's outboard decoder solved all this, but from a marketing standpoint, that wasn't what the company preached. And, to be blunt, Lafayette's CD-4 module (which was a royal pain to insert into the receiver) was the worst in the industry.
We had quad receivers from several other manufacturers in our stores, and the Lafayette units held their own against the best of them. Just thought I"d add this to the forum as a bit of history.
