Your first experience that made you a surround music lover

[Sonik Wiz]

Reading through these post sparked another memory I had of surround music. I had discovered Brian Eno‘s albums around 1981. In ‘82 he released another album In is ambient music series, Ambient 4 : On Land. On the back of the album he had instructions of how to add a third speaker connected to the positive terminals of the left and right channels and to place the 3rd speaker across the room from the front stereo speakers. Since this was published on the back of the album cover, and I thought Eno was a genius, I felt sure this was a perfectly safe thing to do (YIKES!!! we were all young once...). I hooked up my stereo with the 3rd speaker and it worked! We had sound coming from the back wall while we listened to Eno’s ambient sounds... I don’t recall how long we kept the 3rd speaker hooked up or why we got rid of it, but we had surround music of sorts...from any stereo album!
View attachment 43621

Yeah baby! 2.1 whoo!

 

[Sonik Wiz]

This leads me to believe you can discover a surround sound fan but you can't really make one.

Holy shit Batman -you nailed it!

Thank you rikpepe. It is always about the suspension of disbelief in music or movies as you have said.

 

[Beefalo]

18 months ago I decided it was time for a new CD player. I didn't know what SACD was but I saw an add somewhere and noticed B.O.C. Secret Treaties was " multichannel. Got my 1st SACD player a Yamaha 1060.
When I tried to play the BOC I got no sound. My old Yamaha AVR didn't have HDMI. That was the beginning of a very rewarding (and expensive) hobby.
I finally got to hear the BOC. At first it was like "what's the big deal with this multichannel" then guitars came screeching out of the surrounds and I was hooked !!!

 

[Quadrifoglio]

Hi,

I had never even heard of quad, but I did have a DTS/5.1 system for home theater use and even before that some HiFi VHS and Sony 8mm video deck for concert videos etc. It never occurred to me that music would have been mixed in anything but 2.0 Stereo and mono.

Then I visited a friend from Nottingham UK when he was living in London, England. He played me a copy of the Q4 tape of Sabbath's Paranoid!
And after that I think a similar copy of ZZ Top's Tres Hombres. I got 5.1 DVD-A copies from him and I was hooked. Later I found out that I actually had (inherited) and bunch of surround stereo LP's, I had never thought about that "SQ" logo. So I got (again thanks to the same friend's recommendations) an Involve Audio Surround Master for home use, and then luckily found an old AKAI 630D SS reel-to-reel and started searchig for a 4-ch receiver/amp.

Being a sucker for design I ended up with Bang & Olufsen's BeoMaster 6000 (Typ 2702) wit the CD-4 capable Beogram 6000 and vintage speakers (4702 and S45-2) as well as later getting an Audiovox Q8 Stereo radio system from 1975 for the 1975 Jaguar XJ coupé and an AKAI CR-80D SS Q8 tape deck for home use!

I'm still in the infancy, planning to make both digital (4 channel 24/96) and analog (7 ips 1/4" tape) copies of the Q8 tapes I've got, as I know car use can eat them up! (I already destroyed last summer the Quincy Jones "Walking In Space" Q8 that I DID NOT yet have a backup or copy of.

The only Q4's I've got so far are the Vanguard's Country Joe & Fish and WB's Frank Sinatra's Greatest Hits Vol.2.
And the only CD-4's I have are Frank Zappa's Apostrophe and The Doors' Greatest Hits.
Q8's I think I already have about thirty and counting.

But it's been nice to get DVD-A's and SACD's and other stuff that either has the old school 4.0 mix or copies of the Q4's and Quadradiscs on tape or DVD's. Deep Purple, Jethro Tull etc.

 

[Sonik Wiz]

Hi,

I had never even heard of quad, but I did have a DTS/5.1 system for home theater use and even before that some HiFi VHS and Sony 8mm video deck for concert videos etc. It never occurred to me that music would have been mixed in anything but 2.0 Stereo and mono.

Then I visited a friend from Nottingham UK when he was living in London, England. He played me a copy of the Q4 tape of Sabbath's Paranoid!
And after that I think a similar copy of ZZ Top's Tres Hombres. I got 5.1 DVD-A copies from him and I was hooked. Later I found out that I actually had (inherited) and bunch of surround stereo LP's, I had never thought about that "SQ" logo. So I got (again thanks to the same friend's recommendations) an Involve Audio Surround Master for home use, and then luckily found an old AKAI 630D SS reel-to-reel and started searchig for a 4-ch receiver/amp.

Being a sucker for design I ended up with Bang & Olufsen's BeoMaster 6000 (Typ 2702) wit the CD-4 capable Beogram 6000 and vintage speakers (4702 and S45-2) as well as later getting an Audiovox Q8 Stereo radio system from 1975 for the 1975 Jaguar XJ coupé and an AKAI CR-80D SS Q8 tape deck for home use!

I'm still in the infancy, planning to make both digital (4 channel 24/96) and analog (7 ips 1/4" tape) copies of the Q8 tapes I've got, as I know car use can eat them up! (I already destroyed last summer the Quincy Jones "Walking In Space" Q8 that I DID NOT yet have a backup or copy of.

The only Q4's I've got so far are the Vanguard's Country Joe & Fish and WB's Frank Sinatra's Greatest Hits Vol.2.
And the only CD-4's I have are Frank Zappa's Apostrophe and The Doors' Greatest Hits.
Q8's I think I already have about thirty and counting.

But it's been nice to get DVD-A's and SACD's and other stuff that either has the old school 4.0 mix or copies of the Q4's and Quadradiscs on tape or DVD's. Deep Purple, Jethro Tull etc.

Hey
That's a pretty good story & sequence of events. You've got some cool gear & seem to know what your looking for next. That BeoMaster 6000 is a ststraight line tone arm isn't it? Does it work well with CD-4?

Also interesting is that you mention dts as your starting point. To me the launch of dts CD's, LD's etc was the start of the new era of surround sound. Before everything was analog with analog artifacts & dts brought clean discrete surround sound for music ( and movies) into our homes. Yes I did get watery eyes the 1st time I listened to Alan Parson's "On Air."

 

[Quadrifoglio]

Hey
That's a pretty good story & sequence of events. You've got some cool gear & seem to know what your looking for next. That BeoMaster 6000 is a ststraight line tone arm isn't it? Does it work well with CD-4?

Also interesting is that you mention dts as your starting point. To me the launch of dts CD's, LD's etc was the start of the new era of surround sound. Before everything was analog with analog artifacts & dts brought clean discrete surround sound for music ( and movies) into our homes. Yes I did get watery eyes the 1st time I listened to Alan Parson's "On Air."

Hi, thanks! Yeah, that's roughly how it went. We had the home theater for movies and concert videos, but I would use the same (Yamaha) amp usually in stereo, or one of the "spatial modes" to fill the space like "concert hall" or "disco" just to use also the other (rear and center) speakers and I honestly had no idea music had been recorded and mixed for "surround stereo" already decades earlier. :-o

I got my first CD player in 1985 and I was selling away my vinyls unti I realized I just had to have the artwork of the vinyl versions of Led Zeppelin's III and Houses of The Holy etc as well as Jethro Tull's Thick As a Brick even if I was listening to the CD. then I also noticed that many vinyls had (to me) a more appealing overall sound. I had also inherited an old Grundig reel-to-reel stereo recorder that I liked as well, so I never got rid of those. Of course they need servicing every now and then, also the AKAI's and the Audiovox car Q8 unit I got were completely refurbished, dozens and dozens of caps replaced, all rubber parts renewed, everyhting cleaned and adjusted etc.

The "BeoMaster" is the amp/receiver and it is very hand and very advanced for it's age, it does have built-in SQ decoder and also "AMBIO" which is 1970's idea of an ambient effect for Stereo (or mono) recordings through four channels. The "BeoGram 6000" is the turntable and it does have 4-ch discreet output thanks to a built in CD-4 demodulator. It is not perfect, it does have the tangetial arm, optical tracking and a shibata needle and high frequency cartridge. I only have two Quadradiscs (or CD-4) and I think they need a good wash and the needle may need reconditoning, or an ultrasonic cleaning at a minimum. Vinyls sound great with it in mono an stereo, but the CD-4 has some distortion or not-perfect sound in the rear channels. I would need a perfect vinyl to test to be sure, i think my current situation is a combination of both slightly tired (and dirty) needle and slightly worn (and dirty) vinyls. It's not bad, but it's not perfect either, but I am sure it may get better once I can find a way to get the vinyls really clean and perhaps have the needle reconditioned (they are a but expensive).

BTW a white (mine is rosewood) BeoMaster 6000 of this same type was displayed at MOMA in New York. I have another unit in white that is waiting to be repaired / reconditioned in Belgium and a matching white (of course only 2-channel stereo) BeoCord 5500 C-cassette deck.
All the vintage BeoStuff can easily be found in here with photos and desciptions: https://www.beoworld.org/

Cheers!

 

[Floyfn]

Back in the early '80's when I was maybe 10 years old or so, I had been listening to all the pop new wave bands of that time on some tiny radio, partly to keep up with the cool kids when they spoke about music at school, but I really loved the music during the New Wave Era, with The Police, Duran Duran, etc.
I pulled an old stereo my dad had in the closet, very cheap maybe 8 watts with some small 14 inch or so high speakers, I think maybe it was a Norelco or something close.

I knew that old stereo would be a step up for sure, but had no concept of "stereo" yet being that young. After playing with it over an extended period of time, I began experimenting with things like AM vs FM and the Mono/Stereo controls, and escpecially noticed the A/B remote speakers, etc., I kept wondering why FM just sounded so......."Cool" by comparison to AM.

I began to work out what the differences were and actually started experimenting with wiring even - just a kid like a curious cat, oblivious to the dangers of opening the equipment while plugged in and other foolishness. (Funny note on that is how many people I meet even today as mature adults who are OBLIVIOUS to what a stereo signal actually is vs. mono (which I'm sure everyone here moans and heaves when they're asked to explain multichannel to people who cannot even conceptualize stereo.)

Anyways, I remember having a moment, -almost akin to 2001:A Space Odyssey when the ape is staring at the bone, working it out, and I remember thinking "if stereo is 2 different sounds, why can't there be 4? - after which I promptly grabbed another (probably different ohm) speaker set also lying in the closet and wiring them into the remote terminals. It took a while to realize it was just stereo x 2. But I thought I was smart (and cool).

For years I wondered but never saw any evidence of the concept in real life and kinda let it go for years.
Then one day maybe less than a decade later, I had either read in a book or heard mention of the concept on the radio and remembered having conceptualizing it as a kid and proclaiming to myself "IT IS REAL!!!" The other thing that was revealed to me, from whatever the source was, being a massive PF fan at the time, was that PF had released DSOTM in Quad.

In the mid 90's a cousin who managed an electronics store, bought a Pro-Logic Yamaha receiver with some B&W's and I finally got a chance to get some semblance of the Surround format - even if it was just Pro-Logic 1, which at the time we took for a really big deal having no onhand experience with anything Quadraphonic.

He tossed me an Audiophile type magazine and had me read an article that explained some of the details of the soon coming new AC-3 format , then in late '98 or so I bought a Toshiba DVD player and saved slowly over the next year to buy a Kenwood DD receiver and some surrounds and a center. Shortly after I discoverd DTS and set the first Kenwood receiver under the bed, and spent another $350 in 2001 on an updated Kenwood with DD/DTS - my first DTS CD was the Moody's Days of Future Passed (it arrived on Sept. 11 of all days), then I got the DTS Band on the Run. I also found a Quad 8 track player (Sears model!) and ignored many bills, food, soap, whatever because I was seeing PF Quad 8 tracks on Ebay and my money was going there, before all copies somehow fall off the face of the earth before I get one.

Then ProLogic II came out.

My brother in law got the first Kenwood so I had open space for the 2nd under the bed. This was to make room in the stereo stand for my New Yamaha RX-V730 - with DPL-II.

Now I'm surrounded (no pun) by a lot of stuff I every so often scratch my head and say. .....Do I really need that, or should I put the lamp and end table back in the living room? (apartment).

 

[CINERAMAX]

I installed a car quad audio system on my dad's Malibu 74, It was a shoddy job. The 8 track player rested loosely on the hump of the car underneath the front bench facing forward. There was no way of controlling the volume. My first quad 8 track was Journey to the center of the earth. It sounded amazing, problem was my dad inadvertently pushed the tape in with his calf on his commute back home...

He could not figure out where this crazy music was coming from.
What ensued was a steering wheel and window punching variant of this:

 

[van1]

In the late 2000's I bought a Sony home theatre that played something called 'sacds'. I found out these discs played surround sound music and that I could hear 'dark side of he moon' all around me.

So I guess like many 'second wavers' dark side was my first musical multi channel experience which lead me to Jeff Wayne's war of the worlds, genesis box sets, the police, the Beatles, mike oldfield, depeche mode, Elton john, beck, Jeff beck, bjork and later king crimson and xtc, but it wasn't enough, I needed more..

I ended up buying nine inch nails, jazz, classical, stuff I'd never heard before...

With the lack of major label support of new releases, I thought it was over, but then dutton vocalian and Sony Japan come along.

I don't blame my lack of willpower, I blame the internet saying that I've probably enjoyed most of what I've heard and been opened up to plenty of music I'd never heard before

 

[TVB]

From the time I was a teenager in the early 70's, I have been a quadraphonic junkie. When cd's first came out, my dream was that someone would make a quadraphonic cd. Imagine my anticipation in the early 2000's when surround music discs became available. My first journey on the dvd audio trail was a disaster. I purchased "Hotel california" and Fleetwood mac "Rumours" on ebay for about $15 each, but the seller sent me two sealed recordable discs instead of the dvd audio discs. I thought the seller might have just made a mistake, but the guy would not reply to my emails (what a creep)! I complained to ebay and was told I had to wait to file a complaint. A couple weeks later I again tried to file the complaint and was told it was too late (creeps)! I remember thinking, wow, that sure is a small time window. This experience led me on a dvda journey that ended in a road trip out of town to a big name software store where I bought every dvd audio in surround that I could find, even if I was only remotely interested in it. About the only dvda that I want but never could find is Fagans Kamakariad. During this time, I also bought a bunch of sacd surrounds from the the Sony website including "toys in the attic". Its strange, but I like my second hand SQ vinyl of "toys" as much as the sacd. Go figure.

 

[MidiMagic]

I read the July 1970 article about the Hafler system and built one. This was a year before any quad records were sold. But I was hooked just playing all of my stereo records on it.

Within 6 months I was making Dynaco Diamond encoded recordings for sound effects in a stage play.

I have never stopped.

 

[barfle]

I was an engineering tech at Altec-Lansing in 1972 (through 1974), assigned to work with Hal Keeling (an unsung God of audio, IMNSHO). Every couple of days, we would go to his house at lunch and listen to an album over his entirely home-brew system, including speakers. It was tri-amped, and could easily put 100db in the room. He had a copy of Walter Carlos's "Switched-on Bach" and I thought it was marvelous.

I had a halfway-decent setup in my apartment, although I hadn't actually built any of it myself. My neighbor got interested in upgrading his system (which was a "compact stereo" - it hung on the wall, the speakers opened up like a cupboard, and the record changer flipped down - it might have been a Sears brand), and I got the crappy dipole speakers from his setup, probably for nothing. I set those up as back channels and just had them in parallel with my regular stereo pair. The difference in sound quality made quite the quad effect! But I picked up a Sony SQD-1000 {probably from Pacific Stereo) and some sort of amplifier for the back channels, and bought "Switched-on Bach" in quad. The obsession had begun.

 

[Sonik Wiz]

I was an engineering tech at Altec-Lansing in 1972 (through 1974), assigned to work with Hal Keeling (an unsung God of audio, IMNSHO). Every couple of days, we would go to his house at lunch and listen to an album over his entirely home-brew system, including speakers. It was tri-amped, and could easily put 100db in the room. He had a copy of Walter Carlos's "Switched-on Bach" and I thought it was marvelous.

I had a halfway-decent setup in my apartment, although I hadn't actually built any of it myself. My neighbor got interested in upgrading his system (which was a "compact stereo" - it hung on the wall, the speakers opened up like a cupboard, and the record changer flipped down - it might have been a Sears brand), and I got the crappy dipole speakers from his setup, probably for nothing. I set those up as back channels and just had them in parallel with my regular stereo pair. The difference in sound quality made quite the quad effect! But I picked up a Sony SQD-1000 {probably from Pacific Stereo) and some sort of amplifier for the back channels, and bought "Switched-on Bach" in quad. The obsession had begun.

Good one @barfle! If you check my post #79 you'll see my 1st surround sound experience was with Switched on Bach, stereo. Soon I had a Sansui QS-1 to listen to it on, again, stereo & it sounded great. My 1st SQ decoder was also a Sony SQD-1000 & about the same time I bought SoB in quad. I can't remeber what my wife told me last night but this stuff I know.

I bet you could have some intereting stories about working at Altec-Lansing. I should check out your previous posts.

 

[Titch]

I've been a lifelong music lover (over 50 years) and discovered the joy of surround (Pro-Logic, AC-3) home theatre 30 years ago, but only discovered surround music four years ago. I have a 5000 + CD collection and there were a few hybrid multichannel SACDs among them (Elton John, Eric Clapton) but I never utilised the multichannel format. I started purchasing blu-ray audio discs in 2014. However, I still didn't realise that a few of the blu ray audio discs had multichannel surround until I moved house and replaced my home theatre with one much more expensive than I had owned previously. However, when I tried to play multichannel blu ray audio on my previous Oppo, they kept freezing up. Blu ray audio discs are a bit of a pain - I have to turn on the projector to access the menu. Also, they do not stream without a lag time to the other rooms (via Sonos). So I rarely played them.

I have a 5000 + blu-ray collection and my priority was film watching in my new home theatre. In 2016 I purchased the Oppo 203 for 4K discs. One day I was randomly doing comparisons of blu-ray audio and CDs and trying to see if my friends could hear the difference. The Oppo 203 did not freeze up when accessing the menu. Disappointingly, hardly any discernible difference was heard in many cases between the CD version and blu-ray audio disc in two channel stereo. I thought I heard a difference, but then I was the one changing the discs! My friends were not impressed. The turning point came when I popped in the blu-ray audio of Selling England By The Pound and tried the 5.1 LCPM multichannel track. We were suitably stunned. There was a HUGE difference between the CD and what we were hearing on the multichannel tracks on the blu ray audio. In went Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and we couldn't believe our ears. A Night At The Opera. Historie De Melody Nelson. Tommy. Quadrophenia. Unbelievable. I rushed out and grabbed the Talking Heads Brick set - I had never played the DualDisc DVD-A sides. It was a bingo too. I started searching on the Internet for multichannel discs and found out that the majority were on SACD or DVD-A, so I subsequently started the long and expensive task of buying them second-hand from overseas sellers. Both SACD and DVD-A discs have no lag time on the Sonos either, and they are thus my preferred music source now. I have about 200 multichannel audio discs, spread between SACD, DVD-A and blu-ray audio.

 

[djstephan]

It must have been around 2003 when I lived in LA (Calif), and during one of my myriad trips to Tower Records on Sunset blvd. that I came across Deep Purple's Machine head on DVD-A. After doing some research I bought an Oppo DVD player that could play DVD-A's and I was stunned by the sound and the surround presentation. Fleetwood Mac's Rumors followed soon after that and the rest as they say is history.Can hardly listen to 2ch stereo anymore.
Discovering this site years ago made me much more appreciative of multichannel sound, it's history and its evolution..from 8 track to the present. Also very appreciative of the input of it's very knowledgable members.And it's a very friendly site as well, so it's always a joy to visit.
Now if it was that easy to explain to my better half why I NEED to have the latest Multi release (especially this month of October)....

 

[soesbeout]

Got back from my first Navy cruise in 73 with a Sansui 5000X thought this sounds good then shared an apartment with a shipmate who brought back a QRX-5500 along with some DSOTM.I thought man did I miss out next trip over it was all quad stuff.Then when I got out it was Pink Floyd in quad at their In The Flesh Tour in 77.Later I found Quadwrecks shop and started buying albums.

 

[Wurly1]

Besides movies, the first surround music i listen to was the Vegas show "LOVE" music DVD. Then i found out i can encode movies using final-cut X in 5.1. So i did the sound track of a show i was working on with the stereo console sound in front and the ambiance sound from the spectators point in the surround speakers. The result was magic!
But my first quad experience occurred early this year while i got my first Q8 cartridge. It was The Sound Of Music soundtrack. While not the best, i realized the potential of it and now i'm hooked!
Finally i got my CD-4 system up and running and i just love it!

 

[5.1 4 Life]

The first experience that made me a lover of surround sound was Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon (2003 SACD Edition). I had just purchased my first DVD/SACD player in '03 and I was hooked on both hearing the album with wrap-around sound as well as the greater resolution provided by SACD.

 

[popshop]

Cornelius - Five Point One album

 

[ar surround]

Now if it was that easy to explain to my better half why I NEED to have the latest Multi release (especially this month of October)....

Tell your better half that it's dangerous not to feed the kraken...

!