Larry Fast Email response from an icon-Mr. Larry Fast!!!

QuadraphonicQuad

Help Support QuadraphonicQuad:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

kap'n krunch

2K Club - QQ Super Nova
QQ Supporter
Joined
Nov 25, 2008
Messages
9,207
Location
Erased land
I am Geeked! (capital G)

I got a response from none other than Mr. Synergy himself, Larry Fast(!!!), regarding the QS encoding of his LPs other than the first one, Electronic Realizations fro Rock Orchestra.
It's one of those emails you send not really expecting a reply, and boy, I got one very quickly.

Here's the email I sent him:

Dear Mr. Fast:

I have been listening to "Cords" for a good 25 years now and I think it's your best work (my opinion).

I recently found a sealed copy in a gatefold cover-clear vinyl-

And,

since the technology is available and the results are truly great,
I have been doing 96/24 DVD-Audio conversions from SQ and QS encoded LPs for a couple of years using Adobe Audition scripts(SQ and QS have different scripts).
Since only your first LP is listed as QS encoded, I decoded "Cords" just for kicks,
and,
was blown away, I could SWEAR you encoded this one too (or manipulated the phase to achieve very similar results).

Obviously , there must be a reason why you haven't disclosed this info publicly by now, but if there isn't and if you feel inclined to do so, albeit indirectly, it'd be great and I'd truly appreciate it.

Thanks,
Alberto S. Fas


and here is his reply;

Hi Alberto-

I don't know what to say. I'll have to try and listen myself. No Synergy album after Electronic Realizations was mixed in quad, much less released, because Passport Records would not pay the very expensive licensing and royalties demanded by Sansui and the owners of the QS, SQ and other quad encoding technologies. Those fees imposed on the record labels and artists probably had as much to do with the demise of quad as the resistance of the consumer.

All I can suggest is that my albums made extensive use of digital delays, reverbs, harmonizers, phasers and flangers. All of these introduced phase shifts to the signals throughout the multi-layered mix. I suspect that the decoder software, which use phase differences to pick out the spatial locations, thinks that the content being fed has information it is supposed to decode. It's being fooled into creating a somewhat random, but effective surround field.

If it works and you're enjoying it, I'm not going to complain. But it wasn't done by design or kept secret. After Electronic Realizations, when Passport wouldn't continue to pay the fees, in 1976 Sansui came and took back their encoder hardware from the studio and that was then end of that generation of quad for me.


Thanks for your interest,

Larry Fast


Larry Fast
SYNERGY® Electronic Music. Inc.
908-647-3007
[email protected]
 
Great, Kap'n, that you have triggered such an inside statement! I had suspected already, that the "Quad" in electronic music was just inherent to it (and not so much a result of any assumed SQ or QS decoding). :)
 
Wait a minute. I thought that Sansui let folks use the QS system without royalties as long as they did not use the QS logo. I always thought that was why the early Command Quadraphonic and ABC Jazz titles never mentioned QS.

Maybe that was not the case?

Good job, KK!
 
Very interesting that Mr. Fast seems to attribute the demise of quad, in part, to excessive licensing fee and royalty requirements demanded by the patent owners. A new angle to consider --------?
 
Wait a minute. I thought that Sansui let folks use the QS system without royalties as long as they did not use the QS logo. I always thought that was why the early Command Quadraphonic and ABC Jazz titles never mentioned QS.

Maybe that was not the case?

Good job, KK!

I think you are still correct here, Jon.

If his first LP mentioned that it was QS encoded, he would have had to pay the fee.

Doug
 
Does anyone know how much those fee's we're back then? Was the fee so high as to be prohibitive to releasing QS Quad?

BTW, good work kap'n krunch.
 
If the QS 'fee' situation is true, did that also apply to SQ and CD-4? But even if there were fees for use of these formats (by name or not by name), the fact remains that the reasons quad died were because a) three main formats split the sales, b) not enough titles for the formats to thrive in the mainstream, c) no commitment on the part of the labels to push the formats when they began to stall in sales, d)consumer confusion over systems (and how to build one, even), and e) some artists and producers had no interest in mixing music to quad. I'm not sure where 'heavy fees' would fit into the equation, but if it did play a part, it was probably not the main one, but part of the larger environment that led the labels to drop all quad formats.


ED :)
 
I have to look for the Billboard article I saw with the "QS for free" reference. It may have been Sansui's attempt at getting ahead of the other formats. They probably figured they'd make the cash on the decoders, not the encoding. JVC and Columbia were a different story and had a different philosophy.
 
Wait a minute. I thought that Sansui let folks use the QS system without royalties as long as they did not use the QS logo. I always thought that was why the early Command Quadraphonic and ABC Jazz titles never mentioned QS.

Maybe that was not the case?

Good job, KK!

But they did have a picture of a QS encoder in the gatefold of the earliest Command Quadraphonic LP's. While ABC never actually mentioned QS directly, those early albums made it quite clear that was how they were encoded.
 
Wait a minute. I thought that Sansui let folks use the QS system without royalties as long as they did not use the QS logo. I always thought that was why the early Command Quadraphonic and ABC Jazz titles never mentioned QS.

Maybe that was not the case?

Good job, KK!

I don't know about that (no royalties with no logo).

But I do recall talking to both Jerry LeBow who did outreach in the US for Sansui and Ed Michel of Impulse/ABC back in the '70s and they were both very clear that ABC and Impulse were encoding LP releases in QS. The topic of QS royalties never came up in my chats with them.
 
It seems to me that, if Sansui were charging a stiff royalty fee for use of their encoding system, that QS albums would have been much more expensive than the extra dolllar charged for the quad versions. So I don't necessarily buy that they charged such a fee. I may be wrong, but weren't those Passport albums Mr. Fast recorded, distributed by ABC? That would have been another reason for them to have been encoded in QS.
 
(wow!!! it's been THAT LONG???)

Soo..got in touch after a few years with MISTER Larry Fast, who is a GREAT guy, and he told me that he can do MCH mixes (which are NOT included in the distribution deal with one of the MAJORS- they only can control the STEREO stuff) and suggested FLAC MCH downloads...to which he was quite thankful cause he had not thought of that...
He told me he STILL wants to mix his Synergy LPs to MCH ("COOOORDS"!!!!!), so he'll try to get "a going" and he'll let me know..

Of course I extended a cordial invitation for him to JOIN our great Forum, to which he said he would...(he'll also get "the ROYAL treatment"=his own section) cause , let's face it , HE is a QUAD PIONEER!!!

I'll keep you posted..or maybe HE WILL!!! (let's hope so!)

:smokin
 
Great, Kap'n, that you have triggered such an inside statement! I had suspected already, that the "Quad" in electronic music was just inherent to it (and not so much a result of any assumed SQ or QS decoding). :)
Quad in electronic music is just "inherent"? Not really so. Yes, you can get
great synthesis when it's played through a matrix decoder, but actual encoding, and subsequent decoding with the proper decoder, will position sounds in the channels they belong in. Synthesizing quad from stereo sources is purely random. It wasn't planned for.
 
I hope Larry joins, and I hope that if he does we can all give him some positive options for how to proceed with his ideas, keeping in mind the financial realities.

Some of the options depend on what he's got in his vaults, but a few off the cuff ideas -
1) The J Tull way - cd of the album, new mix, outtakes and surround mix in a 2cd/dvd or BR set
2) No real outtakes, then a single BR disc of mixes...2 (or 3) albums per disc, release as they get done - I like the idea of 2 albums per disc with his catalog, seems to fit well with the material.
3) If you're a marketer - make a little box for a small set of discs - like 2/3/4 sets from option 2) - fill the box with those 3 discs or so and get the bonus disc of the extras...price right and I'm in easily.

Would that be a Pledge Music thing?
 
I hope Larry joins, and I hope that if he does we can all give him some positive options for how to proceed with his ideas, keeping in mind the financial realities.
Would that be a Pledge Music thing?

This is one of several things we (Larry Fast & I) discussed over the last 3 months; he's still working through the delivery options. There is more I could say, but I do not wish to speak out of turn. I'd also made Larry aware of QQ and what surround fans are looking for in a general sense. It was my original thought that Larry would become ready during 2018 and we'd engage at that time.
 
Back
Top