I'm sorry, but i've had some bad dealings with some people on the the other group who seem to have migrated to here. I'm just a little touchy at the moment, just ignore me
Thank you for explaining - ever since you and I had that disagreement about SQ having a center front "channel" or not (and the disagreement, I believe, stemmed from the fact that we used the term "channel" in different senses, because, as you know, in SQ, other than the actual Left and Right channels from the CD or LP, there are no other "real" channels present - they are 'imaginary' phase and/or amplitude encoded channels, rather than real ones, and I believe we were misunderstanding each others usage of the terms "channels", but I don't believe we have any real disagreement as to the properties of the SQ matrix)
I can understand your reaction to me because of people like the infamous "QuadBob" who has filled many peoples heads with garbage as to how the various matrix systems work (as well as their history & development), so why shouldn't I be one of those people who thinks I know more than I really do thanks to an education from "QuadBob"? As a side note and real irritant to me, QuadBob also spread considerable misinformation as to the development of the Dolby Stereo/MP Matrix system; in fact, I've been working on an article about that very subject to try and set the record straight. Thankfully, many people at Dolby labs have been reviewing my writing and have confirmed or corrected certain statements - Dolby has published so very little (and a lot of misinformation too!) on Dolby Stereo's development, so I figure it's about time for an accurate article detailing the systems history as well as the changes Dolby made to the Tate DES system to create the Dolby Stereo decoders. (Sadly, many of the people who engineered the Dolby MP encoder and modified Tate decoding never left notes as to what they did - even people like Roger Dressler don't know some of the 'technical' history of Dolby Stereo) In my Dolby Stereo article I also hope to dispel the myth that Sansui's QS matrix formed the basis of Dolby Stereo encoding, which it didn't - and Dolby found Vario-Matrix system so unacceptable (
even though it was NEVER used for decoding the front channels) that they stopped using the Vario-Matrix IC's as soon as the Tate DES IC's became available - SQ didn't factor into Dolby Stereo's development either, although it has more compatibility with Dolby Stereo than QS does - yet that's another QuadBob 'myth', that CBS sold "the SQ patent" to Dolby which Dolby turned into Dolby Stereo! As if there was a single "SQ Patent"! Just musing here, but at the most basic level, DynaQuad probably comes closest to Dolby Stereo, but DynaQuad has all 'real' encoding coefficients, it's not a phase matrix in any manner, whereas Dolby MP Matrix employs quadrature shifts to eliminate signal cancellations as well as allow interior pans and also improve mono compatibility. (
which is why SQ decoders, even the Fosgate Tate 101A in the "cinema" mode, don't make good Dolby Surround decoders - the 'interior' position of Dolby Surround, which film mixers use most of the time since it decodes to the back with a Pro-Logic decoder yet doesn't cancel in mono, decodes in an SQ decoder as Right Back since it's a quadrature shift with Right Leading Left. When I first got my Fosgate Tate I always wondered why so many films had Right Surround information in most scenes - in a Dolby Stereo mix, only with sound sent fully to the surround channel, which is rare since it has absolutely no mono compatibility, does an SQ decoder properly place the signal at Center Back.
Anyway...
Our disagreement saddened me, not only because you were a great guy to have helped me get on Demonoid, but because I come to QQ to make friends, not argue with people and make enemies. (I do like to argue/discuss technology, etc... but not actual 'fight' argue, if you know what I mean) When I worked for DTS as their Internet Rep, I found it to be such a depressing job due to the levels of attacks I would get on the newsgroups, both from pro-Dolby/anti-DTS people AND from PRO-DTS people! If I'd mention something truthful about Coherent Acoustics, something innocent like that it used a common bit-pool, I'd get hate-filled emails from rabid pro-DTS'ers - even Gary Reber sent me hate mail once because I took him to task over the article he ran in Widescreen Review about his DTS equipped Buick! One person actually hacked into my DTS account on AOL and sent out emails making it look like I'd lost my mind or something. I was almost fired over that until AOL looked into it and proved to DTS that the person who hacked my account was in Canada using AOHell to avoid paying fees. When the job with DTS ended, I stopped posting to the various newsgroups completely because I was so bummed and burned out over the whole thing. It was Karen Hultgren at DTS (who had been my boss at DTS) that got me out of my 'funk' and posting online again.
This is probably a dumb question, but what other quad group are you referring to above? Do you mean the original Google (or was it Yahoo?) quad group? If so, I didn't even know it was still around except as an "archived" site - that's how I originally found the QQ forum and ever since, I never looked at the other site.
If you don't mind my asking, what's happening bad with the others on the other site?
One thing that sucks about the online communities like the QQ forum is there is no context, such as facial expression, voice inflection etc... so something someone writes can sound absolutely 'asshole-y' and they never meant it to - I'm certainly guilty of that all the time and I try my damnedest not to do it. I try to write and re-write replies so they don't come off sounding confrontational or like I'm a know it all, since I clearly don't know nearly as much as I wish I did. I remember IM'ing and talking on the phone with Cai Campbell - we were both working on quad articles for the Primal Vinyl newsletter (they basically gave us the entire issue! I don't know if the newsletter is even around anymore.) - I did a very in-depth review of the Fosgate Tate while Cai reviewed the Lafayette SQ-W and CD-4 format. He and I had very different viewpoints technically - he was into subjective reviewing and believed things like audio cables affected sound quality, while I am more technically oriented (in other words, I was a huge fan of
The Audio Critic (click link for free back-issues in PDF form) magazine and
hated The Absolute Sound). Yet I had a blast talking and arguing/discussing with him about our differing viewpoints. I was so sad when he died...
Hopefully, I haven't ever pissed off any QQ Forum member or made anyone dislike me. I just want to make friends and discuss a hobby that is near and dear to my heart.