One thing she's wrong about is that "Switched On Bach" in SQ was withdrawn or deleted DON from the CBS quad catalog. She may have requested it be deleted from the catalog, but CBS never did it. And she does admit that CBS got their SQ encoders to the point where it was the hardest matrix system to trip up with unconventional mixing or recording. RCA and CBS were the giants and once they got behind SQ and CD-4, Sansui never had a chance - had quad survived (and I d o think both SQ and CD
-4 would have survived together since each compliments the other, or the systems would have been merged into USQ or something similar), QS would have been dropped eventually - it had too little support, what I consider to be poor stereo compatibility, and too many defects when broadcast via Stereo FM.
Of course, CBS botched the SQ system by introducing it too early, with too little understanding of how we hear and localize sound (ALL the companies were guilty of that), and then by haphazardly introducing a new 'perfect' SQ decoder type every 6 months that was an attempt to fix this or that defect of the previous SQ decoder, all the while enforcing no standards of decoding on licencee's (SQ's main inventor and quad champion at CBS, Dr. Ben Bauer, really, really believed in quad and SQ and he wanted to be the 'Ray Dolby' of the quad world), while RCA botched CD-4 with their typical cheap manufacturing and no concern for the consumer "Consumers will be so thrilled they can hear anything at all from our CD-4 records they won't care that it doesn't sound good!". Companies like RCA really did not understand why American consumers preferred more expensive imported European and Japanese pressings of albums to RCA's own "pristine" American Made LP's which were warp-riddled and thin, made of poor quality recycled vinyl and with sound quality mastering meant for AM radio and poorly set up 'console' stereo's.
I remember in the early 80's buying Cyndi Lauper's "She's So Unusual" LP (which was a CBS release) and having to return it SIX times before I got a copy that didn't have some defect or wasn't full of ticks and pop's. Then, when on vacation in LA that summer, I found a UK import of it at Licorice Pizza and literally couldn't believe how much better it sounded, with better stereo separation, dynamic range and frequency response - and how different it was in the quality of the vinyl and care with which it had been mastered and pressed - and it was perfectly flat to boot! I never found an American made version of Duran Duran's "Arena" LP that would play properly on my Technics SL-V5 - I had to buy the UK import. And the mass-market pre-recorded cassettes, all except for Capitol/EMI's "XDR" tapes, were not even worth bothering with - they sounded like 8-tracks and used the cheapest tape possible. I could make a Dolby C or dbx II cassette recording from my imported LP or new CD that was indistinguishable from the original - while pre-recorded cassettes had channels that faded in and out of alignment, high frequencies that came and went - vocals wandered back and forth across the soundstage or changed in phase - all due to the cheapness of the studio's manufacturing, materials and super high-speed copying.
BTW, I ask, because I really don't know, has Wendy Carlos ever issued any of her recordings in multi-channel on DVD-A or SACD? She gives so much space to surround sound on her site that I'd love to own or even hear some of her albums in surround, but I've never ran across any.
