List of stereo recordings that sound great in quad

[quadanasaziland]

I have the cd and the lp both have always decoded well. I will run them thru the D-1 next week and see if my memory served me well.

[quadanasaziland]

Just curious. I played this thru a QB QSD 1000 and found it to be subtly discrete at moments. Was it as discrete as Piper at The Gates of Dawn, or King Crimson's The Power to Believe? They matrix like a S&IC thru the 1000.

Well thru my D-1 and my QRX-777 both QB worked units, I think you are mostly right, it was alot of double stereo with moments of cool discreteness. The mix on Modern Music (a later recording) decoded much better though. I know Dave digs the SRS but I cant see how it could do anything but muddy the variomatrix waters but I haven't tried it so.....

[aquadad]

Well thru my D-1 and my QRX-777 both QB worked units, I think you are mostly right, it was alot of double stereo with moments of cool discreteness. The mix on Modern Music (a later recording) decoded much better though. I know Dave digs the SRS but I cant see how it could do anything but muddy the variomatrix waters but I haven't tried it so.....

Hello Dave,

How would you like to test drive one of these units? I like what it does for the quad system so well that I got another unit that I've worked into my theatre system and the Pro-Logic feeds off it equally as well. I'd be more than happy to let you give it a listen.

Originally, I was going to use the second unit to fill the psychoacoustic spaces in the rear channels when playing DVD-A's and SACD's etc., but I didn't like the spatial sound in the rears. I do like the effect of the spatialness across the front channels when playing a surround source, combined with the naked punch of the rears. It gives better definition of the sound stage to spread the fronts out and lock the rears in.

Think of it like watching a concert in a large venue when the further you get from the stage, the more echo you hear. By only spreading out the front you feel like your front and center in the arena.

The real joy of these units though is when you pre-process the stereo signals before feeding them into the variomatrix in the quad system. The original intention of these units was to give you the effect of surround (5.0) out of two speakers by adding the psychoacoustic information to the stereo signals. Adjustments to this info can be made by the two controls on the unit. The "center" control enhances the the center channel effect. The "space" control enhances the rear channels effect. What happens when you feed this enhanced stereo signal to the variomatrix for me is pure bliss. The "center" control becomes a front channel volume control, while the "space" control becomes a rear channel volume control. In essence you are controlling phase information. There is also an "output level" control that lets you raise and lower the signal strength of both channels simultaneously.

I realize I'm not a quad purist like a lot of you out there, so maybe what I'm hearing isn't what you're accustomed to. Being a newcomer to all of this I've gotten into it backwards by starting out with modern day surround as my point of reference. Therefore when I listen to stand alone synthed quad it leaves me wanting more and the NuReality gives it to me.

Anyway Dave, unless you're going to pay us a visit soon, let me know and I'll get this out to you to experiment with.

Here's a little article about how it works...

[quadanasaziland]

Very cool Dave! I would love to test it out!! I probably wont be out till mid summer. so I will pm you this week so we can land line. Do you have Axe Victim? I also have about 5 or 6 of Bill's solo efforts. When we talk I will run thru them with you. My lp copies of Live in the Air Age and Modern Music are promo's in mint cond. with introduction letters, bio's, reviews and several pics of the band in each.

[quadanasaziland]

While I'm doing the 2-4 thing has anyone heard of or tried Badger, One Live Badger? This has got to be one of the best live recordings I have ever heard from the 70's and it decodes to the inth degree! Not like your a typical live decode where the band is up front and echo and audiance to the sides and rear.
If you are a Yes fan this is a must have, recorded live at the Rainbow Theatre, London, England in 1972. With ex Yes man Tony Kaye's Hammond B3 comming at you from the right rear and Brian Parrish's SG coming mainly from the left rear. Over that is Tony's synth solos and fills moving about at times. It is avery rich/full soundfield. I have a Canadian pressing that is whisper quiet
Produced by Jon Anderson and complete with Rodger Dean art.
.

[quadanasaziland]

Well thru my D-1 and my QRX-777 both QB worked units, I think you are mostly right, it was alot of double stereo with moments of cool discreteness. The mix on Modern Music (a later recording) decoded much better though. I know Dave digs the SRS but I cant see how it could do anything but muddy the variomatrix waters but I haven't tried it so.....

I have to revisit this post after having just done 3 hours of critical listening to Sunburst Finish (BE-BOP DELUXE) due to the arrival of aquadad's NuReality processor.

I lied in my last post ( see quote) there is a bunch "cool discreteness" in this recording! As an example on track 11, Shine, the guitar, rythum and lead, just using the onboard variomatrix decoder on my QRX-777, moves in a swirling clockwise motion during just about the entire track. Very cool! There is endless amounts of movement in all directions in the sound field thoughout this recording. Bill Nelson is a wizard!

What's changed since my prior post? Well I don't Know, I have re-tuned the speakers to the room a couple of weeks ago, angling the fronts out quite a bit more. This happened while listening to The Flaming Lips. I tuned till it just locked in to the point that the chills effect was at max. I have kept the speaker location since. That and I did what seemed like a couple of hundred a, b's of the critical discrete passages reviewing the NuReality that really brought out the differences between the two processes (the QRX-777 variomatrix with and without the NuReality). So maybe I just skimmed the surface last listen?

Here is my review of the NuReality VHT-200.

First I must thank Dave (aquadad) for the chance to test it! This is a nice man!

Well this is tuff, I am divided just about down the middle here as I will explain. Out of the box and up in system, the unit is nice looking and the display while running is cool if you like dancing lights and I do. Now for the decoding or should I say possible enhancing of the variomatrix decoding.

Following the directions I set the center and space levels to the 2 o'clock positions and punched the unit out on the DBX 400, started Sunburst Finish and listened to the first minute. Already lots of movement in the soundfield and the vocals heavely out of phase at 2 o'clock high, very cool, hit pause jump up punch in the NuReality, sit back down, hit skip back to the start and hit play, over and over and over well you get what I'm saying. Heres the first thing that struck me was that the already heavely out of phase (o.o.p.) vocals moved back behind me and became less pronounced, all most ghoustly. This happened with the lead guitar that is very oop also. They almost went away so ok there is an adustment for that, the center knob, turned it to the 5 o"clock position and started again. This helped but not enough to sound completely right to what I was used to, still just a bit to transparent but much better. This was constant thoughout the recording as the vocals and guitar are oop 95% of the time so on the next session I will try some software that is a bit less oop on the vocals and see then how I feel about that. Also subtle things in the recording seemed to be less defined due to the extra processing. The straight variomatrix was much more defined but I would think this would be expected.

I spoke above about track 11, Shine and the swirling guitars using just the variomatrix, with the NuReality the swirling was less pronounced. This no doubt due to the extra OOP-ing from the SRS processing, now more just of a side to side movement. This kind of decoding difference was noticable to me thoughout.

OK those seem to be the cons nows the pro's. The NuReality acts some thing like my DBX 3BX expander in that it ads a fullness making things a bit more dynamic, alway a plus on cd's and lp's to me but with a psychoacoaustic twist. In fact this thing increases the chills factor at points that are almost scarry! The very reason I am into surround! I crave that fight or flight feeling that music sneaking up on you from behind, above and to the sides gives me, it's just cool. The NuReality goes a step furthur and places more of that inside your head, just down right spooky at times. Reminds me of the first time I heard DSOTM SQ though a Tate. What everyone is enjoying to an even greater extent now with the DVD-A. This thing with the variomatix is just off the ooohhhh scale at times on this recording!

So for me it is 5 1/2 of one and 6 1/2 of the other at different times. I didn't like what it did with the vocals but the increase in the psychoacoustic effects were pronounced at times. It did take away some definition from the music but added dynamics. It seemed that contray to the multichannel speaker placement in the instructions with the surround speakers behind you this would work better with them to the sides. When I got up and moved to the rear of my normal sweet spot, rear speakers to the side, it helped the vocal problem, putting them more to the front and increased the psychoacoustic effect.

The jury is still out as to whether I could run the NuReality on all stereo to quad synthing without being bugged by the vocals. I need to feed the beast more food but I liked it enuff to say that I will get one of my own to keep playing with. Thanks again Dave, this thing IS cool! You don't want it back too soon I hope?

[aquadad]

I lied in my last post ( see quote) there is a bunch "cool discreteness" in this recording! As an example on track 11, Shine, the guitar, rythum and lead, just using the onboard variomatrix decoder on my QRX-777, moves in a swirling clockwise motion during just about the entire track. Very cool! There is endless amounts of movement in all directions in the sound field thoughout this recording. Bill Nelson is a wizard!

In fact this thing increases the chills factor at points that are almost scarry! The very reason I am into surround! I crave that fight or flight feeling that music sneaking up on you from behind, above and to the sides gives me, it's just cool. The NuReality goes a step furthur and places more of that inside your head, just down right spooky at times. This thing with the variomatix is just off the ooohhhh scale at times on this recording!

I didn't like what it did with the vocals but the increase in the psychoacoustic effects were pronounced at times. It did take away some definition from the music but added dynamics. It seemed that contray to the multichannel speaker placement in the instructions with the surround speakers behind you this would work better with them to the sides. When I got up and moved to the rear of my normal sweet spot, rear speakers to the side, it helped the vocal problem, putting them more to the front and increased the psychoacoustic effect.

The jury is still out as to whether I could run the NuReality on all stereo to quad synthing without being bugged by the vocals. I need to feed the beast more food but I liked it enuff to say that I will get one of my own to keep playing with. Thanks again Dave, this thing IS cool! You don't want it back too soon I hope?

Hello Dave,
Glad to hear from you at long last. Welcome to the new reality. Don't worry about returning it right away. In fact you are only scratching the surface so far. Prepare yourself for even more surprises after you've played with this thing for awhile! I know what you are experiencing with the vocal being split up by the variomatrix after pre-processing it with the Nureality. There is a solution.

I know this probably goes against everything you've ever believed in to this point but if you try it you'll be amazed at the result. What I recommend you do is to go and dig up a stereo amp somewhere with a set of speakers that are comparable to what you are driving in the corners of your quad setup. Feed the pre-processed stereo signal from the NuReality to this stereo set up, in addition to the quad set up, with the speakers closer together (front and center) than the quad speakers. This way you are allowing the NR to do what it was originally intended to do and that is to synthesize 5.0 into two channels and speakers. When you get set up this way it tightens up the vocals front and center while at the same time allowing the quad setup to work it's magic in the corners.

I know what you are thinking at this point, that you will loose all discreteness, but you don't. In fact what happens is in short, miraculous. Because what happens when you anchor all the sound to front and center with a psychoacoustic twist, and simultaneously split all this sound into four discrete channels, is that all kinds of phantoms magically appear all around you in the soundfield which, in my case, now goes beyond the physical limitations of the room I am setup in. It's as if the band is actually setup in your home and you hear things coming from throughout the 3-D space, even where there is no speaker .

One other thing worth mentioning Dave is that with this setup I adjust the levels by turning the quad off and the center and space controls on the NR all the way down, with the output level on the NR at 3 o'clock. Then I bring up the center control until I get the desired sound through the stereo setup. Then bring up the space control to the desired level. Then flip on the quad channels and bring them up to the desired level so that they blend in with the stereo channels, and double check the rear channel level. If the rears seem too hot or cold adjust them with the space control on the NR.

You also noticed, as I soon learned, that with the rear channels at the sides (the Wendy Carlos recommendation) the net effect is enhanced. Again, the speakers seem to disappear with the NR while the musicians appear to be spread out all arround you. Also, whenever there is panning it no longer jumps from speaker to speaker, it now flows and swirls all around and through you. THE CHILLS FACTOR!!! enjoy the change

[BananaSlug]

Holy crap, how did you figure this all out

If my parents weren't retiring and leaving San Diego in a few months I'd stop by the next time I was down there. They're just down the road in PQ at the moment.

[aquadad]

Holy crap, how did you figure this all out

If my parents weren't retiring and leaving San Diego in a few months I'd stop by the next time I was down there. They're just down the road in PQ at the moment.

Hey Guy, My door is always open come on over. And on another note I'll be passing through your neck of the woods next month. We'll be staying in a cabin on the Smith River in the Redwoods for a week. We'll also be checking out NorCal for future, permanent relocation.

[zabble]

I lied in my last post ( see quote) there is a bunch "cool discreteness" in this recording!

Sorry if I'm splitting hairs here, but I think "lied" is the wrong word. To lie is to knowingly tell a falsehood. If you mistakenly believe what you are saying to be true, then you are not lying but simply mistaken.

We don't want no stinking liars on this board!

[BananaSlug]

Hey Guy, My door is always open come on over. And on another note I'll be passing through your neck of the woods next month. We'll be staying in a cabin on the Smith River in the Redwoods for a week. We'll also be checking out NorCal for future, permanent relocation.

Thanks for the offer. With my parents leaving I'll have little reason to be down that way, but perhaps when you are up in NorCal I'll get a chance to check it out someday. Enjoy the redwoods! btw, I'm Tristan, though guy, you there or dude will all work too

[quadanasaziland]

Sorry if I'm splitting hairs here, but I think "lied" is the wrong word. To lie is to knowingly tell a falsehood. If you mistakenly believe what you are saying to be true, then you are not lying but simply mistaken.

We don't want no stinking liars on this board!

Badges, Badges.......

[quietlymknnoise]

I am new to this site. I do know that regular stereo LP's palyed thru my QX949 have a great sound.

[Tubefreak]

Make sure you have heard Pink Floyd- Interstellar Overdrive once over your Quad decoder!
especially the last 2 minutes... amazing!

[dharma_bummer]

The new Flaming Lips album, "At War with the Mystics", sounds awesome decoded with QS.

P.S. I've created SQ and QS mixes of the Lips' "Zaireeka" album in case anybody wants to check 'em out. Sadly my receiver isn't full logic so my results aren't all that spectacular, but you lucky bastards with Tates might think they're pretty cool!

[ALEckel]

The Avalanches - Since I Left You - Dolby Pro Logic
Bobby Birdman Giraffes & Jackals - Dolby Pro Logic

I've listened to a lot of my stereo albums through Dolby Pro Logic (not II), and a bunch sound kinda cool and a bunch sound lame, but two albums actually sound so good that you'd swear you're listening to something that was intended to be heard that way. One is one of my favorite albums, "Since I Left You" by the Avalanches, an album from 2001 that uses the most samples (in the "clips of other songs" sense) ever cleared for one recording. It's an extremely dense-sounding album, so it's exciting to hear it split up a bit. The other is a more obscure pop release, by a musician I've met actually, "Giraffes & Jackals" by Bobby Birdman (http://www.bobbybirdman.com/). The album is now out on CD, but I'm using the vinyl version. When listened to through Pro Logic, the harmony vocals sounds like they're split up around you, like there's six Bobby Birdmans standing in the corners of the room singing together.

[johmbolayaSQ]

The Avalanches - Since I Left You - Dolby Pro Logic

I've listened to a lot of my stereo albums through Dolby Pro Logic (not II), and a bunch sound kinda cool and a bunch sound lame, but two albums actually sound so good that you'd swear you're listening to something that was intended to be heard that way. One is one of my favorite albums, "Since I Left You" by the Avalanches, an album from 2001 that uses the most samples (in the "clips of other songs" sense) ever cleared for one recording. It's an extremely dense-sounding album, so it's exciting to hear it split up a bit.

This is one of my favorite albums. I plan on getting a new listening set-up very soon, and I can start participating more and asking questions in this section of the forum.

A small bit of background on The Avalanches, they are a collective of producers and DJ's in Arizona who have done a wide range of music, originally with instrumentation. They moved into sample-based production (i.e. taking beats, melodies, and various sounds from other records and turning it into a collage of their own music) and Since I Left You is an album that is highly celebrated among those who enjoy that type of electronic music. I felt it was one of the best albums of the year when it was released. So, because of how and what they use (primarily everything is taken from vinyl sources), I would not be surprised if their production techniques didn't involve an incredible amount of phasing and/or some of the source material were quad-based. I wish they would remix that in 5.1, however considering the album credits a good amount of samples, I would think that a 5.1 would reveal some of the hidden sounds that weren't properly credited.

[Quadzilla]

I am a big fan of HDCD, so I bought a copy of The Grateful Dead's Greatest Hits (or something like that), remastered in HDCD for $14 the other day.

I played it through my Sansui QSD-2 in Synth mode, and most cuts sound as discrete as any Q4 I own. If anything, there is almost too much rear channel information. The cuts from the 2 DVD-Audio discs are every bit as good as their MLP versions.

Give it a try if you want a treat. Mike.

[jdmack]

There a song on "Union" by Yes called "The More We Live - Let Go." The liner notes say that this song was "Mixed in Spherical Sound on Radian Speakers."
For fun, I tried both SQ and QS software decoding on this track, and ended up with similar sounding quad mixes. Hand percussion ended up in the rear speakers, and the whole thing had a sense of swirly bigness.

What exactly did "mixed in spherical sound" mean? Was it a form of Dynaquad for the 90's? Or was it just some meaningless hype from Eddie Offord?

J. D.

[leevitalone1]

There a song on "Union" by Yes called "The More We Live - Let Go." The liner notes say that this song was "Mixed in Spherical Sound on Radian Speakers."
For fun, I tried both SQ and QS software decoding on this track, and ended up with similar sounding quad mixes. Hand percussion ended up in the rear speakers, and the whole thing had a sense of swirly bigness.

What exactly did "mixed in spherical sound" mean? Was it a form of Dynaquad for the 90's? Or was it just some meaningless hype from Eddie Offord?

J. D.

u mean " Squirrel boy?

[Ed Bishop]

This is a list of stereo recordings that have impressive surround effects when played back through various high end decoders. Since this is rather subjective please be sure to include information about the type of decoder used to achieve the best pseudo surround effects. Submit your entries for albums as well as individual titles and include the following info if possible;


Captain Beefheart-<strong>Trout Mask Replica</strong> SQ Decoder
Fleetwood Mac - <strong>Then Play On</strong> QSD-1
The Mothers of Invention -<strong>Uncle Meat</strong> QS Decoder 1968 Bizarre/Warner Reprise LP - 2MS 2024

I've isolated these because each has something in common: at least one monaural recording(I think TROUT has three, the others one apiece). While I can well believe these will do well through good decoding, the mono tracks won't do much at all, obviously...

ED

[Reed]

Well I got my Sansui QRX-6001 last night and tried out the Variomatrix settings. WOW!! I still need to clean the pots on the front and clean it up but it still sounded great!

I plugged my laptop into the AUX ports on the back and listened to a bunch of songs through iTunes.

here are my favorite stereo songs Variomatrixed through the "Surround" setting:

Anything on the "Smell the Glove" album by Spinal Tap. This album sounds great in Variomatrix.

"Highway to Hell" by AC/DC.

"Insane in the Brain" by Cypress Hill. I only include this one because of the neat little panning effect that the trumpet does. It starts out in the front right channeland slowly does a clockwise pan. However, as the trumpet pan clockwise in toto, the individual trumpet notes do a rapid counter clockwise pan. First note is just front right, next note is starts faintly in rear right but quickly pans to front right, next note starts solidly rear right but pans to front right, next note starts faintly rear left but pans to rear right, etc... Kind of fun.

Almost anything by "Kyuss"

"In 3-D" by Weird Al Yankovic also decodes pretty good.

Now that I have gone quad, I am never going back!

[Doug G.]

I will add the Eurythmics "Be Yourself Tonight", particularly "I Love You Like a Ball and Chain". I happen to have the CD version.

During the part of the song where the backing singers start singing "like a ball and chain" over and over again, it moves all over the place. It really sounds like it is real quad!

The rest of the album has plenty going on in the rear channels too ("Here Comes That Sinking Feeling", for instance).

This was using a Sony SQD-2050 in SQ mode, Heathkit AA-29 amps, and stacked original Advents in all corners.

Doug

[bugdaddy]

I will add the Eurythmics "Be Yourself Tonight", particularly "I Love You Like a Ball and Chain". I happen to have the CD version.

During the part of the song where the backing singers start singing "like a ball and chain" over and over again, it moves all over the place. It really sounds like it is real quad!

The rest of the album has plenty going on in the rear channels too ("Here Comes That Sinking Feeling", for instance).

This was using a Sony SQD-2050 in SQ mode, Heathkit AA-29 amps, and stacked original Advents in all corners.

Doug

Thanks for that tip Doug. I listened to it last night in PLII mode and really enjoyed it - - especially that "ball and chain" section" you noted. I'll have to check my other Eurythmics cds to see if they work as well in surround as this one.

[Richo]

G'day fellas,

I'm lucky to own a pretty big music collection of roughly 17,000 tracks, most are mp3's (latest 1/2 I've ripped are 320kbs and the earlier years 1/2 are 128kbs) or flacs living on a hard drive. It's taken me the best part of 34 years to amass my collection and I've been digitizing them for the last 8 years. Since discovering quad a few weeks back I've quickly spun through my entire collection and listed artists that are giving good, clean separation through the rear speakers of my setup.

I get the best mp3 results using 320kbs vbr and the lame codec. These are nigh indistinguishable from the source, the differences are there but they are quite small. The flac's are perfect.

I am unsure exactly what kind of decoder I have (its a sanyo amp) but I'm guessing at least 1/2 logic because of the clear rear separation I'm getting, the results are quite spectacular on some tracks. I'm only using the matrix setting (QS) as the SQ setting on my amp sucks in comparison.

My listing technique was a bit haphazard and I apologize up front but I was more interested in throughtput speed than total accuracy. If I found an artist with more than one album that quadded well then I just listed the artist. If I found only the one album from a particular artist that decoded well then I listed the album as well.

Anyway, here's a few more for the list;

QUADABLES (QS matrix)


3 doors down
10cc

beastie boys (rap crap)
beatles - white album
ben harper - the will to live
benny bassani
bif naked
black box
bon Jovi
brant bjork and the operators
BT - IMA 1 (electronica)

chicane
collective soul

delerium (electronica mellow)
deep forest (electronica)
dido
dr alban (electronica)
def leppard
die krupps (awesome separation in 'blackened', electronica)

enya (bloody awesome in quad)
eurythmics

flyleaf

imogen heap (etheral, like enya)

jill sobule
jimi hendrix (man was a genius, electric ladyland goes well but so do about the first 4 albums he made)

Led zepplin (heaps of led zep goes good, even a live concert recording decodes well!)

malice mizer (french electronica)
mamas and the papas
mariah carey
massive attack (electronica)
mike oldfield - tubular bells (a quad classic)
Mr. X - Gangster Politic (best of Canadian ska)

nelly furtado
nickeleback (cool!... + subtle sound effects)
norman greenbaum - spirit in the sky

oasis
oingo boingo
olive
orgy

P.O.D.
paprika corps
paul okenfold
pendulum
pink floyd (dark side of the moon is great but so are quite a few of their other albums like the wall 1+2, atom heart mother, etc)

queen - innuendo
queen - a night at the opera
queen - sheer heart attack
(alot of other queen albums I have do not decode well)

ramstein
rayon/shaggy
rick james

santana (awesome)
sidestepper (big chill 1)
skamikaze
ska-p
snoop dog (rap crap)
spookymen (these guys are funny!)

tara turunen
tripsters skitzophrenik (electronica)
the alohas
the beatles - the white album (read the beatle's LSD experiments, haha!)
The Byrds-The Notorious Byrd Brothers
the corrs
the prodigy (electronica)
the real danger
The whitlams
tim rogers and the temperance union
tina and ike turner
tool
tracey chapman

vitro (electronica)

x-press (electronica)

zakk wylde
zero 7 (electonica)

There are also countless thousands of others that decode into quad well too but not to the tier one discreet voicings of the ones listed above.

97% of my music was ripped from CD source, the rest from vinyl.

Cheers, Richo.