INVOLVE SQ - IS HERE

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Hi Dietrich

The photo for the SQ / QS version of the Surround Master is not updated. The unit we send out has a front panel switch SQ ...QS to make the selection. REMEMBER TO TURN THE POWER SWITCH OFF THEN ON TO REBOOT THE UNIT WHEN CHANGING MODES.

For ordering please go to the "hidden " page on our web site (I have asked our people to un hide it but its not done yet!):

http://www.involveaudio.com/products/surround-master-sq-edition

The price is USD $495

Yes Paypal is good

Regards

Chucky

Hello Chucky,

here an ask from Germany how the Decoder is working for SQ and QS LP's. Although we produce now self discrete quadraphonic software, I am further on interested to play my old discrete and matrix software on the highest level of quality. So the Surround Master decoder must include for me the SQ and the QS mode. I have seen now from your webside pictures of the decoder in sight of front and back. But I have not seen a key or pushbutton to switch or select the SQ oder QS mode. Both matrix chematics are different and needs also a different decoding. Or will the Surround Master recognice automatically the different inputs and switch automatically to the needed different matrix cheme fro a perfect decoding? With other words: I like to listen the same positions of the instruments or voices as playing with my Tate II for SQ and QSD-2 for QS. And if possible with some more clearness and transparency.

How many would cost such a decoder including QS and QS selling to Germany and is paying possible with paypal?

Thanks

Dietrich
 
Hi Roundhousequad

Hmmm, sounds like an interesting concept as we do not have a Tate (or QSD -1), believe it or not we worked independently! May I suggest you first try to flog it on ebay or something as you will probably get a better price (for now), failing that contact me privately.

Regards

Chucky

Chucky do you want to trade a Tate for one of your units
 
`I finally received mine yesterday. When I saw the box, I thought, what's this? That's not my Involve SQ! Opened it up, and there it was. I was expecting a unit the size of the Tate, not a paperback novel!!
Read through the manual, and noticed something missing! How does this unit do bass management? First of all, what is the crossover frequency? I assume used as 4.0 and 5.0, it just sends the bass out untouched to the 4/5 channels. But when used as 4.1 or 5.1, how do you set/turn on/activate the crossover for the sub? I hope that there's not an abscense of a crossover, just providing simple "double bass" to 4/5 and .1 outs! Please explain!
 
Okay, I finally got my initial listening in last night! My fat ass also got a good amount of exercise cuing up tons of records.

I will start this review with this: If you want to listen to QS and SQ records and want to synthesize stereo to quad, do not hesitate to buy this thing. It will meet your expectations and then some. Heck, if anything, the Involve folks are playing it safe and not talking it up enough (I know, they knew it would be more believable from us). This thing is beyond amazing. With SQ and QS records, I finally feel like I am getting what they told everyone they would be getting if they bought matrix stuff. If you have the Surround master, the 70's matrix propaganda is no longer a lie. I feel that if anyone is unhappy with it's QS/SQ performance, it is because they have a problem with their equipment, do not have everything optimally set up or are disappointed with the quad mix on the record (I think some people expect them all to sound like Dark Side Of The Moon).

Firstly, I sat up temporarily at my GF's house. This setup was not optimal. While I used 4 matching large 3 way speakers, positioning was not optimal. I had to work with the space I had. I got it fairly symmetrical but front and rear were closer than left and right (even with the poor speaker placement, the mixes shined). I used my big old sony quad receiver along with an external vintage realistic phono preamp (I know they preamp is perfectly working, i think the Sony is too but I did not want to trust the receiver to this in the off chance anything in the old phono section is bad). The turntable was my GF's Technics SL-J1 linear. Pedestrian cart. Nothing too exciting here. Now that it has performed this well on this less than optimal setup, I know it will completely blow minds when setup in my system.

I will take one second to touch on the appearance. It doesn't look that good, but it's not ugly either. It looks like a cross between a 70's radar detector and one of those digital TV converter boxes that are used to "upgrade" old TVs.

So the first thing I slapped on was An Introduction to SQ Quadraphonic sound. I knew this would let me know right away if the SQ mode worked or not and hot damn it did! It actually sounded how you always thought it should sound! Image was perfectly stable, shocking separation, everything was going in the right direction. This was a great test. Now time to rock.

I have all three Aerosmith quads, and I was going to work my way through the hits on all three in chronological order. They had great separation and channel isolation, but by the time I got to Walk This way, my GF was getting bored. It wasn't ping-pongy enough for her "why would you pay 500 for this type of quad". While I was happy, I knew I had to skip forward to Back In The Saddle. Yay, swirly ping pong effect, her attention is regained. I knew what I had to do next.

Edgar Winter Frankenstein and Free Ride. Beautiful and amazing. Still has everyones attention.

Now for the big guns. Dark Side of The Moon by Pink Floyd. I only had time to play Money and Us and Them. Sounds pretty much like the discrete version to me! I then went on to test out the QS ability.

I put on one of the QS Ovation sound effects records, Sounds of Today and Tomorrow. It moved all the sounds around perfectly. Cars, Motorcycles, Digital effects, Airplanes, gunshots and all! Fun stuff!

I then went to Jim Croce's hits. Played Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown. Sounded really nice. Good separation. Boring mix. Loosing the GF again even though she likes that song.

I then played around with the synthesis from stereo records. Much better than anything I had ever heard. I will touch more on this later, but basically, when it's good it's good, when it stinks, it stinks. When it really works well with a song it is mind blowing. When it's a bad choice, it's almost unbearable compared to stereo.

I went back to a couple more SQ records then. I played the Song Indian reservation by The Raiders. Once again, completely solid and amazing.

The last thing I tried, was well after the ear fatigue set in (and alcohol and *whatnot* and record changing fatigue as well) was Hang On Sloopy from Rick Derringer's Spring Fever. Sounded pretty good but wasn't too exciting, plus I was beat. Kind of a low note to wind the night down on, but stuff happens.

Thank you so much to all the INVOLVE staff for making this happen!!! This is what we have all always wanted!
 
Thank you all for your tests
I don't feel that I have lead anyone up the
Garden path
I just said what I truly believed
Ron
 
Hi all.

I have to thank you for your reviews thus far, not just because it's a huge relief to me that you're enjoying it, but also because I don't need to commit harakiri as is company policy for a failure. The knife goes back into the sheath for another day.

Chucky is a hard master, but fair. (I have to say that)

~David
 
`I finally received mine yesterday. When I saw the box, I thought, what's this? That's not my Involve SQ! Opened it up, and there it was. I was expecting a unit the size of the Tate, not a paperback novel!!
Read through the manual, and noticed something missing! How does this unit do bass management? First of all, what is the crossover frequency? I assume used as 4.0 and 5.0, it just sends the bass out untouched to the 4/5 channels. But when used as 4.1 or 5.1, how do you set/turn on/activate the crossover for the sub? I hope that there's not an abscense of a crossover, just providing simple "double bass" to 4/5 and .1 outs! Please explain!

Hey there,

In a nutshell, the system was designed this way. The -0.1 output / sub output is simply bass output below 50hz for people who want a separate output to their sub unit if they're running an amp setup that doesn't do woofer crossover on its own. The 4 / 5 outputs are all full range, deliberately (well, depending on what you put into it of course, you might have 2.1 output that takes care of this for you) - this let us give the maximum flexibility to multiple speaker types without adding cost, as smaller speakers such as in home theatre systems will have their own roll-off pre-amp to protect their included speakers, or passive rolloff in the speakers themselves.

All of the development time went into the processing itself. The processor we're using is absolutely at its maximum, there was no room to add any more options without adding a bunch of extra circuitry, which would have increased the development time and the cost, thus the price.

Cheers
~David
 
Dwight,

I also work well under the threat of a huge paycheck. Unfortunately nobody has threatened me with one of those yet.
:)

-David
 
I got to spend a few hours putting the Involve Surround Master SQ through its paces. Here are my thoughts and observations.

Stereo-to-surround upconversion: The best I've heard. Better than the results from a Tate 101A, or any of the common receiver modes (Dolby ProLogic IIx, dts Neo:6, etc.). The front stage was completely seamless. With the competition, sometimes vocals get isolated to the front center. On the Surround Master, it was a seamless front stage with an uncanny illusion of "soundstage depth," something I've never experienced before on my system when listening to stereo material. Listening to Dave Brubeck's "Time Out" (an older recording from 1959) was immersive with a middle-of-the-band effect. Sound quality on that CD bested many newer recordings I've heard.

QS decoding: I tried out the Project 3 test LP, the opening track from Paul Anka's "The Painter," and a QS Vox Box set of George Gershwin. On the Project 3 test record, all sounds were placed correctly in their channels during the test playback. Then in the music portion, instrument placement matched the diagrams in the album sleeve. Separation was clean, with no noticeable "bleed-through" to incorrect channels.

I chose the Paul Anka selection ["(You Bring Out) The Best In Me"] to do a comparison of script-based decoding vs. Involve decoding. The results were similar, but not quite identical. I did notice a little percussion bleed-through to the rear channels in the Involve version that was not present in the script-based decode. However, placement of background singers, instruments, etc. was very similar between the two. I don't know which rendition is more "accurate," but overall, I preferred the sound of the Involve rendition.

The Gershwin Vox Box is more of an "ambient surround" presentation. However, it was still a vast improvement over stereo as the Surround Master created a realistic 3-dimensional concert hall ambience out of the QS-encoded LP. Were it not for the vinyl noise, I would have thought I was listening to a multi-channel SACD.

SQ decoding: I tried out the Columbia introduction to SQ quadraphonic sound LP, then listened to a few cuts from Wendy Carlos's "Switched On Bach," Barbra Streisand's "Stoney End," and Billy Joel's "Piano Man." Again, all sound placement tests put sounds in the correct channels. There is a 360-degree pan effect (narration of "all around ... and around ... and around...") that came off flawlessly, with no perceivable gaps or jumps.

My copies of "Switched on Bach" and "Stoney End" are pretty noisy and beat-up (I got them used, and their previous owners didn't treat the records well). This didn't adversely affect the surround decoding, though the music was noisy or distorted as a result. Again, this was due to the records and not the Surround Master.

The decoding of the Billy Joel at least equaled what I have been able to do with the Adobe Audition scripts that have been posted on this site. However, the convenience of playing back the vinyl through the Surround Master can't be beat. This cuts conversion time by 2/3; on my computer, decoding an album with Audition takes about twice the running time ... and that is after playing back the album into the computer!

So we definitely have a winner for decoding '70s quad material, as well as enhancing stereo to surround. If you have matrix quad albums, getting a Surround Master is a no-brainer. Stereo upconversion is also excellent, but with a caveat (see point #3 below).

---

And now some questions and comments that I hope the Involve guys can answer:
1) There are connections for 4-channel or 5-channel output. If I want to do 4.0 upconversions of both SQ and QS, should I be using the 4-channel output jacks? Or use FL, FR, SL, SR from the 5.1 jacks? I read over the manuals and addenda twice but did not fully understand the difference between these two connections, and how the front channels differ. There had been some past discussion about the QS decoding only being in 5.1 and not 4.0. Is that still the case? Or can I decode QS in 4.0 (as it was done in the '70s)?

2) What sampling rate / bit depth are used internally to the Surround Master for digitizing and processing the audio? I usually rip LPs at 96/24, but if the Surround Master works at 48/24, there's no point in doing a 96/24 LP rip. I ask this so I can use the highest bit rate for quality reasons, but not waste space by grabbing higher-resolution samples than the Surround Master can re-output as analog audio.

3) How to improve Surround Master and make it appealing to a broader market? The main thing that is missing is digital audio input and output. Relying upon analog input and output is somewhat obsolete in the current home theater world, which has largely migrated to HDMI for everything (except vinyl). I made the switch to HDMI for all my digital sources in 2009 and haven't looked back, as it combines multi-channel audio and video in ONE cable, and eliminates duplicate investment in multiple high-end D/A stages.

Since the Surround Master can act as a stereo-to-surround box, the ideal for digital stereo sources would be to have digital input and output. This avoids quality loss from extra A/D and D/A conversion steps. It will likely require HDMI (and the accompanying expensive licensing) to get a 4.0 or 5.1 lossless PCM surround signal into a pre/pro (the only surround I've seen carried over Toslink and coax is Dolby Digital and dts).

If I could connect up a Surround Master digitally, in between a CD player and pre/pro, I would use it to enhance all my stereo recordings. But I bought the lower-end Oppo players (without the high-performance analog stage), consciously planning to use them as "transports," and that the digital "sound" comes from the pre/pro.

Also, all home theater receivers apply bass management and room correction in the digital domain. My pre/pro forces me to "direct" mode (no bass management and room correction) when using multi-channel analog inputs.

The upshot is that the peculiarities of multichannel analog input mean I take a hit to sound quality for stereo sources. So where I find the Surround Master most useful is for decoding quad vinyl. Then I have a FLAC file or DVD-A that I can play back in all-digital form, getting the benefits of bass management and room correction.

I'd think perhaps the digital "guts" of the Involve stereo-to-surround processing should be sold/licensed to receiver manufacturers. I'd love to pull up "Involve" modes alongside all those Dolby / dts modes. That would also solve the HDMI / bass management / room correction issues. But I realize receiver manufacturers would probably pay $10-$25 per unit shipped for the firmware. It would take a 20X the sales volume to make the same money, and that's if these big multinational conglomerates even bite in the first place.
 
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I just did a little looking around, and it does take HDMI to get 4.0 or 5.1 digital audio into a consumer market pre/pro or receiver. S/PDIF maxes out at 2.0 for lossless, 5.1 if using lossy compression like AC-3 or dts. This would suggest the best avenue for implementing Involve in full-digital form would be in receiver firmware... :(

I wonder if newer pre/pros can do bass management and room-correction on multichannel analog inputs? I'm using the Integra DTC-9.8, which is now about 4 years old.
 
2) What sampling rate / bit depth are used internally to the Surround Master for digitizing and processing the audio? I usually rip LPs at 96/24, but if the Surround Master works at 48/24, there's no point in doing a 96/24 LP rip. I ask this so I can use the highest bit rate for quality reasons, but not waste space by grabbing higher-resolution samples than the Surround Master can re-output as analog audio.
Ripping/cleaning is time-consuming. I would still rip at 24/96 just in case better things come in the future. Hard disks are cheap.

Also, the Involve unit does not have input level adjustments, so it's unlikely that you would take full advantage of the 24-bit capability.

3) How to improve Surround Master and make it appealing to a broader market?
I would be tempted by a MKII Involve unit having 26/96 sampling/processing, input level adjustment, QS and SQ, for USD500.
 
Got around to trying an Angel SQ classical record this morning (sealed copy of Karajan conducts Johan Strauss waltzes). Though perhaps I was expecting too much of SQ before, I was really impressed with the sound the SM gave me on the classical. It didn't hurt that the album is pristine, but the sound was clean and spacious, and the ambient effect noticeably better than one I got through my 2020. it was very much a real concert hall type experience. Can't wait to play more of my classical records.
 
proufo -

My signal chain goes from TT -> phono stage -> Involve Surround Master -> MOTU 828mk3 digital sound interface.

Hence, my question about sample rates came up because I will be recording the output of the Surround Master, not the stereo signal coming off the phono stage. I'm trying to minimize the times the signal is handled (particularly in the analog domain) so as to get the best sound quality possible. I don't have any "high-end" analog sources except for the turntable, so I'm not looking to preserve a stereo version of a quad LP.

In the above chain, if the Surround Master processed at less than 96/24, there'd be no reason to record at 96/24 as the re-created analog waveform coming off the Involve wouldn't be truly at that resolution.
 
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I'm trying to minimize the times the signal is handled (particularly in the analog domain) so as to get the best sound quality possible. I don't have any "high-end" analog sources except for the turntable, so I'm not looking to preserve a stereo version of a quad LP.
Hello Colin.

Maybe the right approach for you would be the scripts, instead of the SM. I believe there's no "final" QS script available, though.
 
Got around to trying an Angel SQ classical record this morning (sealed copy of Karajan conducts Johan Strauss waltzes). Though perhaps I was expecting too much of SQ before, I was really impressed with the sound the SM gave me on the classical. It didn't hurt that the album is pristine, but the sound was clean and spacious, and the ambient effect noticeably better than one I got through my 2020. it was very much a real concert hall type experience. Can't wait to play more of my classical records.
Congrats, RS!

It must be a real joy to receive an ebay package and play it immediately in a high-performance decoder such as the SM.
 
Colin, Thank you for that very thorough review. I am glad to see a bit of a consensus forming as a result of serious listening. We all seem to be hearing the same good things!
Dwight
 
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