Take a listen to this.....

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JonUrban

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First off, I tested playing an HDTracks HiRez Stereo file out of my PC, into the Surround Master, then back into my PC via my MOTU 828. It worked!! Holy Crap.

So that answered my own question here in this forum section I placed a few days ago. Anyway, I played a few stereo HiRez tracks out of my PC at 24/96 and 24/192 and recorded them back in 4CH from the QS mode of the (original) Surround Master and recorded them in Vegas. One of the tracks I did was from James Taylors' new album called "Stretch of the Highway". It's probably my favorite song at this point from that album (that I have to admit takes a while to warm up to), but that spreads out nicely in QS mode.

I then tried some old tired-and-true '70s tunes, and one jumped out at me on playback. Listen to this single verse, under a minute so it's OK to preview, of the Eagles tune "Peaceful Easy Feeling" from their first album. I'm sure you're all sick of it by now, as was I, but this is a VERY interesting listen. This is the rear channels. You can play it right from here, just right click and PLAY. Check it out:

www.quadraphonicquad.com/miscstuff/Sound6.mp3
 
First off, I tested playing an HDTracks HiRez Stereo file out of my PC, into the Surround Master, then back into my PC via my MOTU 828. It worked!! Holy Crap.

So that answered my own question here in this forum section I placed a few days ago. Anyway, I played a few stereo HiRez tracks out of my PC at 24/96 and 24/192 and recorded them back in 4CH from the QS mode of the (original) Surround Master and recorded them in Vegas. One of the tracks I did was from James Taylors' new album called "Stretch of the Highway". It's probably my favorite song at this point from that album (that I have to admit takes a while to warm up to), but that spreads out nicely in QS mode.

I then tried some old tired-and-true '70s tunes, and one jumped out at me on playback. Listen to this single verse, under a minute so it's OK to preview, of the Eagles tune "Take it Easy" from their first album. I'm sure you're all sick of it by now, as was I, but this is a VERY interesting listen. This is the rear channels. You can play it right from here, just right click and PLAY. Check it out:

www.quadraphonicquad.com/miscstuff/Sound6.mp3

That's really great you miss that in plain vanilla stereo. I've never heard any of the Eagles Quad albums, can we get AF to get all of them released?
 
That's really great you miss that in plain vanilla stereo. I've never heard any of the Eagles Quad albums, can we get AF to get all of them released?

Eagles are under the Warner umbrella so it shouldn't be too far fetched an idea that they could do it. Supposedly, even the self-titled and Desperado albums were mixed but left on the shelf. So really, that's the first four albums, plus I'm sure The Long Run was done a few years back, PLUS Hotel was in 5.1 a few years back.

So, in my mind - it's a complete no brainer. However, I do believe the Eagles themselves own their recordings so everything has to be approved by them. And although they are proponents of surround sound in general, I do not think they are or were happy with the Quad mixes. Bill Szymczyk himself has said he wasn't particularly happy with them - and he mixed them!!! (Editors' Note: I think he's being either self-critical or was never a big fan of Quad. Even though he mixed a number of titles and was particularly good at it to my ears!)
 
Jon be careful what you say.
some 5 or so years ago i got very weird pressing of "Desperado". did attempt to decode and it turned out
just amazing but then i was beaten nearly to death by quad gurus who didn't accept possibilities of existance of such LP.

desperado.jpg
 
Holy cows! Nice separation! Have you compared this result directly to the rears of the official quad mix? Would be curious to see those waveforms side by side.
 
I had similar results running my favorite tracks from the 24/96 Complete Studio Albums set from HDTracks into SPEC. Most of the tracks came out with the harmony vocals rears and a separation of the instruments that you would swear was a discrete mix. Every song that I tried from the first album to The Long Run opened up in the much same way. I ended up with an Eagles Greatest Hits in Surround that sounds like the real deal. Every time I listen to it, I'm amazed that came out as well as it did.
 
After hearing this, I ran downstairs and played this track from the red book CD with just the surrounds/rears turned on using both PLIIx Music and Logic 7. Both decoders do a really nice job of sucking the harmonies out of the center left/right and placing them in the surrounds/rears, but they do not sound like the harmonies in Jon's sound bite. Is the HDTracks stereo file a downmix of the quad version, or can these harmonies somehow be extracted from the red book CD using QS in Surround Master? If these particular harmonies are indeed in the red book CD track, then they are buried way down deep.
 
After hearing this, I ran downstairs and played this track from the red book CD with just the surrounds/rears turned on using both PLIIx Music and Logic 7. Both decoders do a really nice job of sucking the harmonies out of the center left/right and placing them in the surrounds/rears, but they do not sound like the harmonies in Jon's sound bite. Is the HDTracks stereo file a downmix of the quad version, or can these harmonies somehow be extracted from the red book CD using QS in Surround Master? If these particular harmonies are indeed in the red book CD track, then they are buried way down deep.

This is the unaltered HDTracks HiRez downloaded .flac file of the song played right off the PC using Foobar2000 into the Surround Master, then recorded using the 4 channel out in QS (Involve) mode back into the PC in real time and recorded using Vegas.

There are no adjustments made, this is the way it played out. You can be sure I'll be doing more tunes from these Eagles albums this weekend to see what I find.

Holy cows! Nice separation! Have you compared this result directly to the rears of the official quad mix? Would be curious to see those waveforms side by side.

PS - There is no "official" quad master tapes, commercial or boots, of the first two Eagles albums. They were listed as coming out in quad in the Schwann catalogs of the era, but they never saw the light of day and I never saw any advertising for them in any WEA ad copy of the time.
 
Since getting a Surround Master my attitude towards synthesized surround has changed dramatically. Everything goes through it; as many have written before, not everything produces such discrete activity but it seems never less than musical. I have a few mono oddities that understandably folded up into not a lot but on the whole there is a genuinely pleasing reveal of elements within the mix you may have not heard before, Jon's find above is a perfect example. I even indulge in some gaming via emulators like Dolphin which allow you to play old Nintendo Gamecube games on your PC. Those games are pretty much all in DPLII and the Surround Master does a far better job of producing a stable and coherent sound field than my best in class Onkyo Receiver does.

Is there a sticky thread for 'stuff that the surround master makes sound amazing'?
 
Since getting a Surround Master my attitude towards synthesized surround has changed dramatically. Everything goes through it; as many have written before, not everything produces such discrete activity but it seems never less than musical. I have a few mono oddities that understandably folded up into not a lot but on the whole there is a genuinely pleasing reveal of elements within the mix you may have not heard before, Jon's find above is a perfect example. I even indulge in some gaming via emulators like Dolphin which allow you to play old Nintendo Gamecube games on your PC. Those games are pretty much all in DPLII and the Surround Master does a far better job of producing a stable and coherent sound field than my best in class Onkyo Receiver does.

Is there a sticky thread for 'stuff that the surround master makes sound amazing'?


If there isn't one there should be
 
What's a Surround Master? (Another stupid Newbie question)

Edit: Ok I just found the website. I play everything on an OPPO; I don't have a turntable. Would I benefit from this device (I have an extensive redbook cd collection).
 
What's a Surround Master? (Another stupid Newbie question)

Edit: Ok I just found the website. I play everything on an OPPO; I don't have a turntable. Would I benefit from this device (I have an extensive redbook cd collection).

I think you would benefit; my Oppo is connected to a NILES passive switch so I can go from turntable, media pc and then the Oppo. There are a lot of QS encoded CDs out there that will decode beautifully through the surround master, pretty much most of the Black Jazz label for example. I'm listening to Archie Sheep's Attica Blues right now and it sounds gorgeous. I also play back non matrix CDs like the recent sound track for the movie 'Inside Out' and it sounds wonderfully rich and musical and very much like it did in the cinema. My Oppo is set to have the L/R stereo only pair connected to the NILES switch. That way there is no messing about if I choose to play SACD and output DSD via the HDMI. Maybe it's a gateway drug to a turntable? I'm hopelessly addicted to SQ and QS vinyl thanks to this lovely device.

IMG_3454.jpgIMG_3450.jpgIMG_3469.jpg
 
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