Santana Lotus - Stereo SACD from Audio Fidelity (Dec 2016)

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Is it that absurd at this stage really if AF haven't located the tapes they intend/hope to utilise, as has been indicated by our Jon since Marshall Blonstein has asked him if he knows the whereabouts of the 4-CH master of the Lotus Quad..?

This could be a case where no Quad master Q4 tape exsists (as Jon has surmised previously).

This may very well be an SQ ENCODED MASTER Tape only of the live concert. Not common for 74 but certainly not out of the question.Instead of feeding 4 or more direct buss inputs from tape, they could have used the four main mic inputs to the SQ ENCODER.

Something to consider, anyway.

and I won't be totally dissapointed if the SACD contains---only this encoding .u get what u get sometimes.
 
Since I just rained on the parade in the Black Sabbath Paranoid thread, I might as well do it here. Lotus is stereo. Marshall told me it sounds incredible. The current estimate for a release date is 11/25. I think we should regard that as relatively fluid. It will be awesome whenever we get it.

I don't get here as often as I should, so please don't be shy about PMing me or hitting me up on Twitter if you're wondering about sources or whatever. If something is coming from the US, I often can get an answer.

Best,
Buzz Kill Chris
 
The Bull Moose is correct.

After four rounds of tape searching at Sony Music US and Sony Music Japan, along with Santana's Management Firm, 4 Channel Quad Tapes of Santana Lotus were not found.

Stereo tapes of the album have been provided to Audio Fidelity and they will be used for the album's Stereo SACD release on the label later this year. No word on whether the Stereo tapes are SQ encoded.

Marshall says the album's transfer to Stereo SACD sounds great. Looking forward to hearing it.
 
The Bull Moose is correct.

After four rounds of tape searching at Sony Music US and Sony Music Japan, along with Santana's Management Firm, 4 Channel Quad Tapes of Santana Lotus were not found.

Stereo tapes of the album have been provided to Audio Fidelity and they will be used for the album's Stereo SACD release on the label later this year. No word on whether the Stereo tapes are SQ encoded.

Marshall says the album's transfer to Stereo SACD sounds great. Looking forward to hearing it.

Thanks, Brian, for settling THAT issue. And I suppose we should be grateful to Marshall and SONY US and Japan for attempting to locate the missing Lotus QUAD masters.

My next question. If one has the Surround Master, can it decode an SQ encoded digital output from an SACD or RBCD player? I believe Adam (fredblue) mentioned that the SM only takes the analogue output from a Turntable to effectively decode SQ but I could be wrong.

And my last question, Brian and you can answer this with a simple YES or NO. Will there be any more QUAD SACDs forthcoming from Audio Fidelity by years end?
 
The Bull Moose is correct.

After four rounds of tape searching at Sony Music US and Sony Music Japan, along with Santana's Management Firm, 4 Channel Quad Tapes of Santana Lotus were not found.

Stereo tapes of the album have been provided to Audio Fidelity and they will be used for the album's Stereo SACD release on the label later this year. No word on whether the Stereo tapes are SQ encoded.

Marshall says the album's transfer to Stereo SACD sounds great. Looking forward to hearing it.

One of the things I admire about Marshall is how available he makes himself. Speaking as a retailer, AF is great to work with.
 
Thanks to Chris & Brian for the final word on what this release will be.
I must say this is a much better situation that we find ourselves in (compared to what happened with "Tale Spinnin" and "Musicmagic".)
If discrete 4-channel master tapes could not be located for "Lotus", then of course it has to be a stereo-only SACD, and I'm perfectly OK with that.

Now I just hope we'll get another silver (Multichannel) title before the year ends! :)
 
Thanks, Brian, for settling THAT issue. And I suppose we should be grateful to Marshall and SONY US and Japan for attempting to locate the missing Lotus QUAD masters.

My next question. If one has the Surround Master, can it decode an SQ encoded digital output from an SACD or RBCD player? I believe Adam (fredblue) mentioned that the SM only takes the analogue output from a Turntable to effectively decode SQ but I could be wrong.

And my last question, Brian and you can answer this with a simple YES or NO. Will there be any more QUAD SACDs forthcoming from Audio Fidelity by years end?

Yes of course, you just run the Front Left & Front Right from the MultiCh analogue out of your SACD player into your Surround Master :)
 
The Bull Moose is correct.

After four rounds of tape searching at Sony Music US and Sony Music Japan, along with Santana's Management Firm, 4 Channel Quad Tapes of Santana Lotus were not found.

Stereo tapes of the album have been provided to Audio Fidelity and they will be used for the album's Stereo SACD release on the label later this year. No word on whether the Stereo tapes are SQ encoded.

Marshall says the album's transfer to Stereo SACD sounds great. Looking forward to hearing it.

I thank and applaud Audio Fidelity for going to such great lengths to try and get this one done in MultiChannel, it sounds like they really tried, so hats off to them for that.
 
Thanks to Chris & Brian for the final word on what this release will be.
I must say this is a much better situation that we find ourselves in (compared to what happened with "Tale Spinnin" and "Musicmagic".)
If discrete 4-channel master tapes could not be located for "Lotus", then of course it has to be a stereo-only SACD, and I'm perfectly OK with that.

Now I just hope we'll get another silver (Multichannel) title before the year ends! :)

Absolutely Ryan! Totally different situation to the RTF/WR (if indeed Quad tapes were available for those two, maybe they were not, in which case I'd feel quite differently about that state of affairs too.. but that wasn't what was implied at the time :) ) it would be wonderful if AF could deliver at least one more MCh SACD in 2016.. I'd buy it just to say "thanks for the surround" even if its more Christmas music! Maybe.. ;)
 
One of the things I admire about Marshall is how available he makes himself. Speaking as a retailer, AF is great to work with.

Speaking as a consumer I think AF have been amazing!

I just wish they could have afforded to go on with the Surround programme at the pace they were at but they're a business not a charity, something had to give, I respect that.
 
I thank and applaud Audio Fidelity for going to such great lengths to try and get this one done in MultiChannel, it sounds like they really tried, so hats off to them for that.

Totally agree !

At least they gave it a good go over, and I appreciate knowing what was done by them to try and locate a Q4 master,, worldwide.Thanks for that very important information btw.





All is not lost though as I think, (well I hope )the stereo tape master will contain the Quad SQ encode.
 
why can't they just find a great vinyl copy, play it through a surround master and use that. it would be great. do i have to solve all their problems for them.
 
why can't they just find a great vinyl copy, play it through a surround master and use that. it would be great. do i have to solve all their problems for them.

There's a very good reason why that will never happen, and that's because doing something like that falls below the quality standards that Audio Fidelity have set for themselves.
All of their SACD releases (stereo and stereo/multichannel) utilize the highest quality sources, which are the master tapes.
A release that utilized a 'needle drop' would be so poor in quality compared to all of their other releases.
 
Betting that the so-called "stereo master" is the SQ encoded one. No real stereo-only version of this title that i'm aware of, only the SQ master, badged quad or stereo or whatever.
 
So, why can't they run the master tape, if it's SQ encoded, thru an SQ decoder in order to provide a multichannel layer on the SACD ?
 
There's a very good reason why that will never happen, and that's because doing something like that falls below the quality standards that Audio Fidelity have set for themselves.
All of their SACD releases (stereo and stereo/multichannel) utilize the highest quality sources, which are the master tapes.
A release that utilized a 'needle drop' would be so poor in quality compared to all of their other releases.

You've heard one of AoQ or Bob Romano's Quad needle drops, right?
 
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