I do believe that I have the vinyl edition of the Surround Master. I am curious how the first one compares with the vinyl, but with the majority of SQ material being on vinyl (as far as I know), that seems the most relevant version.
I do realize that my episode focused primarily on separation, as that's what is easiest to hear and present when demonstrating these things, especially in a format in which I only have 2 channels of audio to present. But the votes in the shoot out were (I hope) based on listening in the sweet spot to the entire presentation, not based on isolated channels to purely compare separation. My instructions were rather clear to vote purely based on listening in the sweet spot, and that if one were going to isolate channels to compare separation, that be done so after deciding the preferred mix. It was with these instructions that the Tate did still come in the lead.
However, coming in 2nd to the Tate is not a bad place to be. The Tate isn't exactly something you can easily buy, and even so, the older they get, the higher the risk that the irreplaceable chips are going to burn out. As I mentioned in the episode, my Tate has been in the shop for 10 years, trying to get all the parts together to fix it up. Also, when isolating the channels as I did in the episode, you can clearly here the pumping that the Tate is known for. The Involve doesn't have that. So while the Tate did have more votes, I think the votes were rather close, one of the participants called it a tie on all examples, and it was a rather small sampling with 5 participants.
I realize you designed this with the best compromise in mind, and not to just hit high numbers in separation. But it does seem that the vocal leakage into the rear continues to be something of a noticeable "flaw" that has been spoken of by a few people in threads, and noticed in the shoot-out. I do love that the Surround Master doesn't have the Tate's flaw of pumping....I feel like it's almost there, if the front center leakage could be tweaked a little to be more comparable to the Tate in that one aspect, without adding further artifacts, I think that would be a clear winner.