Roberta Flack 4-channel cassette

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surround.sound.enthusiast

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This is definitely NOT the real McCoy, but amusing anyway! GM appears to have gone for lazy and misleading
with this offering.

Roberta Flack cassette

Roberta Flack 4-channel cassette.jpg

Anyone know how long GM offered cassettes or 8-tracks that weren't demo recordings to go with their automobiles?
 
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Wow, this thing looks real. Never seen it. The issue is if it is quad and a cassette there could not be a side one and side 2. there is only 4 tracks. Had to be one side only. And what are you playing it in??? If it is fake, who is the market????
lots of questions

QUOTE=surround.sound.enthusiast;327430]This is definitely NOT the real McCoy, but amusing anyway! GM appears to have gone for lazy and misleading
with this offering.

Roberta Flack cassette

Anyone know how long GM offered cassettes or 8-tracks that weren't demo recordings to go with their automobiles?[/QUOTE]
 
It could very well be as it says it is. 4 channel Stereo, a mixdown from the original Q4 presented in stereo.

I have a BTO BEST OF ,2 cd set that lists 4 tracks in quad-which of course are actually mixdowns from the discreet tape.


Never the less it is unusal to say the least. A quad like curio at best.





As to quad discreet cassettes- I only know of the discreet cassette tape decks by Neal Ferrograph and Astrocom/Marlux.

It's really too bad the industry didn't promote QC discreet tapes as I'm certain the prices would have been cheaper than Q4, but I think Phillips (rumour ?) prevented this from occurring.
I know I would have made that investment.
 
It's really too bad the industry didn't promote QC discreet tapes as I'm certain the prices would have been cheaper than Q4, but I think Phillips (rumour ?) prevented this from occurring.

I've heard that this is indeed true, but the motives were arguably good ones: Philips really wanted every tape to work in every player. Quad would have broken that.
 
I've heard that this is indeed true, but the motives were arguably good ones: Philips really wanted every tape to work in every player. Quad would have broken that.
The wonders of maturing or at least aging: at the time I was so angry for that and now my reaction is "Duh, of course!"
 
I've heard that this is indeed true, but the motives were arguably good ones: Philips really wanted every tape to work in every player. Quad would have broken that.

Broken ?

So their logic would be the same as every Q4 R-R would have to play in every R-R deck and every Q8 would have to play in every 8 track machine. Some bizarre logic, me thinks. :rolleyes:
 
Broken ?

So their logic would be the same as every Q4 R-R would have to play in every R-R deck and every Q8 would have to play in every 8 track machine. Some bizarre logic, me thinks. :rolleyes:

They were the terms of the Philips compact cassette licence, AND their patent. If a manufacturer wanted to sell cassette decks, they had to agree to those terms. Don't forget that cassettes weren't originally designed for high fidelity use, they were for voice dictation. When the Philips patent ran out, then manufacturers could offer multitrack recorders that used faster tape speeds (like the 3 3/4 ips Tascam and Fostex decks). Dolby noise reduction was allowed because it didn't change the sound drastically, especially Dolby B. DBX was only allowed after the patent expired. The Roberta Flack tape might be some sort of matrix, or it could just be bullshit.
 
Going back to the first replay to this thread, no, I don't own or possess the cassette, merely found it while browsing auctions.

I thought I remember reading in other threads on QQ that there were technical difficulties, or limitations, to trying to put 4 channels playing at the same time on such a narrow tape. But either way, as replied to already, no 4-channel cassette system was ever produced for the consumer market. As fizzywiggs said, maybe it was a mix-down from quad (I have no idea if the stereo and quad versions differ for this album). I may also be just mistaken graphic design layout from back in the day, if this cassette is of legitimate origin.

It's a curio any which way.
 
I thought I remember reading in other threads on QQ that there were technical difficulties, or limitations, to trying to put 4 channels playing at the same time on such a narrow tape. But either way, as replied to already, no 4-channel cassette system was ever produced for the consumer market. As fizzywiggs said, maybe it was a mix-down from quad (I have no idea if the stereo and quad versions differ for this album). I may also be just mistaken graphic design layout from back in the day, if this cassette is of legitimate origin.

It's a curio any which way.

4 channel stereo was the typical designation of stereophonic R2R, possibly just a crappy c&p.
 
I have several cassettes recorded in various matrix systems. So maybe this was a matrixed cassette. When car players went from 8-track to cassette, they had to have something for quad, because it was still selling then. I have a Craig Car Quad matrix decoder that goes into the back speaker wiring. I found it at a flea market.
 
4 channel stereo was used on reel to reel tapes...it wasnt quad...just a way of saying that there were 4 channels of audio on the tape ...but they werent all going in the same direction hence the stereo mentioned... i.e. 2 channels on side 1 and 2 channels on side 2..if you add side 1 and 2 together you get a total of 4...but its all stereo
 
4 channel stereo was used on reel to reel tapes...it wasnt quad...just a way of saying that there were 4 channels of audio on the tape ...but they werent all going in the same direction hence the stereo mentioned... i.e. 2 channels on side 1 and 2 channels on side 2..if you add side 1 and 2 together you get a total of 4...but its all stereo

Guess I've been using my AKAI 202D-SS wrong all these years.
 
It's too bad the Elcaset came along after the death of Quad. They could have easily designed in a 2-channel/2-direction; 4-channel/1-direction operation just like Quad reel.
 
the track listing is interesting (and a giveaway that as there are 2 Sides to the tape it can't be discrete with all 4 tracks on the tape in one direction) Side 1 is almost all of the Killing Me Softly album, just one track omitted and that was all bona fide Quad mixed so maybe its the Quad QS encoded or something.. but there's some lovely stuff on Side 2 that never made it out in Quad.. and if that is all unreleased Quad mixes in matrix form or something would be really special to hear.! I'll try and track down a copy of this cassette (might be a toughie but still gotta be worth a try!)
 
4 channel stereo was used on reel to reel tapes...it wasnt quad...just a way of saying that there were 4 channels of audio on the tape ...but they werent all going in the same direction hence the stereo mentioned... i.e. 2 channels on side 1 and 2 channels on side 2..if you add side 1 and 2 together you get a total of 4...but its all stereo

I think you meant 4 *track* stereo isn't quad. There are lots of tapes and LPs that are labeled 4 *channel* stereo that are quad. Project 3 used the terminology a lot:


IMG_20180414_230536.jpg
 
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