Mystery Quad/Surround Box

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Q8

1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
Joined
Aug 30, 2012
Messages
1,751
Location
Ohio
So I ran into one of my favorite things to run into yesterday. Mystery Surround Sound Decoder box. This thing looks homebrew or like a kit. The inputs say VCR so I'm guessing someone was using this for VHS surround. It has quadraphonic outputs. It is only marked with a silkscreen of "Surround Sound Decoder". The S's being a weird double S symbol. I don't know if that was intentional or a silk screening mistake. I did the first thing any good quad lover would do with it and open it up to see if there are any more clues. I was hoping the IC would give a clue but I think it is just a low power 4-channel amp chip. Does this circuit look familiar to anyone?

IMG_20170410_212927.jpg

IMG_20170410_212914.jpg

IMG_20170410_213213.jpg

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Yep, I think ya did.....:D

I am curious as to what the creators were attempting to achieve, however. As it was designed for integration with a VCR, just what else was it supposed to separate. Most of us who had a VCR also had an amp or receiver that would process Dolby Surround, so this unit would presumably be for those without such hardware, but with a pair of amps and extra speakers which would facilitate surround.

ED :)
 
Yep, I think ya did.....:D

I am curious as to what the creators were attempting to achieve, however. As it was designed for integration with a VCR, just what else was it supposed to separate. Most of us who had a VCR also had an amp or receiver that would process Dolby Surround, so this unit would presumably be for those without such hardware, but with a pair of amps and extra speakers which would facilitate surround.

ED :)

Yep, reading this, it was intended to give a low cost surround option if you did not have hardware with Dolby Surround or Dolby Surround Pro Logic. They also claim better performance than basic Dolby Surround. Glad I found this little piece of Surround History.
 
Have you tested it yet, hooked it up? I'm very curious as to how the little beast sounds, and if it does enhance the Dolby Surround signal, or at the least offer a reasonable equivalent.

ED :)
 
Have you tested it yet, hooked it up? I'm very curious as to how the little beast sounds, and if it does enhance the Dolby Surround signal, or at the least offer a reasonable equivalent.

ED :)

Not yet, I'm going to have to shuffle some gear around. They claim to get 6db separation.
 
We had about 5 years between the appearance of Dolby Stereo and the availability of home decoders.

I was using a QS decoder to decode all of the soundtrack albums for that period.
 
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