Disconnect - SQ and QS in the Lab and in the Home

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CBS Labs published many technical articles about the development (including listening tests) of the SQ matrix.

Sansui also published some articles about the development of the QS matrix.

In 1974 and 1977 the BBC published listening tests of SQ and QS (links are elsewhere in QQ). Both SQ and QS didn't do very well in terms of sound localization.

CBS Labs, Sansui and the BBC all had/have a fairly high level of credibility on audio and technical matters in general.

Anyone have any ideas as to why both CBS and Sansui (through listening tests and other scientific measurements) concluded their matrix systems offered good performance whereas the BBC tests showed this to be questionable?

Kirk Bayne
 
Anyone have any ideas as to why both CBS and Sansui (through listening tests and other scientific measurements) concluded their matrix systems offered good performance whereas the BBC tests showed this to be questionable?
There was money to be made; more than that, a new market to be created.

And eventually hardware caught up with the requirements of matrix decoding, up to the Surround Master.
 
CBS Labs published many technical articles about the development (including listening tests) of the SQ matrix.

Sansui also published some articles about the development of the QS matrix.

In 1974 and 1977 the BBC published listening tests of SQ and QS (links are elsewhere in QQ). Both SQ and QS didn't do very well in terms of sound localization.

CBS Labs, Sansui and the BBC all had/have a fairly high level of credibility on audio and technical matters in general.

Anyone have any ideas as to why both CBS and Sansui (through listening tests and other scientific measurements) concluded their matrix systems offered good performance whereas the BBC tests showed this to be questionable?

Kirk Bayne

I don't know what they based that on, it depends greatly on what equipment they were using, remember this was before Tate DES. With SQ the best encodes were done when the results were monitored trough a decoder, simply encoding a discreet mix through an encoder might not be optimal. With QS there should be no problem simply encoding any discreet source. SQ shines in stereo playback, at least the front channels have full separation, QS suffers a bit with lower stereo separation. QS should have no problem at all with sound localization if a Vario-Matrix decoder is used. SQ is more problematic for phantom positions but then they came out with the position encoder to take car of that. In short both systems have their merits and deficiencies. BBC Matrix H later aligned itself with Ambisonics to become Matrix HJ. Ambisonics relies on each speaker reproducing the same sound at the proper phase and amplitude to create realistic sound imaging (not just from a single speaker location, or PWM location), I never got into Ambisonics because there wasn't much in the way of program material, but have always been intrigued by the concept; the jury is still out!
 
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