The stereo lp has incredibly deep bass on the last track of side 2 "Sail in the wind" ...you could use it for a hifi demo...and whilst I haven't heard the q8 of this title, the quad lp has (by comparison to the stereo lp) not much bass at all on the last track of side 2..
I'm not sure if they just mixed Jim Messina's bass guitar down in quad or something went out of phase in the quad mixing,..after all as the bass guitarist recorded the lp, you'd think he might have a slight desire to have his instrument a bit louder than normal.
But the dissapearing bass in the quad version reminded me of two otherquad that lost alot of bas compared with the stereo version....1) the quad version of windflowers by seals and crofts on their unborn child lp compared with their stereo lp version....2)and also on the quad version of summer in the city by quincy jones on the you've got it bad girl lp.
While I don't know the particulars for the Loggins & Messina quad, I do know that in the
vast majority of cases, the original artist had absolutely NO input as to how the Quad release was mixed - many didn't even know they ever had a quad release on the market! RCA, CBS, Warner, etc... all employed producers/mixers who did the quad mix when they were told to do. Some artists cared more about their stuff, such as Wendy/Walter Carlos & Paul Simon, and had enough clout, or a good contract, that allowed them to tell the studio what they would or would not release and in what format, but most didn't. Heck, control freak Barbra Streisand had
no control over her releases in quad - I'm glad those albums got released in SQ though,
even if only ever listened to in stereo because the SQ mixes are so superior in every way - better mixing, dynamics, soundstage layout (even with 2 channel playback), better/different vocal takes and more instruments in many songs that fill out the mix better, etc. By comparison, Bab's stereo releases sound muddy, squished, flat, often with poor separation, total lack of dynamics - and the 45 mixes are even worse, with much less separation to increase Mono AM broadcast compatibility.
BTW, speaking of mono compatibility - there was one LaserDisc release from Disney back in the early 90's, Fantasia, that had a Dolby Surround encoded Digital soundtrack that was NOT mono compatible because it had full, hard surround, that would totally disappear in mono - the Analog FM soundtrack was was stereo, but Mono compatible and was barely Dolby Surround - instead of sounds being fully panned to the rear, they were panned about half-way between front and back so that a full quadrature relationship was created between front and back, ensuring all speakers got all surround sounds in mono. That's the ONLY time that has been done like that - the VHS and Beta Hi-Fi releases both used the mono compatible mix. The Non-Mono Compatible mix decodes AMAZINGLY with the Fosgate Tate II - if I didn't know better, I wouldn't hesitate to claim it was SQ encoded - it decodes that quaddy! There really aren't any phantoms mixed in, like Center Left/Right up front, etc... so even power-transfer Full Wave-matching Logic decoders like the Sony SQD-2020 or the Vari-Blend Layfette SQ-W decode Fantasia really well too.
Sorry to bring that up here - I just wanted to mention it. If someone thinks this subject (home video/audio compatible/non-compatible mixes) merits further discussion, could the above section of this post be moved into the appropriate forum area? I think it's something worth discussing because DVD's and Blu-ray's often have a 5.1 mix that does not mix down to Dolby Surround correctly so the studio includes a correctly matrixed 2-channel Dolby Surround encoded mix. Dolby has never really let the public know that that is why DVD's contain a 2-channel duplicate of the 5.1 mix in many cases. If the 5.1 mix WILL mix down to 2 channel correctly (has no side-phantoms that are destroyed by the broadband 90-degree phase shift applied to the Right Back channel in 5.1 encoding), there will be no 2-channel mix included on the disc. DTS didn't really get their 5.1-to-2 channel matrix encoded downmix (and Dial Norm and Dynamic Range control settings/control) in order until around 2005 or so - thus, no DTS CD release or the DTS LaserDisc's will properly encode down to 2-channel. I have (what I think is the first) Panasonic DVD-Audio portable, the DVD-LA95, and it has built-in DTS decoding - it won't downmix ANY DTS DVD or CD to 2 channel with Dolby MP Matrix encoding. It mixes to non-encoded 2 channel like CD-4 did - Left Back to Left Total, Right Back to Right Total, full stop, end of story.