Just for clarity's sake, the Airto/Deodato two-fer is two albums:
The Airto solo studio album called
Fingers from 1973, and the co-billed Airto / Deodato
In Concert album from 1974.
Fingers is from the discrete 4-channel quad master tape, and it features a discrete Creed Taylor/Rudy Van Gelder quad mix not unlike the mixes on the Deodato
Prelude/Deodato 2 twofer that Vocalion put out last year.
It's only
In Concert that's presented from a decoded SQ-encoded master tape. I normally have a deep aversion to any kind of matrix decodes, and if this were a studio album, I probably would've advised D-V to skip it - I'm the kind of guy who would generally rather listen to a Q8 of anything over even the best Surround Master or Tate decoded version of the same material.
However, I own the Q8 of
In Concert and (I think I mentioned this upthread) it's what I'd call a "barely quad". It's been some time since I listened to it, but it sounded like they mixed the album completely in stereo, and then later on decided to add some string section overdubs to Deodato's 3 songs. So in the quad mix, the only thing in the rears are these occasional string overdubs, which represent probably 25% of the total playing time. The rest of the time it's just some artificial hall reverb in the rears - because the album (aside from the strings) was seemingly mixed in stereo, even the applause etc. is in the front. As
@fredblue astutely noted earlier, an SQ decode of an album like this can actually turn out better than a discrete version, because of some of the unintentional phase-related shifting like in the case of Santana's Lotus. Decoding the SQ-encoded stereo master of that album actually yields a more active horseshoe-shaped sound field, whereas the actual discrete version on the recent Japanese SACD is much more tame by comparison and I expect D-Vs take on
In Concert will be similar, if not better.
I can understand when people are disappointed that a discrete quad master doesn't exist, and believe me, no one feels that disappointment than me, the guy that spent the better part of a week researching and writing about these albums, but in the case of
In Concert, it's much less of a disappointment than if it were some four-channel studio masterpiece. In standard stereo or SQ decoded quad the live performances on
In Concert are great, and even if the occasional string overdubs aren't perfectly placed in the rears, the music is still great. The real attraction on this two-fer is
Fingers, and I hope that at least a few people will discover this unique album thanks to this release - as
@winopener said, it bears a lot of similarities to Santana's
Borboletta album (aside from the lead guitar), which both Airto and Flora Purim appear on. So if you like your jazz-fusion with a South American twist, it's well worth checking out.
But I am glad that they fully disclosed these were SQ-decoded.... imagine how pissed off everyone would be if they ordered believing it to be the discrete master only to wind up with an SQ decode? Kudos to D-V for being up front and honest about it.
I'm glad someone said this - Mike asked for my opinion on this, and I said that D-V are held in such high regard here (and elsewhere) when it comes to quality that it was worth being upfront about sources as the risk of damaging that reputation wasn't worth it. As you can probably see from some of the responses - and I should say, everyone has the right to raise concerns and ask questions - it would've been easier in the short term to say nothing. How many people other than me have heard the discrete version anyway to compare? I hope, however, that this reassures people about Mike Dutton and his whole team's commitment to quality, and that if you're buying anything from him, you can basically do so sight unseen/unheard, knowing that the utmost care has been taken to present whatever you've bought in the best quality possible.
hmm nobody ever questioned how much he made at Vegas for throwing the game?? But the local nickname Brick Anderson has stuck with him here forever. Snood digress......4 free throws though wow
dancing. I actually got up and danced and haven't 
