Following Snood's suggestion, I am reposting here something I said elsewhere.
First of all, I must say that I first listened to a quadraphonic record back in 1974 or 1975. It was Gordon Lightfoot's Sundown. Even though I am a classical music lover, I was astounded when I heard Sundown. Unfortunately, I never purchased quadraphonic hardware myself, and no records, reels or tapes either. However, a few months ago we set up a Home Cinema system and purchased a Sony 4K Blu-ray player capable of playing High-res Audio (both DVD-A and SACD), multi-track FLAC files, et cetera.
I decided to download some test quadraphonic FLAC files and see how well they played. The result was disappointing. Perhaps as a result of my Onkyo's amplifier setup, the sound of the rear tracks was lost. Then it occurred to me that the Onkyo might be treating tracks 3 and 4 as "middle" loudspeaker sound and, since I don't have any "middle" loudspeakers, it had nowhere to send the relevant data, so it was lost. Perhaps if I somehow managed to insert two blank tracks between tracks 2 and 3, thereby creating a hexaphonic FLAC, I would get a valid custom-made quadraphonic FLAC. I did that with Audacity for macOS and it worked! In the last three days I've listened to one particular record (whose relevant FLAC files I got via a roundabout route) a lot of times. It sounds wonderful, probably better than it sounded in the 70s.
This success in recreating one particular quadraphonic record for a modern Home Cinema has whetted my interest in getting hold of more quadraphonic media. Considering I don't actually own any such media, or the relevant hardware to play it, and being aware that DVD-A, SCDA and, presumably, BD-A may totally fail as commercial ventures, is there any realistic hope that some of the recording labels will sell quadraphonic Country/Classical/Rock FLACs to audiophiles in the foreseeable future?
Lastly, is there any hope that recording labels will eventually release albums such as the aforementioned Sundown as DTS CDs or similar physical media?
First of all, I must say that I first listened to a quadraphonic record back in 1974 or 1975. It was Gordon Lightfoot's Sundown. Even though I am a classical music lover, I was astounded when I heard Sundown. Unfortunately, I never purchased quadraphonic hardware myself, and no records, reels or tapes either. However, a few months ago we set up a Home Cinema system and purchased a Sony 4K Blu-ray player capable of playing High-res Audio (both DVD-A and SACD), multi-track FLAC files, et cetera.
I decided to download some test quadraphonic FLAC files and see how well they played. The result was disappointing. Perhaps as a result of my Onkyo's amplifier setup, the sound of the rear tracks was lost. Then it occurred to me that the Onkyo might be treating tracks 3 and 4 as "middle" loudspeaker sound and, since I don't have any "middle" loudspeakers, it had nowhere to send the relevant data, so it was lost. Perhaps if I somehow managed to insert two blank tracks between tracks 2 and 3, thereby creating a hexaphonic FLAC, I would get a valid custom-made quadraphonic FLAC. I did that with Audacity for macOS and it worked! In the last three days I've listened to one particular record (whose relevant FLAC files I got via a roundabout route) a lot of times. It sounds wonderful, probably better than it sounded in the 70s.
This success in recreating one particular quadraphonic record for a modern Home Cinema has whetted my interest in getting hold of more quadraphonic media. Considering I don't actually own any such media, or the relevant hardware to play it, and being aware that DVD-A, SCDA and, presumably, BD-A may totally fail as commercial ventures, is there any realistic hope that some of the recording labels will sell quadraphonic Country/Classical/Rock FLACs to audiophiles in the foreseeable future?
Lastly, is there any hope that recording labels will eventually release albums such as the aforementioned Sundown as DTS CDs or similar physical media?