Thoughts on ideal speakers for quadraphonic

QuadraphonicQuad

Help Support QuadraphonicQuad:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
I use 4 B&W 802 Series III's for Quad. With a HTM-2 center and B&W and SVS subs for 5.2. It's powered by Parasound and Rotel amps. As a system it plays Quad very well I feel. One of my favorites is Deep Purple Machine head on SACD.. It's pretty much like you are sitting in the room with them. For Quad I think having four speakers which sound the same is a must though. Especially for studio recorded 4 channel playback.
 
Hey folks, I've been enjoying this thread, I would only mention that we should keep it upbeat and refrain from the occasional mudslinging. Anyway, I used to be really picky about speakers, sound and all the rest, but I've come to a point where I want my setup to be solid, but not "sky's the limit" awesome. I like speakers to be clear and dark (just because). I found 4 bookshelf speakers by a company called psb and a matching center speaker. Of course the center speaker doesn't apply to quad. I also have a polk audio sub that is decent but not amazing. It is all going through an old yamaha rxv2500 receiver that is somewhere around 10-15 years old. It is a little bright sounding, and the psb speakers counteract that very well. When listeing to old quad stuff, these speakers (at least to me), do a great job at capturing the tonality of those old recordings. With classical quad, they empahisize the roominess of the old recordings and deemphasizing the close miked sound of newer classical recordings which I don't care for. Outside of a little volume adjustment of the speakers, I don't run any eq or cal programs, as I never liked what they did. I don't know if the program in the receiver is the problem, but certainly the cheap mike they give you with the receiver can't be accurate to begin with.
One last thing about the "average quality" speakers. I do some daw mixing from time to time, and having darker speakers to mix on helps me, as they aren't fatiguing, plus they make me have to work on the mixes a little more to make things sound clear (but that's just my messed up brain at work).
So anyway, I've been enjoying hearing about all these amazing setups, but if you are on a short budget (like most of us probably), that shouldn't stop you from enjoying your music and movies, as there are plenty of less expensive options around.
I agree, original 4.0 mixes were not made for any more then for 4, all other extra channels are just personal preferences, Different strokes for different folks, if it sounds good to you, that's all that matters.
 
Good comment from Lou but I really cannot understand how that configuration recommended by RCA works
View attachment 45373

As the negative is common on most amps, you would get a left reinforcement, aside from no actual separation of the center. Oh center separation is mathematically impossible but we do it in the SM by a wacky path.
This was on the back of a Brian Eno ambient LP from the seventies (I think it might have been 'on land', not sure). I had it set up in my living once, forgot all about it (I used to smoke a lot of 'Jazz cigarettes').
 
This was on the back of a Brian Eno ambient LP from the seventies (I think it might have been 'on land', not sure). I had it set up in my living once, forgot all about it (I used to smoke a lot of 'Jazz cigarettes').

Yes, that's the correct diagram, the Lou Dorren one must be a mistake.
The trick was to tie the third speaker across the hot sides (+) of each channel.



R-2096038-1300889470.jpeg.jpg
 
I use 4 B&W 802 Series III's for Quad. With a HTM-2 center and B&W and SVS subs for 5.2. It's powered by Parasound and Rotel amps. As a system it plays Quad very well I feel. One of my favorites is Deep Purple Machine head on SACD.. It's pretty much like you are sitting in the room with them. For Quad I think having four speakers which sound the same is a must though. Especially for studio recorded 4 channel playback.

You have never heard a quadraphonic setup which didn't have four matching speakers that sounded great? It really isn't a must from my experience. Even identical speakers will sound different in a different part of the room unless you are listening in a cube and your furniture is perfectly symmetrical.
 
The notion that different channel formats (at least between 2.0, 4.0, & 5.1) lend to different types/styles of speakers would be my only disagreement. (The thread title could suggest that even if it was unintended.) If there is a type of speaker you prefer for dispersion, phase coherence between multiple drivers, frequency response, SPL, as well as a room size and arrangement you prefer. That would extend across channel formats. 4.0 is still the "meat" of the mix in 5.1. The main channels. Any 5.1 mix that treats rear channels differently or lesser, for example, is all that mix. 5.1 and 4.0 aren't different animals. They aren't supposed to be anyway! 5.1 is 4.0 expanded with 2 more channels.

Matched speakers in a good room with everything calibrated certainly makes things easier! But a properly calibrated system with different speakers could easily beat matched speakers of poor quality that cannot even be calibrated.
 
The notion that different channel formats (at least between 2.0, 4.0, & 5.1) lend to different types/styles of speakers would be my only disagreement. (The thread title could suggest that even if it was unintended.) If there is a type of speaker you prefer for dispersion, phase coherence between multiple drivers, frequency response, SPL, as well as a room size and arrangement you prefer. That would extend across channel formats. 4.0 is still the "meat" of the mix in 5.1. The main channels. Any 5.1 mix that treats rear channels differently or lesser, for example, is all that mix. 5.1 and 4.0 aren't different animals. They aren't supposed to be anyway! 5.1 is 4.0 expanded with 2 more channels.

Matched speakers in a good room with everything calibrated certainly makes things easier! But a properly calibrated system with different speakers could easily beat matched speakers of poor quality that cannot even be calibrated.

I cringe when I hear people say the center channel is the most important speaker/speakers in a surround sound setup.
 
I cringe when I hear people say the center channel is the most important speaker/speakers in a surround sound setup.
Maybe they're listening to Jakko Jasnick mixes? :D

The center channel is like a front solo channel to me and that seems to be how most mixes use it.
Of course there are no rules. Put two drum kits in the room front and back and keep adding other instruments and now we're going for as many speakers to cram as much discrete stuff into as we can find!

A front solo channel is a fine thing too. Makes sense for a lot of music.
A discrete center stage is a fine thing too with that aesthetic when it comes up. It needs to make sense though.

A mix that places mono content from the front L/R pair in the center channel... is a mistake. That's... not how you mix!
Any piece of gear (like a home receiver) that autopilot derives a center mono feed from the L/R channels... That's called a bug in the software. There's a bug in your software that controls the receiver and it's mutilating music. Not a good look for your product.
 
Last edited:
For anyone interested, you can simulate the fake rears in software. It's a "one button" style of upmixing.
Take a feed from the front L/R pair. Flip LR stereo to MS. Drop the mid channel. Flip back to stereo sans mid. Send that stereo pair to your rears. It's putting the side only content in stereo in the rears, which is what you're doing with that wiring trick. Doing it in software, you can blend to taste.
 
For anyone interested, you can simulate the fake rears in software. It's a "one button" style of upmixing.
Take a feed from the front L/R pair. Flip LR stereo to MS. Drop the mid channel. Flip back to stereo sans mid. Send that stereo pair to your rears. It's putting the side only content in stereo in the rears, which is what you're doing with that wiring trick. Doing it in software, you can blend to taste.
Although doing it with a couple of lengths of wire means it works in real time!
 
Although doing it with a couple of lengths of wire means it works in real time!
How large of a block size are you setting for your DAW?
My 'relaxed' setting for post work (ie anything that isn't running live sound related) is 1024 samples. With 96k program that would be a system lag of 11ms. So if you inserted your favorite DAW app between your media player and output and used a large relaxed block size, you might have a lag of 11ms. That's still real time. Combining live sound with a delayed output from a computer mixer is what causes problems. Comb filtering for same signals split and offset <= 11ms. Lag that can affect performance > 11ms. Playing pre-recorded audio only means a lag between first hitting play and audio starting. And this would only be around 11ms and below your perception.

Heh, I suppose you meant creating a new render. I was thinking real time processing. :)
 
Back
Top