The Legacy of Dr Bauer

[Sonik Wiz]

Excellent portfolio of Ben Bauer , Sonik Wiz.

BTW was'nt he also heavily involved in the "London Box" addition for SQ encoding ?

As for the Ghent SQ microphone which automatically gave the SQ encoding to any recording in use , I always wondered how many wee actually made ?
I wonder if anyone knows the answer to my question.

Thanks!
Yup the London Box tried improve mono capability if a sound is positioned center back. It was basically a crude comb filter accomplished by EQ filters set oppositely between Lb/Rb input chs to the encoder. Think: Left 60Hz low, 120 Hz high, 240 Hz low etc. And right back would be 60Hz high, 120 Hz low, 240 Hz high, etc. It's very similar to those old time black boxes for TV's that tried to turn mono into stereo.

I found some interesting stuff today about the Ghent mic partway down in an article about Ambisonics:

https://www.fugato.com/pickett/pantoph.shtml
Edit: I should clarify that only sounds an artist wanted sent to center back went through the London Box. Corner sounds were not.

Also don't forget the SQ Position Encoder. There were several flavors of SQ encoding such as front oriented, side oriented, back oriented, & of course the basic vanilla flavor. These were all wrapped up in one "package" called the SQ Position Encoder. Odd how SQ was pushed as the optimum stereo/quad compatible system ( well they all were...) they spent a lot of time & ingenuity fixing the loop holes.

 

[fizzywiggs41]

I've got this piece of old news about Ben Bauer, from Billboard.

Both Inoyue and Ben Bauer were given awards for their work on Quad Matrix at this years 1973 Montreaux Jazz Festival. (October 03rd 1973 ; 25)

FWIW Ben Bauer received many such awards and high praise throughout his tenure at CBS .

 

[fizzywiggs41]

Picture of basic Sony SQ Encoder and CBS Position Encoder.

 

[fizzywiggs41]

Also the basic layout for the GHENT SQ MIC.

And fuzzy picture.

 

[fredblue]

I've got this piece of old news about Ben Bauer, from Billboard.

Both Inoyue and Ben Bauer were given awards for their work on Quad Matrix at this years 1973 Montreaux Jazz Festival. (October 03rd 1973 ; 25)

FWIW Ben Bauer received many such awards and high praise throughout his tenure at CBS .

he probably died of a broken heart as his death from a heart attack came not long after CBS NY dismantled all their Quad gear (smashed it up with pickaxes and chucked it out in the street apparently... nice) and pulled the plug on SQ

 

[Owen Smith]

he probably died of a broken heart as his death from a heart attack came not long after CBS NY dismantled all their Quad gear (smashed it up with pickaxes and chucked it out in the street apparently... nice) and pulled the plug on SQ

Oxford Dickie told me a few years ago that Bauer was going to come over to the UK to work on quad and set up a studio, but it didn't happen because he died. I've no idea of the truth of it but if CBS smashed up all the gear I can see why he'd want to relocate.

 

[fizzywiggs41]

he probably died of a broken heart as his death from a heart attack came not long after CBS NY dismantled all their Quad gear (smashed it up with pickaxes and chucked it out in the street apparently... nice) and pulled the plug on SQ

Oh , I heard that was CD-4 Proponents , such as WEA going out of their way to destroy/smash up Quadulators , maybe out of frustration as sales were not justified and noise problems with the pressings persisted , no matter what new gear they received. No doubt complaints were piling up and CD-4 records were being returned by the hundreds by customers /dealers as unplayable.

In this regard I don't think CBS destroyed much of anything , as they sold SQ to the TATE Group. Pretty much lock, stock , and barrel . But held onto all the discrete masters , including the SQ master tapes.

 

[Akaiquadster2]

Oxford Dickie told me a few years ago that Bauer was going to come over to the UK to work on quad and set up a studio, but it didn't happen because he died. I've no idea of the truth of it but if CBS smashed up all the gear I can see why he'd want to relocate.

Well dying can interfere with the best intentions or laid plans!

I tip my hat to all of these geniuses- and to our man in Oxford! Enjoy many a dvd of his !

 

[surround.sound.enthusiast]

Also don't forget the SQ Position Encoder. There were several flavors of SQ encoding such as front oriented, side oriented, back oriented, & of course the basic vanilla flavor. These were all wrapped up in one "package" called the SQ Position Encoder. Odd how SQ was pushed as the optimum stereo/quad compatible system ( well they all were...) they spent a lot of time & ingenuity fixing the loop holes.

Fizzywiggs already beat me to the punch with his photographs, but the Sony SQE-2000 had a selector knob on the back for selecting the SQ encode flavor.

 

[Soundfield]

Also don't forget the SQ Position Encoder. There were several flavors of SQ encoding such as front oriented, side oriented, back oriented, & of course the basic vanilla flavor. These were all wrapped up in one "package" called the SQ Position Encoder. Odd how SQ was pushed as the optimum stereo/quad compatible system ( well they all were...) they spent a lot of time & ingenuity fixing the loop holes.

Yes those encoders just show how badly flawed the SQ system was. Far from being a transparent '4-2-4' system it needed all kinds of tricks applied to try and hide its positional shortcomings. SQ didn't like the complexities of real world signals and these encoders simply tried to iron them out, forcing outcomes that it could handle!

 

[MidiMagic]

QS was the only matrix system that did NOT require any kind of foolery.

 

[par4ken]

The Position Encoder would of been a great way to create a very immersive mix with sounds located in every conceivable position. Typical studio recordings are mixed from multi-tracks (many more than four). Not really a 4-2-4 system but a N-2-4 system!

 

[Sonik Wiz]

The Position Encoder would of been a great way to create a very immersive mix with sounds located in every conceivable position. Typical studio recordings are mixed from multi-tracks (many more than four). Not really a 4-2-4 system but a N-2-4 system!

Little known bit of quad history is that Regular Matrix encoding had a position encoder too. A bit like Ambisonics it wasn't really a 4-2-4 scheme it was more like an N-2-N concept. That is using the early 4 corner Scheiber quad decoder as a standard, it could be specified that any decoded output in a 360 deg circle could be predicted by a corresponding phase/amplitude input. You could have any number of instruments or tracks panned to a decoded output again just mixing the right levels & phase, or in this case more like matching or opposite polarity since no 90 deg phase shifting was used.

And you could decode any number of speaker output locations, again by combining the right polarity/amplitude.

The EIAJ approved this method but I don't know what hardware or music was produced this way. Pretty soon there after the EIAJ approved the Sansui QS method. Certainly a bit more complex with real 90 deg phase shifts involved but in one aspect it lended itself more directly to working with multi-track pair wise mixing.

 

[MidiMagic]

Little known bit of quad history is that Regular Matrix encoding had a position encoder too. A bit like Ambisonics it wasn't really a 4-2-4 scheme it was more like an N-2-N concept. That is using the early 4 corner Scheiber quad decoder as a standard, it could be specified that any decoded output in a 360 deg circle could be predicted by a corresponding phase/amplitude input. You could have any number of instruments or tracks panned to a decoded output again just mixing the right levels & phase, or in this case more like matching or opposite polarity since no 90 deg phase shifting was used.

And you could decode any number of speaker output locations, again by combining the right polarity/amplitude.

The EIAJ approved this method but I don't know what hardware or music was produced this way. Pretty soon there after the EIAJ approved the Sansui QS method. Certainly a bit more complex with real 90 deg phase shifts involved but in one aspect it lended itself more directly to working with multi-track pair wise mixing.

I have done this many times with a 4-bus mixer and a phase inverter. The encoded position of each channel strip depends on the pan pot and bus selector.

 

[kfbkfb]

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Archive-Audio/70s/Audio-1979-08.pdf#page=14^^^
USQ by BBB.


I haven't run across much here in QQ about the USQ proposal (similar in concept to the UD-4 system with a base layer matrix and then various higher layers providing more channel separation).


Kirk Bayne

 

[Soundfield]

I have just realised that the CBS Position Encoder was not an SQ Matrix Encoder and was used earlier in the production chain. The use of the term 'encoder' in two different contexts is rather confusing.

The "Postion Encoder" didn't really encode anything. It was what we in the engineering trade would have called a "bodge box"!

 

[kfbkfb]

The SQ Position Encoder is an SQ encoder, each of the settings for a particular position set the phase and amplitude of the signals so that it would [SQ] decode at the desired position. A unique feature was "diagonal splits" which provided (IIRC) ~8 dB (LF/RB and RF/LB) rather than the ~3 dB of a regular 4 corner [only] input SQ encoder.

(I have a photocopy somewhere that gives the vectors, I worked thru them many years ago on my HP-45 to see what they meant by "diagonal splits")


Kirk Bayne

 

[Soundfield]

The SQ Position Encoder is an SQ encoder, each of the settings for a particular position set the phase and amplitude of the signals so that it would [SQ] decode at the desired position.

An SQ encoder has two output channels Rt and Lt. The Positional encoder has four output channels Lf Rf Lb Rb which need to connected to an SQ Encoder to generate Rt and Lt. So, as you can see from the diagram above, the only place you can connect an SQ Decoder for monitoring is at the output of the SQ Encoder. You cannot connect an SQ decoder to the output of the Position Encoder.

 

[kfbkfb]

I think the drawing is wrong.

The discrete module "undoes" the phase/amplitude changes (IMHO, it seems like a roundabout way of getting a discrete mix, they should have built the SQ position encoder to also provide a discrete mix [maybe the position selectors could have operated 2 different systems, phase/amplitude for SQ encoding and amplitude only for discrete])


Kirk Bayne

 

[Soundfield]

I think the diagram is correct. Yes, the discrete module undoes the phase/ amplitude changes of the pan pots in the Position Encoder, but if as you say, the Position Encoder produces a SQ encoded output how could that work?!

The Position Encoder is merely a box of pan pots used to produce phase and amplitude changes representing positional locations in a form that when, and only when, they are encoded in SQ format can be subsequently decoded and reproduced positionally correctly. Here is a more detailed description of its use: