MidiMagic
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
- Joined
- Jul 5, 2010
- Messages
- 2,081
I sometimes wonder if Quad should've stayed a completely tape-based medium at least until something viable were produced for the LP format.
Then nobody could have played those albums except on a quad player. That was the one thing I wanted removed from quad (a reason I supported matrix).
It might've helped because I know more than a few folks who dipped their toe back in the 70's and deemed it "fake" or more often "not worth the money". I always though that odd but it turns out, they jumped into LP's first, not tapes like I did.
Then those of us who avoided tape when we could (due to high failure rates) would have had no quad and those who wanted quad had to spend a lot.
For the longest time, I would avoid Quad LP's simply because I couldn't get them to work. It took many years for me to finally get CD-4 right, and even with a Tate, SQ still does not blow me away.
Part of the problem is the way they cut corners when making quad. They tried to use the same recording for both the discrete tape and the matrix record. The matrix record sounds MUCH better if the mix were made with the matrix in mind. But they usually created a 4-track discrete mix, and then accepted whatever matrix performance came out of the 4-corners encoder.
It's a shame that Columbia Records and Sony were intertwined. Sony has ALWAYS had this kink where they must make some sort of proprietary equipment (I would assume so they can double-dip on royalties) but my god.... how many times have they tried that and fallen on their face? You'd think they'd have learned by now. I think RCA backed the right horse, but they wanted product YESTERDAY and I think put CD-4 to market way too prematurely.
CD-4 is also a proprietary equipment need, as are Q4 and Q8. You can't play it without the equipment.
RCA lost my business precisely because its records were not compatible with older equipment.
Only a fool would take a record labelled as QUADRAPHONIC and try to play it back on a mono system. Why would anybody BUY a Quad LP when they only have a mono system anyway?? It just seems.... silly.
Maybe they did that because they wanted that album with that music and those musicians, and it was only available as a quad (Elvis "Aloha via Satellite" comes to mind). If there is nothing sold but a CD-4 LP and a Q8 tape, how do you buy and play the album without spending a lot of money to go quad?
Think of college students on limited budgets. That's what I was when quad appeared. No money to play with. I passed by a lot of quad releases I would have liked to have just because I didn't have the money. I bought a lot from used record stores (Imagine buying a used CD-4 and wondering if the carrier was. OK).
But then again, I recall setting up this beautiful, 7.1 home-theatre system for a very wealthy client only to have him put on a Beatles CD with nothing but mono songs and then having to tolerate him boast about "How good the 7.1 sounds." People ain't SMRT.
I also just recently had a WTF moment when a fellow on the Facebook was telling everybody how much better his stereo LP's sounded in CD-4 mode....
This DID work with the matrix systems. Many of my LPs DID sound better in Dynaco Diamond, Dynaquad, EV-Stereo-4, and QS. This was another reason I preferred matrix.
And then there is the fact that I can make my own matrix recordings. CD-4 is out of the question for a home studio. I made my first matrix recording in 1970 with stereo equipment I already had.