New Surround Master coming! Its a jump to the left and a step to the right

[JonUrban]

I have also noticed that most of the 3rd party forum links to QQ is dead.

I checked this out and you are correct, all of those links point to the old vBulletin QQ which is no longer there. In order to make it easier for Involve to update those links, and to make it easier for the membership to find threads and posts on the Surround Master and other Involve projects, I just created a new forum section in the INDUSTRY area of the forum for Involve Audio, and moved all of the threads I could find from other areas of the forum to (t)here.

So, here you go! Welcome to the new INVOLVE AUDIO section of QQ!

 

[chucky3042]

I checked this out and you are correct, all of those links point to the old vBulletin QQ which is no longer there. In order to make it easier for Involve to update those links, and to make it easier for the membership to find threads and posts on the Surround Master and other Involve projects, I just created a new forum section in the INDUSTRY area of the forum for Involve Audio, and moved all of the threads I could find from other areas of the forum to (t)here.

So, here you go! Welcome to the new INVOLVE AUDIO section of QQ!

I am unworthy!

 

[Scott65]

Dear All

I am going to release a new SM V2 brochure targeted at the Vinyl shops and market. I have included a few review grabs from QQ members - still under review which ones to use. Please have a look and if you want your own quote on it ......please provide one (a real one!) If you object to your QQ name being used we will dump it.

Sorry to nitpick....but I think page 1 should refer to 'discrete surround sound' not 'discreet surround sound'.

 

[ar surround]

Sorry to nitpick....but I think page 1 should refer to 'discrete surround sound' not 'discreet surround sound'.

Yes, 'discreet surround sound' is what we got on a lot of tracks on Silverline DVD-A's

 

[chucky3042]

Sorry to nitpick....but I think page 1 should refer to 'discrete surround sound' not 'discreet surround sound'.

Thanks....I have passed it on

 

[Scott65]

Yes, 'discreet surround sound' is what we got on a lot of tracks on Silverline DVD-A's

The one thing missing from the SM v2... a 'Silverline' mode...

 

[JonUrban]

The one thing missing from the SM v2... a 'Silverline' mode...

Oh it's there. It's called the POWER switch!

 

[dwight]

I have the same problem with the SMv2 that I had with the SMv1, I can’t stop listening to it. Now I can even switch, with a quick little turn of the wrist, between INVOLVE and SQ in both 4.1 and 5.1...E-GADS! ...... “The Horror”....I am very grateful for this even though I have been forced, forced, forced, to turn my entire body back through a 90 degree phase shift in order to quickly ascertain if the center channel is as bad as the charming AUSSIE NUMBER ONE says it is. On some recordings, I will admit 4.1 can sound better, but on recordings featuring a fantastic voice, 5.1 can be a game changer if that center channel is of high quality. I am very grateful to have this delightful choice before I die, or if my ears should die before me. Thank you NUMBER ONE!
I can now adjust every channel independently. This is all very exciting, especially if you’re an old man like me who suffered many brain bleeds in the early days of Quad, because you were told that what you were hearing was virtually discrete, but you really couldn’t tell where anything was coming from....agghahhh! .....Those days came to an end a while back, but there was never an all-inclusive, affordable high quality package such as THE INVOLVE SMv2. It clarifies QUAD surround sound!
I said all-inclusive. I know many will disagree with me, but INVOLVE does a very credible, if not almost perfect job of letting you hear a CD4 record mix close to how it was meant to be heard through the demodulator, because of the way rears were folded into stereo. Try it...I think you will be surprised if not amazed by how close INVOLVE comes. Listen to Carly Simon’s YOUR SO VAIN or I’VE WAITED SO LONG on the “VAIN” CD4 album through the INVOLVE. You will hear the same corner to corner guitar riffs that you would hear through the demodulator... Listen to JUMP INTO THE FIRE on “NILSON SCHMILSON” and you will be beyond pleased, especially if you have never heard a CD4 mix.
So, once I have digitized my SQ, QS, and CD4 albums to FLAC,( a laborious process ..yuk) I will sit on my fat ass, press the little buttons on my hi-res hand held, and call up my favorite QUAD albums in any order I damn well please....and let the good times roll. Just amazing! Thank You to everyone at INVOLVE.
Dwight

 

[chucky3042]

I have the same problem with the SMv2 that I had with the SMv1, I can’t stop listening to it. Now I can even switch, with a quick little turn of the wrist, between INVOLVE and SQ in both 4.1 and 5.1...E-GADS! ...... “The Horror”....I am very grateful for this even though I have been forced, forced, forced, to turn my entire body back through a 90 degree phase shift in order to quickly ascertain if the center channel is as bad as the charming AUSSIE NUMBER ONE says it is. On some recordings, I will admit 4.1 can sound better, but on recordings featuring a fantastic voice, 5.1 can be a game changer if that center channel is of high quality. I am very grateful to have this delightful choice before I die, or if my ears should die before me. Thank you NUMBER ONE!
I can now adjust every channel independently. This is all very exciting, especially if you’re an old man like me who suffered many brain bleeds in the early days of Quad, because you were told that what you were hearing was virtually discrete, but you really couldn’t tell where anything was coming from....agghahhh! .....Those days came to an end a while back, but there was never an all-inclusive, affordable high quality package such as THE INVOLVE SMv2. It clarifies QUAD surround sound!
I said all-inclusive. I know many will disagree with me, but INVOLVE does a very credible, if not almost perfect job of letting you hear a CD4 record mix close to how it was meant to be heard through the demodulator, because of the way rears were folded into stereo. Try it...I think you will be surprised if not amazed by how close INVOLVE comes. Listen to Carly Simon’s YOUR SO VAIN or I’VE WAITED SO LONG on the “VAIN” CD4 album through the INVOLVE. You will hear the same corner to corner guitar riffs that you would hear through the demodulator... Listen to JUMP INTO THE FIRE on “NILSON SCHMILSON” and you will be beyond pleased, especially if you have never heard a CD4 mix.
So, once I have digitized my SQ, QS, and CD4 albums to FLAC,( a laborious process ..yuk) I will sit on my fat ass, press the little buttons on my hi-res hand held, and call up my favorite QUAD albums in any order I damn well please....and let the good times roll. Just amazing! Thank You to everyone at INVOLVE.
Dwight

Dearest Dwight

Long time no see/ hear of you big fella! I do hear the odd report from Bitch as to your recent trials and tribulations - but yay we are both still ticking! Next time I am in your part of the world we really must catch up again and talk shit again.

Considering I am now AUSSIE NUMBER 1, can you now anoint Dave the Bitch as officially - NUMBER 2?

Actually I have heard several reports of various fools saying that the SM somehow mysteriously decodes CD4 discrete format records. My initial thoughts were that you guys are delusional and just had listened to one surround recording too many with red wine present. Afterall all the surround stuff is hidden in the subcarrier above 20 kHz, and the good ol SM just does not go there.

BUT

When I think about it at the time of the CD4 debacle the major issue was cross compatibility of artists material and trying to get artists to go to one format or another. Maybe, just perhaps, they were being clever dicks and put some phase info into the stereo mix- maybe a partial RM matrix or something??????? If some one can send me or loan me a CD4 record (RustyandI???) I could view the sub 20 kHz information and see if I can spot it. You may be on to something - those sneaky little JVC buggers.

Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of Saki

AUSSIE NUMBER 1

 

[dwight]

Dearest Dwight

Long time no see/ hear of you big fella! I do hear the odd report from Bitch as to your recent trials and tribulations - but yay we are both still ticking! Next time I am in your part of the world we really must catch up again and talk shit again.

Considering I am now AUSSIE NUMBER 1, can you now anoint Dave the Bitch as officially - NUMBER 2?

Actually I have heard several reports of various fools saying that the SM somehow mysteriously decodes CD4 discrete format records. My initial thoughts were that you guys are delusional and just had listened to one surround recording too many with red wine present. Afterall all the surround stuff is hidden in the subcarrier above 20 kHz, and the good ol SM just does not go there.

BUT

When I think about it at the time of the CD4 debacle the major issue was cross compatibility of artists material and trying to get artists to go to one format or another. Maybe, just perhaps, they were being clever dicks and put some phase info into the stereo mix- maybe a partial RM matrix or something??????? If some one can send me or loan me a CD4 record (RustyandI???) I could view the sub 20 kHz information and see if I can spot it. You may be on to something - those sneaky little JVC buggers.

Yo Ho Ho and a bottle of Saki

AUSSIE NUMBER 1

 

[dwight]

Dear BIG AUSSIE, Is that better?......I was sitting on the floor in my old New York studio apartment listening to my new JVC demodulator and CD4 records, and just for the hell of it I listened to Carly Simon's YOUR SO VAIN through the TATE 101A in the surround position and my jaw dropped.......I was dumbfounded...my audio memory, which can be bad, told me I was hearing the same quad mix...so I set up a second old preamp so that I could quickly AB the JVC with the TATE....It was an OMG moment..every CD4 was decoded by the TATE. but to my ears the sound lost some spaciousness. The Tate surround was very close but not as specific and natural as the SM. .....foolishly I stopped buying CD4s ....they were expensive and I thought that everyone would figure this out and CD4 would be a casualty.......Rusty must have NILSSON SCHMILSSON. It's got everything...it seems every CD4 had a guitar moving to the four corers of the room......but Jump Into The Fire is outrageous. You can't forget it. The red book cd is no comparison, even through INVOLVE. I would love to hear your feelings about this after you investigate of course. You know that " Dave the Bitch" has been in close contact and very kind to me.. maybe .....you're AUSSIE NUMBER 1 and he's CUBIT IN AN UNDETERMINED STATE. How's That?
Dwight

 

[sjcorne]

......I was sitting on the floor in my old New York studio apartment listening to my new JVC demodulator and CD4 records, and just for the hell of it I listened to Carly Simon's YOUR SO VAIN through the TATE 101A in the surround position and my jaw dropped.......I was dumbfounded...my audio memory, which can be bad, told me I was hearing the same quad mix...

The Tate's "surround" setting takes the information panned to the far sides of the stereo spectrum and moves it to the rears, creating a horseshoe-like soundfield. I've found it to be incredibly effective in upmixing stereo-to-surround, more so than Involve. But - with all due respect - to suggest a CD-4 LP is playing back properly in quad using a matrix decoder makes no sense. It's like saying you could take a discrete quad SACD, downmix it to stereo by combing the left front & rear and the right front & rear (which is how CD-4 records fold to stereo), then play it back through an SM to get the same thing you started with. Sure you'll get four channels of audio and it might sound cool in spots, but you're not hearing anything close to the actual quad mix.

The reason your Nilsson Schmilsson CD sounds so different than the CD-4 played back in stereo is because the CD-4 is a remix from the original multis that contains all kinds of differences from the old stereo mix, such as all that crazy extra echo in "Jump Into The Fire".

 

[hobie1dog]

I've been rerouting the cables in back of my equipment rack and finally got the SM in place and wired up but now have to swap some speakers around as the one plate amp on my Definitive technology BP 2000 is shot that powers the 15" subwoofer. May be another week before it's done. Everything takes so long to do when you're disabled.

 

[chucky3042]

Dear BIG AUSSIE, Is that better?......I was sitting on the floor in my old New York studio apartment listening to my new JVC demodulator and CD4 records, and just for the hell of it I listened to Carly Simon's YOUR SO VAIN through the TATE 101A in the surround position and my jaw dropped.......I was dumbfounded...my audio memory, which can be bad, told me I was hearing the same quad mix...so I set up a second old preamp so that I could quickly AB the JVC with the TATE....It was an OMG moment..every CD4 was decoded by the TATE. but to my ears the sound lost some spaciousness. The Tate surround was very close but not as specific and natural as the SM. .....foolishly I stopped buying CD4s ....they were expensive and I thought that everyone would figure this out and CD4 would be a casualty.......Rusty must have NILSSON SCHMILSSON. It's got everything...it seems every CD4 had a guitar moving to the four corers of the room......but Jump Into The Fire is outrageous. You can't forget it. The red book cd is no comparison, even through INVOLVE. I would love to hear your feelings about this after you investigate of course. You know that " Dave the Bitch" has been in close contact and very kind to me.. maybe .....you're AUSSIE NUMBER 1 and he's

42 minutes ago


The description "CUBIT IN AN UNDETERMINED STATE" is just possibly the best description of "Dave the Bitch" I have heard!

So does the CD4's "decode" better with the SM V2 in the SQ or Involve/ QS position??

 

[dwight]

The Tate's "surround" setting takes the information panned to the far sides of the stereo spectrum and moves it to the rears, creating a horseshoe-like soundfield. I've found it to be incredibly effective in upmixing stereo-to-surround, more so than Involve. But - with all due respect - to suggest a CD-4 LP is playing back properly in quad using a matrix decoder makes no sense. It's like saying you could take a discrete quad SACD, downmix it to stereo by combing the left front & rear and the right front & rear (which is how CD-4 records fold to stereo), then play it back through an SM to get the same thing you started with. Sure you'll get four channels of audio and it might sound cool in spots, but you're not hearing anything close to the actual quad mix.

The reason your Nilsson Schmilsson CD sounds so different than the CD-4 played back in stereo is because the CD-4 is a remix from the original multis that contains all kinds of differences from the old stereo mix, such as all that crazy extra echo in "Jump Into The Fire".

To sjcorne, I said "...I know many will disagree with me...", and you are entitled to do that. I was listening to the TATE and the JVC in real time, and determined, just for me, that they were so close that I decided to abandon CD4 . Anyone else can investigate or not, and come to their own conclusion after performing the comparison. This is just an observation not an absolute! It can be tried and dismissed or found to be pleasantly interesting, that's all!

 

[dwight]

Dear Big Aussie, Definitely in INVOLVE 4.1. I knew opening my big mouth would cause problems. I think you nailed it though. The mixdown for many CD4s followed the template for a good decode by Sansui. There was a plastic place mat that came with my QRX 3000, and on it was a picture of the way the synth mode distributed the mix to the four speakers. Fosgate followed that scheme with the TATE surround mode. VOILA! I'm sure there were some that were mixed in a different fashion, but the CD4s that I bought in the 70's, were sounding pretty much identical through the JVC and the TATE. I own 10 CD4s. I can only vouch for the ones I listened to back then through the TATE and today through INVOLVE. Have you ever listened to the TATE front channels ONLY when it's in the surround position.. Very bizarre. It is a strange mishmash that only makes sense when you bring the rears back up. The rears define the front image. A whole lot of masking going on! Clearly not what INVOLVE is doing.
Dwight

 

[chucky3042]

Dear Big Aussie, Definitely in INVOLVE 4.1. I knew opening my big mouth would cause problems. I think you nailed it though. The mixdown for many CD4s followed the template for a good decode by Sansui. There was a plastic place mat that came with my QRX 3000, and on it was a picture of the way the synth mode distributed the mix to the four speakers. Fosgate followed that scheme with the TATE surround mode. VOILA! I'm sure there were some that were mixed in a different fashion, but the CD4s that I bought in the 70's, were sounding pretty much identical through the JVC and the TATE. I own 10 CD4s. I can only vouch for the ones I listened to back then through the TATE and today through INVOLVE. Have you ever listened to the TATE front channels ONLY when it's in the surround position.. Very bizarre. It is a strange mishmash that only makes sense when you bring the rears back up. The rears define the front image. A whole lot of masking going on! Clearly not what INVOLVE is doing.
Dwight

Dear Yankee Doodle Dandy
Again really interesting comment. If they did a special mixdown secretly on the CD4 disks and used the Sansui QS or even RM matrix then the left / right front channel separation on the stereo mix would be compressed and sound not very wide. So I suspect they might have reduced the matrix mix parameters slightly to increase the downmix separation ....but a good decoder should still work well with that. I can spot this on the CD4 disc if I can get my grubby claws onto one.

No I have not listened to the fronts in isolation on the Tate while in surround mode, damn I should have done that at RustyandI's dungeon. I did spot straight away the difference between the Tate and the SM SQ model and it was a bit like you described, maybe rough imaging - if that's a description. It comes back to the mantra I have been spouting on this great forum for years that its all impressive to get big channel separation numbers but the trade off in SQ is a rough "grainy/ mechanical" sounding extraction. The trick is to separate the signals with no artifacts. The numbers turn out to be a pissing contest- as much fun as that is.

As I mentioned previously you are one of 3 who have reported really good decode of CD4 ......I smell something suspicious!

Yet again you have shown that you are smarter than the average bear.

Glad to see that I now out rank Hugh Jackman, Russel Crowe and Chris Helmsworth.....at best they are number 3, 4 and 5 Aussies.

Onwards Excelsior

Aussie Number 1

 

[DennisMabry]

I've been rerouting the cables in back of my equipment rack and finally got the SM in place and wired up but now have to swap some speakers around as the one plate amp on my Definitive technology BP 2000 is shot that powers the 15" subwoofer. May be another week before it's done. Everything takes so long to do when you're disabled.

I have BP 2000 speakers that I bought new in 94. Both of the built in 300 watt power amps went out within a couple years but were still under warranty. You can remove the back panel that contains the power amp and have them repaired as opposed to shipping the entire speaker. It was a manufacture defect that plagued almost all of them. I have not had any trouble since, and I leave them powered up continuously. Not sure what the repair cost would be out of warranty.

You're going to love the SM v2!

 

[dwight]

Dear Yankee Doodle Dandy
Again really interesting comment. If they did a special mixdown secretly on the CD4 disks and used the Sansui QS or even RM matrix then the left / right front channel separation on the stereo mix would be compressed and sound not very wide. So I suspect they might have reduced the matrix mix parameters slightly to increase the downmix separation ....but a good decoder should still work well with that. I can spot this on the CD4 disc if I can get my grubby claws onto one.

No I have not listened to the fronts in isolation on the Tate while in surround mode, damn I should have done that at RustyandI's dungeon. I did spot straight away the difference between the Tate and the SM SQ model and it was a bit like you described, maybe rough imaging - if that's a description. It comes back to the mantra I have been spouting on this great forum for years that its all impressive to get big channel separation numbers but the trade off in SQ is a rough "grainy/ mechanical" sounding extraction. The trick is to separate the signals with no artifacts. The numbers turn out to be a pissing contest- as much fun as that is.

As I mentioned previously you are one of 3 who have reported really good decode of CD4 ......I smell something suspicious!

Yet again you have shown that you are smarter than the average bear.

Glad to see that I now out rank Hugh Jackman, Russel Crowe and Chris Helmsworth.....at best they are number 3, 4 and 5 Aussies.

Onwards Excelsior

Aussie Number 1

Aussie Number 1, Again, I think you are on to something about left/right front channel separation. They had to find a way to fold those rear channels into the stereo mix when they hit the market....compatibility was a huge issue.
Yankee Doodle Dandy

 

[hobie1dog]

I have BP 2000 speakers that I bought new in 94. Both of the built in 300 watt power amps went out within a couple years but were still under warranty. You can remove the back panel that contains the power amp and have them repaired as opposed to shipping the entire speaker. It was a manufacture defect that plagued almost all of them. I have not had any trouble since, and I leave them powered up continuously. Not sure what the repair cost would be out of warranty.

You're going to love the SM v2!

I have an electronic tech who is going to look at it for me. I would like to know what the problems are so that I might save him some troubleshooting time. Do you know what they are? I read on another forum that some of the components had values too low in ratings for the current involved.