In the "old" days, even though I was a Carole King fan, I was never had much respect for the 4 Carole King Q8's. Played on my 1970's equipment, they sounded more like echoed stereo than REAL quad.
Well, now that all of this DTS conversion stuff has been available, I re-aquired these 4 tapes via eBay to create a DTS CD of my favorite tracks from these tapes. I did not expect much. In fact, I had heard that there were "fake" quad Tapestry's out there, and there was no way to tell by looking at the tape.
So, I bid, I bought, and I copied to hard drive, and WOW!, was I suprised! Once I cleaned these tracks up and arranged them into a giant file, I noticed that yes, they really were quad, and they actually had a pretty decent sound field. They are by no means ping-pong, but they are not bad.
You know what, they are "undefined" quad. What I mean is that the lead vocal is in all 4 speakers, sometimes with the rears reverbed, but the arrangement of the instruments and background vocals are not stuck in a specific speaker, but in a specific location in the sound field. When you hear an individual the track by itself, you don't notice it, but when all four tracks are played back in sync, it's there! You can't eliminate a vocal or intstrument by removing a track like some Q8's.
"Fantasy" has the most "surround", but the earlier Q8s have their moments. As for Tapestry, I examined the 4 wav files closely, and there are definate differences in them. At least my Q8 was internally quad.
Anyway, these Q8's are not that bad after all. Hopefully, we will see them redone as SACDs some day.
:-jon
Well, now that all of this DTS conversion stuff has been available, I re-aquired these 4 tapes via eBay to create a DTS CD of my favorite tracks from these tapes. I did not expect much. In fact, I had heard that there were "fake" quad Tapestry's out there, and there was no way to tell by looking at the tape.
So, I bid, I bought, and I copied to hard drive, and WOW!, was I suprised! Once I cleaned these tracks up and arranged them into a giant file, I noticed that yes, they really were quad, and they actually had a pretty decent sound field. They are by no means ping-pong, but they are not bad.
You know what, they are "undefined" quad. What I mean is that the lead vocal is in all 4 speakers, sometimes with the rears reverbed, but the arrangement of the instruments and background vocals are not stuck in a specific speaker, but in a specific location in the sound field. When you hear an individual the track by itself, you don't notice it, but when all four tracks are played back in sync, it's there! You can't eliminate a vocal or intstrument by removing a track like some Q8's.
"Fantasy" has the most "surround", but the earlier Q8s have their moments. As for Tapestry, I examined the 4 wav files closely, and there are definate differences in them. At least my Q8 was internally quad.
Anyway, these Q8's are not that bad after all. Hopefully, we will see them redone as SACDs some day.
:-jon
