(1973-08) Billboard - Quadrasonic Surge Soon

[Q-Eight]

Let's just be grateful we have what we have in surround and stop lamenting the past! We cannot alter HISTORY!

100% agree with your statement. The goal of the conversation though is to learn from said history and identify the problems so as to not repeat the same issues and have it fail again! However, it seems the powers that be still have not learned and history is repeating itself with multiple, incompatible formats and lackluster sales due to the publics' apathy toward the product(s) being offered.

 

[kfbkfb]

IMHO, Dolby Labs lucked out (due to technical requirements unrelated to the home use of [original] Dolby Surround, there's only 1 surround channel and it's limited to 100Hz to 7,000Hz), a single small (mostly the midrange) speaker can be placed behind the home listener and with a DS decoder, the full and accurate Dolby Surround sound effect can be obtained, no need for 2 additional full range speakers.

I don't know how much of a benefit this was for selling Dolby Surround in the early days (~1982) though.


Kirk Bayne

 

[Q-Eight]

Or how even the Compact Disc (supposedly) has a 4-channel mode that has never been implemented or how Quad FM was finally green-lit well past it's sell by date.
Hell, look at cars today. 99% of them are set up for surround-sound with multiple speakers even in the most basic cars, and virtually every modern car on the road has some sort of satellite receiver more than capable of streaming a 5.1 audio signal.

And yet, all 29 of those speakers are driven by a 2-channel amp and that satellite receiver does.... something.

Hell, was it not our very own ArmyofQuad who broadcast a 5.1 Surround internet radio station 15 years ago?? IT WORKED and it worked well.
He should be in the Guiness Book of Records. Pretty sure he's the only dude who'd ever done something like that.

 

[bill114]

After devouring all the articles I could find on Quad in the early seventies, it was clear to me the only truly discrete hi-fi format was reel-to-reel tape. That was simply an impossible purchase on my budget, and I suspect cost was the deal-breaker for many others. As far as wife approval factor, my better half has never denied my purchase of speakers, players, AVRs, etc.

The first thing I always did on moving into a new place was to scope out the living room for best speaker/receiver placement, and my wife would work out how to place furniture around the room so as not to interfere with sound dispersion. Love my gal

So for me, it was the budget busting prices beyond anything else that brought my Quadraphonic dreams to a screeching halt.

I'm also lucky enough to have a wife that shares my appreciation for music and quad. The same sort of scoping out an new place suitable for it all applies to me too. The fact that she's an artist and I made my living as a musician for years probably contributed to that. Best thing is we'll be having our 44th anniversary this year.

 

[MidiMagic]

I am 70 and retired. I don't have the money I had while I was working. And my physical abilities aren't what they used to be.

Not only can I not afford any of the new discrete formats, I am trying to find a way to afford a Surround Master on my bustget. Heart medicine is my major expense.

My wife is not a decorating freak, so there is no problem there.

I have started collecting records again - new ones.

The cogging effect of sounds suddenly jumping from speaker to speaker (when supposedly the sounds are panned smoothly from front to back or back to front) drives me nuts every time I hear a discrete demonstration.

And I still want compatibility. All of the recordings I own are compatible with recordings I have that were made before World War I.

There is nothing "wrong" with Dolby Surround having only one back channel. The encoded recordings are practically the same for Scheiber, QS, Dynaco diamond, Dynaquad, EV-4, QX, and Dolby surround. All of them will play the same recording and place the panned image in the same place, no matter where the speakers are designed to be in the system. And these work on records, FM stereo, stereo reels, 8-tracks, cassettes, HiFi-VHS, CD, DVD, and even BluRay.