270 degree surround with Fosgate Tate and Surround Master SQ decoder

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Disclord

900 Club - QQ All-Star
Joined
May 19, 2005
Messages
944
Location
Plattsburg, MO (just outside Kansas City)
As those with a Fosgate Tate II 101A know, its surround mode is second to none in creating a 270 degree U shaped horseshoe of sound. The Involve Surround Master SQ unit can't do this since its a straight SQ decoder.... But, I have found that if you combine the Fosgate with the Surround Master you can have the Tate type of synthesized surround. Here's how:

feed your input signal into the Fosgate. Feed the Fosgate's front L/R outputs into the Involve Surround Master SQ units 2channel inputs. The outputs from the Surround Master should be the standard 4 channel outs - don't use the outputs with the center channel. Set the Fosgate to the Surround mode and the switch under Tape to MONO, then set the front/back balance all the way to the front. You are now sending the Surround Master a stereo signal that has been reencoded into SQ 270 surround. Make sure your Surround Master is on SQ and the Fosgate input is properly balanced L/R and the input and output levels don't over drive the Surround master.

set up like this you will have the exact same soundfield the Fosgate Tate produces in the surround mode. To listen to regular stereo or encoded sources, simply put the Fosgate in Bypass.

this really works. You can even record the output of the Fosgate in the surround mode setting and have a CD or digital recording that is SQ encoded 270 degree surround.

try it, you'll like it. Switching the Fosgate to mono turns off the DES processing so the Surround master can decode it perfectly.

i don't know if this can be done with other SQ decoders.

post your results, because I'm getting excellent synthesized SQ surround and I'd like to know others opinions of the process and results.
 
As those with a Fosgate Tate II 101A know, its surround mode is second to none in creating a 270 degree U shaped horseshoe of sound. The Involve Surround Master SQ unit can't do this since its a straight SQ decoder.

The Surround Master isn't a "straight SQ decoder" at all. It has a QS-like matrix named Involve and 3 band processing at its core. So it's much closer to a Sansui QSD-1 than an SQ decoder or a Tate.

As for the results, I much prefer the Surround Master results to the old 270 degree SQ horse shoe approach. But as always, everyone has their favorite approaches to music playback... :)
 
The Surround Master isn't a "straight SQ decoder" at all. It has a QS-like matrix named Involve and 3 band processing at its core. So it's much closer to a Sansui QSD-1 than an SQ decoder or a Tate.

As for the results, I much prefer the Surround Master results to the old 270 degree SQ horse shoe approach. But as always, everyone has their favorite approaches to music playback... :)

I realize what you are saying, but the SQ version of the Surround Master does a great job decoding SQ recordings in its SQ mode - so for those that liked the Fosgate type of synthesized surround, this is a way of achieving it. I've run the SQ Quadraphile tests as well as the CBS SQT-1100 SQ test LP through it in the SQ mode and it decodes everything perfectly.

BTW, back in the day Martin Willcocks was working on a 4-band Tate DES decoder with Jim Fosgate but Gary Reber's shenanigans and other issues caused him to drop the project.
 
The Surround Master isn't a "straight SQ decoder" at all. It has a QS-like matrix named Involve and 3 band processing at its core. So it's much closer to a Sansui QSD-1 than an SQ decoder or a Tate.

As for the results, I much prefer the Surround Master results to the old 270 degree SQ horse shoe approach. But as always, everyone has their favorite approaches to music playback... :)

this a reply to an older post, but I thought I should reply to clarify - the SQ mode of the Surround Master is a 'real' SQ decoder with the added benefit of 3 band processing. While the Vario-Matrix was originally developed for QS/RM decoding, there is nothing that prevents it from properly enhancing SQ encoded recordings. Although the Tate DES operates on the output of an existing SQ decoder, and the Vario-Matrix changes the parameters of the decoding matrix itself, the end results are the same - they are just achieved in a different matter. While the DES was derived from the mathematical analysis of the decoding problem, the Vario-Matrix was developed in a different way, but again, the results are the same - the unwanted sound is suppressed in the channels where its not supposed to be while the wanted signal is enhanced in level to retain overall constant power. So, given the correct matrix parameters, both the DES and Vario-Matrix are capable of decoding any phase-amplitude matrix. The DES is much more complex than the Vario-Matrix but the end results are basically the same. The DES could be adapted easily to QS or the BMX matrix but in the IC version was only designed for SQ. Martin Willcocks was planning on multi-band DES decoding but Fosgate dropped the Tate IC'S due to actions of Gary Reber and Wes Ruggles, leaving Dolby as the sole user of the IC'S until they got sick of Tate's antics and developed their own Pro-Logic system. The Shure Acra-Vector are the only Dolby Stereo decoders that decode with performance that duplicates the Tate based Dolby CAT-150 Dolby Stereo card. Dolby used the QSD-1 in their early decoders up to Star Wars when they switched to the Tate DES for all later films such as Close Encounters.

So the SQ version of the Surround Master is a true SQ decoder with Paramatrix type decoding based on the Vario-Matrix - Sansui never developed the SQ decoding beyond front/back decoding which left the corners with only 3db separation - but we now have a full variable matrix decoder for SQ and in 3 bands no less which greatly increases the discrete sound of the original SQ encoding.
 
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