A Vario-Matrix Survival Guide

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par4ken

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There were many great articles published during the brief lifespan of "MCS Review" formerly "Quad Quarterly". Our own Sonik Wiz penned most of the technical articles. I was looking for the copy with his Pre-Synth circuit in it. but came upon his Vario-Matrix Survival Guide. This tells about all you need to know about Vario-Matrix decoding, how to maintain your equipment and even how to modify the various units.

This article is invaluable for me, as I'm about to do some maintenance on my QSD-1.

My required maintenance involves Deoxing the switch contacts. Sometimes I have to punch them in and out to get them to work. At times the sound is distorted until the push button is exercised (a high resistance contact can actually act as a diode which causes this type of distortion. Another problem is at times the bass drops out (another switch contact?) on one or more speakers, I thought that it was a bad input connection to my amplifier (as I Bi-amp), but switching over to the S&IC that problem is gone.

I plan to add the variable Hall and Surround pot to my Photolume decoder when I'm done with the QSD-1. For the QSD-1 I'll check that the hall and surround blend is correct, replacing resistors or using a trim pot if necessary.
 

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There were many great articles published during the brief lifespan of "MCS Review" formerly "Quad Quarterly". Our own Sonik Wiz penned most of the technical articles. I was looking for the copy with his Pre-Synth circuit in it. but came upon his Vario-Matrix Survival Guide. This tells about all you need to know about Vario-Matrix decoding, how to maintain your equipment and even how to modify the various units.

This article is invaluable for me, as I'm about to do some maintenance on my QSD-1.

My required maintenance involves Deoxing the switch contacts. Sometimes I have to punch them in and out to get them to work. At times the sound is distorted until the push button is exercised (a high resistance contact can actually act as a diode which causes this type of distortion. Another problem is at times the bass drops out (another switch contact?) on one or more speakers, I thought that it was a bad input connection to my amplifier (as I Bi-amp), but switching over to the S&IC that problem is gone.

I plan to add the variable Hall and Surround pot to my Photolume decoder when I'm done with the QSD-1. For the QSD-1 I'll check that the hall and surround blend is correct, replacing resistors or using a trim pot if necessary.

Thanks for the shout out & kind comments! When I last got the urge to do repairs on my Sansui QSD-1000 I went looking for my copy of that issue & could not find it. Anywhere. So thanks to you I have it back in my possession. That article & Uncle Sam's Department of Quad were the two contributions I was most proud of. And also I can not find the copy of the latter article either.

I like to think the Survival Guide was the launch pad for others that expanded on it such as Quad Bob (when his reputation was good) & maybe even QRX Restore.

When I did that article I remember tracing the signal path through the various IC's internal schematic to understand the details of Vario-Matrix operation. These are included in your posted scan but I just did one of the IC's from the original AES White Paper. I think this valuable stuff so here is another image that might be a bit higher quality:

SANSUI CHIPS.jpg


If you look close at HA1327 you can see my pencil notes on the signal mixing & polarity. Some of the features of the Sansui Vario-Matrix design that set it far apart from others was using a phase discriminator to determine direction, the fact that there are no 90 deg phase shifts needed until after decoding ( and then that is a debatable nicety), the use of FET's for the variable matrixing. In fact even this is unique because the FET's work as a variable shunt to ground rather gain controlling the signal as pass through. In other words, unlike SQ full logic decoders the signal that you hear is what didn't go through the gain control elements.

In the September '76 issue of Wireless World there was a QS Vario-Matrix kit article that described a different way to tune up & adjust the pots that control the front, back, left, right, parameters for optimum performance. Unlike mine it requires a simple 90 deg phase shift to check outputs and balancing. Either way works but mine is a bit simpler.

https://worldradiohistory.com/UK/Wireless-World/70s/Wireless-World-1976-09.pdf
RE: Hall & Synthesis blend on the QSD-1: I've never checked the in phase blending on the Hall setting because that seems pretty tolerant considering the front chs are actually undecoded straight stereo. In the 4>5 units I've checked the dB blend for Synth it has always been a bit less than .414, closer to -10dB at .316. I think Sansui did this a bit conservatively accounting for the amount of already randomy rear ch signal that might be there on a stereo records. It would be good to replace the Synth fixed resistor with a multi-turn trim pot, set right where you think is the best, & leave it.

post back as the QSD-1 restoration project goes!
 
RE: Hall & Synthesis blend on the QSD-1: I've never checked the in phase blending on the Hall setting because that seems pretty tolerant considering the front chs are actually undecoded straight stereo. In the 4>5 units I've checked the dB blend for Synth it has always been a bit less than .414, closer to -10dB at .316. I think Sansui did this a bit conservatively accounting for the amount of already randomy rear ch signal that might be there on a stereo records. It would be good to replace the Synth fixed resistor with a multi-turn trim pot, set right where you think is the best, & leave it.

I downloaded the previous Wireless World article, and although the author states in both articles that the Hall mode passes the (Lt/Rt) stereo signal direct to the front outputs in Hall mode I believe that is incorrect. The Hall mode mixes the Lt and Rt together by .414 in phase, that makes the signal decode as stereo from the front. I don't know if the author was confused on that point or if it was just in the way he was trying to explain it. Interesting that the article is actually describing another Vario-matrix kit, available at the time. That one came on two boards that plugged together, I think that I would prefer the Photolume that uses only one board!
 
I downloaded the previous Wireless World article, and although the author states in both articles that the Hall mode passes the (Lt/Rt) stereo signal direct to the front outputs in Hall mode I believe that is incorrect. The Hall mode mixes the Lt and Rt together by .414 in phase, that makes the signal decode as stereo from the front. I don't know if the author was confused on that point or if it was just in the way he was trying to explain it. Interesting that the article is actually describing another Vario-matrix kit, available at the time. That one came on two boards that plugged together, I think that I would prefer the Photolume that uses only one board!

Ah Sansui says the front chs are un-decoded stereo as well. Taken from a 4 page promo piece about the QSD-1 titled The Ultimate Decoder/Synthesizer:

" Hall Mode: The 2-channel signals are reproduced through the front channels as ordinary stereo, while the QSD-1 sends ambience signals to the back channels to result in the same kind of rich musical sound you would hear in a concert hall."

You can also trace the signal in hall mode on the Photolume or QSD-2 schematic to verify this. Actually the QSD-1 schematic is easier to see this as it has separate switches for the decoding modes. Take a look at F-2467 illustration. You'll notice that the switch for synthesizer has only 2 poles to it as it just switches in the out of phase (rather opposite polarity) mixing resistor into the circuit. But the Hall mode is 4 pole as it switches in the in phase blend resistor while also routing the 2 ch input to Front L/R.

Are we not geeks? No. We are Quadra-Geeks!
 
More of Uncle Sam

Thank you Ken!
I considered the Patent & Trademark Office a gold mine of worth while information. There is so much hype in advertising & only so much you can take as true in a electronics review in a magazine. But there is relatively little BS in a patent application. In the halcyon days of quad, if you wanted to find out how something worked there were patents & AES papers.

You also found out about cool ideas that never made it to market. Such as Sony having their own variable matrix decoder for both SQ & QS. II think it was Mitsubishi that had a highly advanced RM (not QS) decoder with direction sensing on 8 points where as Sansui used only 4. There was a myriad of schemes for synthing stereo to surround some very intriguing, some down right laughable.

All of this was in the days you had to some how without use of the internet find the patent numbers you wanted, get a USPS money order cuz each patent copy cost 10 cents, and do all this via snail mail. But most of the patents I have came from that time period. I have maybe 12"+ of printed out patents all about audio & surround sound.
 
Ah Sansui says the front chs are un-decoded stereo as well. Taken from a 4 page promo piece about the QSD-1 titled The Ultimate Decoder/Synthesizer:

" Hall Mode: The 2-channel signals are reproduced through the front channels as ordinary stereo, while the QSD-1 sends ambience signals to the back channels to result in the same kind of rich musical sound you would hear in a concert hall."

You can also trace the signal in hall mode on the Photolume or QSD-2 schematic to verify this. Actually the QSD-1 schematic is easier to see this as it has separate switches for the decoding modes. Take a look at F-2467 illustration. You'll notice that the switch for synthesizer has only 2 poles to it as it just switches in the out of phase (rather opposite polarity) mixing resistor into the circuit. But the Hall mode is 4 pole as it switches in the in phase blend resistor while also routing the 2 ch input to Front L/R.

Are we not geeks? No. We are Quadra-Geeks!
I'm still scratching my head about that one. I see the front bypass now on the Photolume but still not in the Wireless World article, it's hard to see with diagrams that extend across multiple pages.

That amounts to half decoding and why use in-phase blend which will actually cancel out some of the ambience that we are trying to reproduce? Hall mode is one that I rarely use, I would rather use SQ or the stereo enhance setting of the S&IC with the pot all the way down. I don't mean to second guess the designers but WTF!

Your pre-synth gave Hall and Surround by simply adjusting a pot, but the fronts were decoded too! I'm still looking for that article, I saw it not long ago. It's just so easy to misplace those small little magazines!
 
I'm still scratching my head about that one. I see the front bypass now on the Photolume but still not in the Wireless World article, it's hard to see with diagrams that extend across multiple pages.

I agree; I do not see the Hall front ch bypass on the WW article either. This article was one of three that also included an SQ & CD-4 kits from Compcor. Maybe the WW QS article just had a schematic error but was done properly on the kits. Who knows?

That amounts to half decoding and why use in-phase blend which will actually cancel out some of the ambience that we are trying to reproduce? Hall mode is one that I rarely use, I would rather use SQ or the stereo enhance setting of the S&IC with the pot all the way down. I don't mean to second guess the designers but WTF!

In another article that would take me hours to find (my closet has a really poor search function) I remember that the in phase blending was to keep any direct sounds from coming out of the rears. Not decoding the front chs added to the over all integration of the sound field. There's an abundance of classical/jazz made with close micing & multi-micing that gave a superficially impressive wide stereo image. In surround, well, I gues some folks don't like the idea of a cymbal crash coming out of left back scaring them.

I didn't use it much unless it was a poorly recorded live concert or something clean & pristine like a Sheffield Direct to Disc. In the former noise & distortion can emphasized in the rear chs & Hall helped with that. In the latter I just liked the least amount of processing to honor the high quality source.

In some ways the Hall decode mode can be seen as effectively close to an EV 4 decoder with stereo. But the Sansui method still had L/R enhancement in the rears so you could still have good depth along with good width between the rear speakers.

Your pre-synth gave Hall and Surround by simply adjusting a pot, but the fronts were decoded too! I'm still looking for that article, I saw it not long ago. It's just so easy to misplace those small little magazines!

Roger, that!
I am in pre-construction on a new front end for my SMv2. It will include L/R balance & Phase balance & be remote controlled. I gave some extended thought to using just out of phase blending? Or did I want in phase blending as well? I decided on the latter as it just seem more complete to me. I then started to look at various circuits most of which were centered on the M-S matrix encode/decode. That seemed a little bit more complex than it needed to be. So I've settled on the circuit shown in Fig 2 or 3:

https://sound-au.com/project21.htm
The only parts I've recieved so far is a nice Avel torroidal Xfmr and 2, motorized ALPS 10k linear pots for the balance controls.
 
Roger, that!
I am in pre-construction on a new front end for my SMv2. It will include L/R balance & Phase balance & be remote controlled. I gave some extended thought to using just out of phase blending? Or did I want in phase blending as well? I decided on the latter as it just seem more complete to me. I then started to look at various circuits most of which were centered on the M-S matrix encode/decode. That seemed a little bit more complex than it needed to be. So I've settled on the circuit shown in Fig 2 or 3:
I'm still looking for your original circuit. I remember you placing a capacitor in the circuit so that the bass wouldn't cancel with the out of phase blend. I was thinking of trying that with my simple decoder, although it does seem fine as is. Maybe you could add a bypass for the front channels, to see if that sounds better in Hall Mode, I can't really see it myself though.

Too bad there are no circuit boards available from the Eliot site for the "Width Controller" project, It would of made construction a breeze. I bought boards from them in the past for an active crossover.

While searching I came upon my latter SQ encoder design, with the stereo to SQ synth feature. I forget if it was published in the MCS Review or not but I remember building several of them. Now today I can't find it looking in the same place but did I find the instructions for my Audionics 106A Decoder. That one takes me back to almost the beginning of my Quad journey!
 
I'm still looking for your original circuit. I remember you placing a capacitor in the circuit so that the bass wouldn't cancel with the out of phase blend. I was thinking of trying that with my simple decoder, although it does seem fine as is. Maybe you could add a bypass for the front channels, to see if that sounds better in Hall Mode, I can't really see it myself though.

Too bad there are no circuit boards available from the Eliot site for the "Width Controller" project, It would of made construction a breeze. I bought boards from them in the past for an active crossover.

While searching I came upon my latter SQ encoder design, with the stereo to SQ synth feature. I forget if it was published in the MCS Review or not but I remember building several of them. Now today I can't find it looking in the same place but did I find the instructions for my Audionics 106A Decoder. That one takes me back to almost the beginning of my Quad journey!

Hey Ken
This continued exchange has motivated me to go where I've never gone before. Well, close enough in a very, very long time. To the bottom & the very back of my quad lit closet. There I found all the Quad Quarterly & MCS Reviews that I thought were lost forever. I found my pre-synth article you've mentioned from Summer 1982 (the same year I was married. Oh my poor wife...). It also includes your fine contribution Building a Quad Panning Circuit. I've also scanned that. Your schematic looks much better than mine. I had not yet discovered Letraset press type for electronics. But I think you can easily copy/transpose the circuit to something better. I haven't compared wire to wire yet but it looks almost identical to the ESP width controller, just adding a cap to for low pass roll off.
 

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I am in pre-construction on a new front end for my SMv2. It will include L/R balance & Phase balance & be remote controlled. I gave some extended thought to using just out of phase blending? Or did I want in phase blending as well? I decided on the latter as it just seem more complete to me. I then started to look at various circuits most of which were centered on the M-S matrix encode/decode. That seemed a little bit more complex than it needed to be. So I've settled on the circuit shown in Fig 2 or 3:

https://sound-au.com/project21.htm
The only parts I've recieved so far is a nice Avel torroidal Xfmr and 2, motorized ALPS 10k linear pots for the balance controls.

Would be really interested to know if you completed this SM Front End project. If so, did you go with the ES Width Controller as the basis of it or did you stick with your original MCS DIY circuit in the end? And, did the motorised pots work out?
Cheers!
 
Hey Ken
This continued exchange has motivated me to go where I've never gone before. Well, close enough in a very, very long time. To the bottom & the very back of my quad lit closet. There I found all the Quad Quarterly & MCS Reviews that I thought were lost forever. I found my pre-synth article you've mentioned from Summer 1982 (the same year I was married. Oh my poor wife...). It also includes your fine contribution Building a Quad Panning Circuit. I've also scanned that. Your schematic looks much better than mine. I had not yet discovered Letraset press type for electronics. But I think you can easily copy/transpose the circuit to something better. I haven't compared wire to wire yet but it looks almost identical to the ESP width controller, just adding a cap to for low pass roll off.
Not to detract from the primary discussion, but really admire the technical talent and savvy of some of you QQer's. I spent hours and hours with op amp / circuit / board designs and fab in my labs at Cal Poly SLO, loved it, but my heart ultimately went into heavy industrial construction. Living vicariously through some of these threads! Anyway, back to topic...
 
Would be really interested to know if you completed this SM Front End project. If so, did you go with the ES Width Controller as the basis of it or did you stick with your original MCS DIY circuit in the end? And, did the motorised pots work out?
Cheers!

Wow Mr. Soundfield. How did you track of this from almost a year ago?

Of course it's taking longer then it should. I have ordered & built a nifty RIAA pre-amp to go in the box from RJM AUDIO. I built a similar circuit yearz n yearz ago with a HA911 op amp. Well the IC's are better today & this a a well designed circuit board, holes plated through and very important, the RJM has even tolerance matched the EQ parts. It really doesn't need to get more complicated than this for a very high quality phono pre-amp. And while I was in the neighborhood I also nabbed a dual rectifier board from RJM because why not? I'd have to build something like it anyway. And again RJM even included the diodes for it.

I am going with the ESP width controller as mentioned before. I have 2, dual gang linear motorized ALPS pots for the left/right balance & phase balance. The pot is not the usual 2 gang, 3 pins each. It has all the pins in line front of the pot. A pin out diagram was supplied for a stereo volume level control (what? With linear?) that needed to be balance & I was pretty confused at that point. So out came the 'ol ohm meter & I tested the pins & put corresponding pin numbers on my width controller schematic so hopefully it actually works right. I have not gone further on this part yet.

Also from ESP I purchased a bass/treble tone control board. This will be the output stage. What I like about this is bass or treble boost can be at max & the critical mid-range is not affected, unlike most tone controls. I had to order the parts for this, I have them but have not stuffed the board yet.

And into the mix is a nixie tube indicator also. I have not the nixie tube yet or the parts, but do have the circuit. As I said, it's going slower than expected.

The remote control is the real wild card. I'm not smart enough to design something proper so I've come up with a delicious Rube Golberg RF design. That will be the last part after I finish & check the other circuit sections. If the remote hits a snag it doesn't stop the over all project from working. It just means I have to, um, get up & actually turn the knobs.

Thanks for the interest!
 
Wow Mr. Soundfield. How did you track of this from almost a year ago?
It's mid winter I've got too much time on my hands!
Of course it's taking longer then it should.
They always do of course, even when you take Sod's Law into account!
I have ordered & built a nifty RIAA pre-amp to go in the box from RJM AUDIO.
Nice.
I am going with the ESP width controller
Probably a good idea. The ES circuits are reliable. Shame there isn't a PCB available for this. Perhaps we should get @Wurly1 to design one for us - he seems to have mastered the production of bespoke PCB's!!
A pin out diagram was supplied for a stereo volume level control (what? With linear?) .
Very odd.
Also from ESP I purchased a bass/treble tone control board. This will be the output stage. What I like about this is bass or treble boost can be at max & the critical mid-range is not affected, unlike most tone controls. I had to order the parts for this, I have them but have not stuffed the board yet.
Yes, I got one of those boards because I thought it might come in useful but haven't got around to using it yet
And into the mix is a nixie tube indicator also. I have not the nixie tube yet or the parts, but do have the circuit.
Excellent !! What will it indicate- input selected perhaps?
The remote control is the real wild card. I'm not smart enough to design something proper so I've come up with a delicious Rube Golberg RF design. That will be the last part after I finish & check the other circuit sections. If the remote hits a snag it doesn't stop the over all project from working. It just means I have to, um, get up & actually turn the knobs.
I have to admit I'd never heard of Mr.Goldberg but having looked him up I'm sure that his design philosophy is perfectly suited to this project!!
Thanks for the interest!
Not at all; I want to do something like this myself (if Chucky isn't going to give us a full synthesis mode!) and am more than happy to learn from your mistakes (if there are any)!
Good luck and keep up the good work - there aren't enough constructors here.
 
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I am going with the ESP width controller.

I found this website where someone had designed a PCB for the ESP circuit-

Width Controller PCB

His layout looks neat-
PCB 2.JPG


PCB.JPG


He gives an Eagle 6 file for the PCB layout. I don't know much about these things, but I think that was an old design tool and PCB manufacturers want Gerber files these days, so I'm not sure this gets us any further forward unfortunately.
 
For some time now I've been planning to add Scott's variable phase blending circuit to my Vista/Photolume QS decoder. The Photolume is virtually a clone of the Sansui QSD-2. It was featured as a construction project in the Dec 1976 issue of Popular Electronics. I didn't have the cash to purchase the kit at the time but was fortunate to find one on eBay many years latter.

All that is involved to make the blend variable is to replace the fixed 5.6K (Surround) (3.9K Hall) resistor with a pot. The pot allows you to vary the amount of out of phase blend (surround) and in phase blend (hall). This allows you to tweak the factory setting to suit the decoded material and to your own taste.

The way Sansui does their Hall setting is rather odd IMHO, they leave the front channels undecoded! Scott explained it to me as follows.
"The reason Sansui gave for doing Hall the way they did seems pretty clear to me. Classical or even rock live recordings can be all over the place. This includes 9' wide pianos, horn sections out of just left or strings out of just right. Folks that are picky about live classical presentation & concert hall acoustics will not want an oboe coming out of left back or even center left. Ditto for an attention getting triangle from the right side. So this way kept direct sounds out of the rear & allowed only ambience, but kept the natural stereo soundstage to front."

Personally I prefer Hall with the fronts decoded like you get with Scott's Pre-synth circuit used ahead of the QS decoder. At first I was not going to bother with variable Hall at all but I already had the dual pot so why not, it's only two extra wires.

Scott's article refers to the QSD-2 "R601 and R602". In the Photolume they are R1 (surround) and R79 (hall). Scott cautioned me to add a coupling capacitor in series with the pot so as not to upset any bias voltage, however the Photolume already has such capacitors in series C1 and C42. All that you have to do is remove the fixed resistor, add two wires in the holes vacated by the fixed resistor and run them to the pot.

Scott added 900Ω resistors in series with the pot to help even out the unequal blend between Hall and Surround. I wondered why 900Ω that's not even a standard value. 910Ω is a standard value but to my surprise I didn't have any in my stock (which does contain almost every other conceivable value). Anyway the common value of 1K is just fine.

I wired the pot so that the resistance decreases as you rotate it clockwise that throws more sound to the rear in Surround mode. Hall has the opposite effect, decreasing resistance reduces ambiance a bit giving less rear output. So I reversed the pot connection for the Hall mode, turning it up increases rear output the same as with Surround.

If you look at the pictures you will see other mods that I did in the past. I replaced the original coupling capacitors, the reds are Wima's The whites are some other 1μ film types. For the remainder I used "Pure Gold" audio grade electrolytics. I added new output jacks as the original Phenolic RCA jack strip has the jacks spaced much too close together, quality cables just won't fit! The jacks shown are excellent quality and available via eBay from China. Don't use the cheaper Chinese ones they are a bit too small, the cables don't fit tight. I left the old jack strip in place as removing it would have left a large open hole.

The final mod was to replace fixed resistors with small trim pots to facilitate trimming/tweaking separation of the decoder. You can see them (rectangular blue) in the picture.

The grey stuff in the picture is Epoxy, The back switch wafer broke while I had the unit apart, epoxy fixed it. A few drops around the jacks keeps them from ever coming loose.

The knob on the syth pot might look a bit odd but it was all that I had to fit the splined shaft, I will replace it latter on.
Decoder Front.jpg
Decoder Back.jpg
Decoder Guts.jpg
Decoder Pot.jpg
 
For some time now I've been planning to add Scott's variable phase blending circuit to my Vista/Photolume QS decoder. The Photolume is virtually a clone of the Sansui QSD-2. It was featured as a construction project in the Dec 1976 issue of Popular Electronics. I didn't have the cash to purchase the kit at the time but was fortunate to find one on eBay many years latter.

All that is involved to make the blend variable is to replace the fixed 5.6K (Surround) (3.9K Hall) resistor with a pot. The pot allows you to vary the amount of out of phase blend (surround) and in phase blend (hall). This allows you to tweak the factory setting to suit the decoded material and to your own taste.

The way Sansui does their Hall setting is rather odd IMHO, they leave the front channels undecoded! Scott explained it to me as follows.
"The reason Sansui gave for doing Hall the way they did seems pretty clear to me. Classical or even rock live recordings can be all over the place. This includes 9' wide pianos, horn sections out of just left or strings out of just right. Folks that are picky about live classical presentation & concert hall acoustics will not want an oboe coming out of left back or even center left. Ditto for an attention getting triangle from the right side. So this way kept direct sounds out of the rear & allowed only ambience, but kept the natural stereo soundstage to front."

Personally I prefer Hall with the fronts decoded like you get with Scott's Pre-synth circuit used ahead of the QS decoder. At first I was not going to bother with variable Hall at all but I already had the dual pot so why not, it's only two extra wires.

Scott's article refers to the QSD-2 "R601 and R602". In the Photolume they are R1 (surround) and R79 (hall). Scott cautioned me to add a coupling capacitor in series with the pot so as not to upset any bias voltage, however the Photolume already has such capacitors in series C1 and C42. All that you have to do is remove the fixed resistor, add two wires in the holes vacated by the fixed resistor and run them to the pot.

Scott added 900Ω resistors in series with the pot to help even out the unequal blend between Hall and Surround. I wondered why 900Ω that's not even a standard value. 910Ω is a standard value but to my surprise I didn't have any in my stock (which does contain almost every other conceivable value). Anyway the common value of 1K is just fine.

I wired the pot so that the resistance decreases as you rotate it clockwise that throws more sound to the rear in Surround mode. Hall has the opposite effect, decreasing resistance reduces ambiance a bit giving less rear output. So I reversed the pot connection for the Hall mode, turning it up increases rear output the same as with Surround.

If you look at the pictures you will see other mods that I did in the past. I replaced the original coupling capacitors, the reds are Wima's The whites are some other 1μ film types. For the remainder I used "Pure Gold" audio grade electrolytics. I added new output jacks as the original Phenolic RCA jack strip has the jacks spaced much too close together, quality cables just won't fit! The jacks shown are excellent quality and available via eBay from China. Don't use the cheaper Chinese ones they are a bit too small, the cables don't fit tight. I left the old jack strip in place as removing it would have left a large open hole.

The final mod was to replace fixed resistors with small trim pots to facilitate trimming/tweaking separation of the decoder. You can see them (rectangular blue) in the picture.

The grey stuff in the picture is Epoxy, The back switch wafer broke while I had the unit apart, epoxy fixed it. A few drops around the jacks keeps them from ever coming loose.

The knob on the syth pot might look a bit odd but it was all that I had to fit the splined shaft, I will replace it latter on.
View attachment 76432View attachment 76433View attachment 76434View attachment 76435

Hey Ken, thanks for the shout out & congratulations on yet another step forward. It seems amazing that the Photolume/Vista kit proves value all these years later.

That function switch looks enormous, like the size of the one I used for my 2 band Photolume decoder. Is that the original switch? Wiring the switch is one of the trickier parts of building this & I would hate to have to replace & rewire a new one. Good you fixed it with epoxy.

Good call on replacing various caps as I did too. Sometimes I wonder about the cap quality in newer SMD designs. What are they? No electrical component is perfect but capacitors might be the most onerous for audio use. And a shame we can't check or replace this newer stuff if we want like on the Photolume.
I would have wired the pot opposite of you. Why? Haha, because my gear sits to side of left front speaker. For synth turning it CCW would point it to the rear of my room, to the rear speakers. But that's the fun of DIY.

So you haven't said how it sounds or how useful it is. After experimenting let us know your impressions. Oh, & try something I've never done before: stereo records in the SQ mode with some outta phase synth blending.
 
That function switch looks enormous, like the size of the one I used for my 2 band Photolume decoder. Is that the original switch? Wiring the switch is one of the trickier parts of building this & I would hate to have to replace & rewire a new one. Good you fixed it with epoxy.
Yes the switch is the original, I do have another similar switch, it's ceramic rather than phenolic but I would hate to have to rewire it. It's much easier to just use my magic glue! When switching functions you do get the odd popping sound, possibly due to charging/discharging capacitors. The QSD-1 produces no such sounds while switching. No matter I use Surround mode 90% of the time!
Good call on replacing various caps as I did too. Sometimes I wonder about the cap quality in newer SMD designs. What are they? No electrical component is perfect but capacitors might be the most onerous for audio use. And a shame we can't check or replace this newer stuff if we want like on the Photolume.
Agree
I would have wired the pot opposite of you. Why? Haha, because my gear sits to side of left front speaker. For synth turning it CCW would point it to the rear of my room, to the rear speakers. But that's the fun of DIY.
That's always a judgement call, I like that turning up the control increases the effect.
 
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