List of stereo recordings that sound great in quad

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The Avalanches - Since I Left You - Dolby Pro Logic
Bobby Birdman Giraffes & Jackals - Dolby Pro Logic

I've listened to a lot of my stereo albums through Dolby Pro Logic (not II), and a bunch sound kinda cool and a bunch sound lame, but two albums actually sound so good that you'd swear you're listening to something that was intended to be heard that way. One is one of my favorite albums, "Since I Left You" by the Avalanches, an album from 2001 that uses the most samples (in the "clips of other songs" sense) ever cleared for one recording. It's an extremely dense-sounding album, so it's exciting to hear it split up a bit. The other is a more obscure pop release, by a musician I've met actually, "Giraffes & Jackals" by Bobby Birdman (http://www.bobbybirdman.com/). The album is now out on CD, but I'm using the vinyl version. When listened to through Pro Logic, the harmony vocals sounds like they're split up around you, like there's six Bobby Birdmans standing in the corners of the room singing together.
 
The Avalanches - Since I Left You - Dolby Pro Logic

I've listened to a lot of my stereo albums through Dolby Pro Logic (not II), and a bunch sound kinda cool and a bunch sound lame, but two albums actually sound so good that you'd swear you're listening to something that was intended to be heard that way. One is one of my favorite albums, "Since I Left You" by the Avalanches, an album from 2001 that uses the most samples (in the "clips of other songs" sense) ever cleared for one recording. It's an extremely dense-sounding album, so it's exciting to hear it split up a bit.

This is one of my favorite albums. I plan on getting a new listening set-up very soon, and I can start participating more and asking questions in this section of the forum.

A small bit of background on The Avalanches, they are a collective of producers and DJ's in Arizona who have done a wide range of music, originally with instrumentation. They moved into sample-based production (i.e. taking beats, melodies, and various sounds from other records and turning it into a collage of their own music) and Since I Left You is an album that is highly celebrated among those who enjoy that type of electronic music. I felt it was one of the best albums of the year when it was released. So, because of how and what they use (primarily everything is taken from vinyl sources), I would not be surprised if their production techniques didn't involve an incredible amount of phasing and/or some of the source material were quad-based. I wish they would remix that in 5.1, however considering the album credits a good amount of samples, I would think that a 5.1 would reveal some of the hidden sounds that weren't properly credited.
 
I am a big fan of HDCD, so I bought a copy of The Grateful Dead's Greatest Hits (or something like that), remastered in HDCD for $14 the other day.

I played it through my Sansui QSD-2 in Synth mode, and most cuts sound as discrete as any Q4 I own. If anything, there is almost too much rear channel information. The cuts from the 2 DVD-Audio discs are every bit as good as their MLP versions.

Give it a try if you want a treat. Mike.
 
There a song on "Union" by Yes called "The More We Live - Let Go." The liner notes say that this song was "Mixed in Spherical Sound on Radian Speakers."
For fun, I tried both SQ and QS software decoding on this track, and ended up with similar sounding quad mixes. Hand percussion ended up in the rear speakers, and the whole thing had a sense of swirly bigness.

What exactly did "mixed in spherical sound" mean? Was it a form of Dynaquad for the 90's? Or was it just some meaningless hype from Eddie Offord?

J. D.
 
There a song on "Union" by Yes called "The More We Live - Let Go." The liner notes say that this song was "Mixed in Spherical Sound on Radian Speakers."
For fun, I tried both SQ and QS software decoding on this track, and ended up with similar sounding quad mixes. Hand percussion ended up in the rear speakers, and the whole thing had a sense of swirly bigness.

What exactly did "mixed in spherical sound" mean? Was it a form of Dynaquad for the 90's? Or was it just some meaningless hype from Eddie Offord?

J. D.

u mean " Squirrel boy?
 
This is a list of stereo recordings that have impressive surround effects when played back through various high end decoders. Since this is rather subjective please be sure to include information about the type of decoder used to achieve the best pseudo surround effects. Submit your entries for albums as well as individual titles and include the following info if possible;


Captain Beefheart-<strong>Trout Mask Replica</strong> SQ Decoder
Fleetwood Mac - <strong>Then Play On</strong> QSD-1
The Mothers of Invention -<strong>Uncle Meat</strong> QS Decoder 1968 Bizarre/Warner Reprise LP - 2MS 2024

I've isolated these because each has something in common: at least one monaural recording(I think TROUT has three, the others one apiece). While I can well believe these will do well through good decoding, the mono tracks won't do much at all, obviously...:D

ED :)
 
Well I got my Sansui QRX-6001 last night and tried out the Variomatrix settings. WOW!! I still need to clean the pots on the front and clean it up but it still sounded great!

I plugged my laptop into the AUX ports on the back and listened to a bunch of songs through iTunes.

here are my favorite stereo songs Variomatrixed through the "Surround" setting:

Anything on the "Smell the Glove" album by Spinal Tap. This album sounds great in Variomatrix.

"Highway to Hell" by AC/DC.

"Insane in the Brain" by Cypress Hill. I only include this one because of the neat little panning effect that the trumpet does. It starts out in the front right channeland slowly does a clockwise pan. However, as the trumpet pan clockwise in toto, the individual trumpet notes do a rapid counter clockwise pan. First note is just front right, next note is starts faintly in rear right but quickly pans to front right, next note starts solidly rear right but pans to front right, next note starts faintly rear left but pans to rear right, etc... Kind of fun.

Almost anything by "Kyuss"

"In 3-D" by Weird Al Yankovic also decodes pretty good.

Now that I have gone quad, I am never going back!
 
I will add the Eurythmics "Be Yourself Tonight", particularly "I Love You Like a Ball and Chain". I happen to have the CD version.

During the part of the song where the backing singers start singing "like a ball and chain" over and over again, it moves all over the place. (y) It really sounds like it is real quad! :)

The rest of the album has plenty going on in the rear channels too ("Here Comes That Sinking Feeling", for instance).

This was using a Sony SQD-2050 in SQ mode, Heathkit AA-29 amps, and stacked original Advents in all corners. :banana:

Doug
 
I will add the Eurythmics "Be Yourself Tonight", particularly "I Love You Like a Ball and Chain". I happen to have the CD version.

During the part of the song where the backing singers start singing "like a ball and chain" over and over again, it moves all over the place. (y) It really sounds like it is real quad! :)

The rest of the album has plenty going on in the rear channels too ("Here Comes That Sinking Feeling", for instance).

This was using a Sony SQD-2050 in SQ mode, Heathkit AA-29 amps, and stacked original Advents in all corners. :banana:

Doug


Thanks for that tip Doug. I listened to it last night in PLII mode and really enjoyed it - - especially that "ball and chain" section" you noted. I'll have to check my other Eurythmics cds to see if they work as well in surround as this one.
 
G'day fellas,

I'm lucky to own a pretty big music collection of roughly 17,000 tracks, most are mp3's (latest 1/2 I've ripped are 320kbs and the earlier years 1/2 are 128kbs) or flacs living on a hard drive. It's taken me the best part of 34 years to amass my collection and I've been digitizing them for the last 8 years. Since discovering quad a few weeks back I've quickly spun through my entire collection and listed artists that are giving good, clean separation through the rear speakers of my setup.

I get the best mp3 results using 320kbs vbr and the lame codec. These are nigh indistinguishable from the source, the differences are there but they are quite small. The flac's are perfect.

I am unsure exactly what kind of decoder I have (its a sanyo amp) but I'm guessing at least 1/2 logic because of the clear rear separation I'm getting, the results are quite spectacular on some tracks. I'm only using the matrix setting (QS) as the SQ setting on my amp sucks in comparison.

My listing technique was a bit haphazard and I apologize up front but I was more interested in throughtput speed than total accuracy. If I found an artist with more than one album that quadded well then I just listed the artist. If I found only the one album from a particular artist that decoded well then I listed the album as well.

Anyway, here's a few more for the list;

QUADABLES (QS matrix)


3 doors down
10cc

beastie boys (rap crap)
beatles - white album
ben harper - the will to live
benny bassani
bif naked
black box
bon Jovi
brant bjork and the operators
BT - IMA 1 (electronica)

chicane
collective soul

delerium (electronica mellow)
deep forest (electronica)
dido
dr alban (electronica)
def leppard
die krupps (awesome separation in 'blackened', electronica)

enya (bloody awesome in quad)
eurythmics

flyleaf

imogen heap (etheral, like enya)

jill sobule
jimi hendrix (man was a genius, electric ladyland goes well but so do about the first 4 albums he made)

Led zepplin (heaps of led zep goes good, even a live concert recording decodes well!)

malice mizer (french electronica)
mamas and the papas
mariah carey
massive attack (electronica)
mike oldfield - tubular bells (a quad classic)
Mr. X - Gangster Politic (best of Canadian ska)

nelly furtado
nickeleback (cool!... + subtle sound effects)
norman greenbaum - spirit in the sky

oasis
oingo boingo
olive
orgy

P.O.D.
paprika corps
paul okenfold
pendulum
pink floyd (dark side of the moon is great but so are quite a few of their other albums like the wall 1+2, atom heart mother, etc)

queen - innuendo
queen - a night at the opera
queen - sheer heart attack
(alot of other queen albums I have do not decode well)

ramstein
rayon/shaggy
rick james

santana (awesome)
sidestepper (big chill 1)
skamikaze
ska-p
snoop dog (rap crap)
spookymen (these guys are funny!)

tara turunen
tripsters skitzophrenik (electronica)
the alohas
the beatles - the white album (read the beatle's LSD experiments, haha!)
The Byrds-The Notorious Byrd Brothers
the corrs
the prodigy (electronica)
the real danger
The whitlams
tim rogers and the temperance union
tina and ike turner
tool
tracey chapman

vitro (electronica)

x-press (electronica)

zakk wylde
zero 7 (electonica)

There are also countless thousands of others that decode into quad well too but not to the tier one discreet voicings of the ones listed above.

97% of my music was ripped from CD source, the rest from vinyl.

Cheers, Richo.
 
There's zillions of 12-inch mixes that sound teriffic on various classic matrix systems.

A few examples of 12-inch club singles:

D-Mob: Irrisistible. the Extended Radio Mix on the promo single 1st side.
Madonna: Too many to list especially Open Your Heart, Material Girl, Borderline and Crazy For You (from Vision Quest).
Janet Jackson: Escapade. The Instrumental mix off the back of the 12-inch is quad by itself. Sync that w the Radio Version.
Sandra Bernhardt: You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real). Frisco Disco Mix
Cher: Do You Believe (In Life After Love) Xenophobia Mix
Dan Hartman: I Can Dream About You (from Streets of Fire)
Vangellis: (sarcastically) big guess: Chariots of Fire
Framk Mills: Music Box Dancer
David Bowie: Underground, Dance Magic Dance (from Labyrinth))
Pointer Sisters: Fire, Jump (Working Girl mix)
David Byrne: Main Title The Last Emperor
Ryuichi Sakamoto: End Title The Last Emperor (available front and back off an extended white label promo single)
Third Force: In the Full Moonlight

Most of the various Virgin Gentle Jazz discs (Pure Moods, etc)
Kim Wilde
Pieces of a Dream

The list is endless.
 
Rick Wakeman "Rhapsodies" A&M Records SP-6501 2LP's
altrough print stated "stereo" i guess originally mix has matrix purpose.
too good for plain stereo (y)

b.t.w. when sleeve stated album as "Rhapsodies", the print on LP's said "Rhapsody" :)
 
Disneyland/Buena Vista Records never released album in Quad in any format. However, I have discovered through my Technics Dolby Pro-Logic, Sony SQD-1000 and Sanyo SQ Receiver , that several stereo albums featuring Tutti Camarata actually comes alive in this fashion. I played one track "Aldonza" from the Camarata Conducts Man of La Mancha STER-4027 on the Technics and I could swear I heard sounds coming from the rears. I had to try that track through my SQD-1000 and Sanyo and lo and behold, pure Disney Quad Magic.

This is also evidenced in these Buena Vista LPs as well:
Camarata Conducts Fiddler on the Roof STER-4033 and Camarata Conducts Finian's Rainbow STER-4034.

This is really "FantaSound" as the record series states!
 
I used to get bored of American oldies as a little kid and pre-teenager so since my three uncles went to a lot of foreign countries in their line of work as international newspaper correspondents, they'd bring back all these various-artists LPs with the hits from that country currently on the radio there.

Most of em were stupid, but a few were worthy of being worn out over and over and over.

I went this weekend to my storage and dragged through all those old LP's I used to get from them when I was a little kid in the 60's and 70's and spun a few nice ones:

This one was a big radio hit in Italy in 1972.
Adriano Celentano Prisencolinensinainciusol
Stereo record mix laid over a mono RAIDUE video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcUi6UEQh00&playnext=1&list=PL01B70C5C19B0B513

This next one was on on the other side of the same Successi Grandi dell` Anni 1970 album of early 70's Italian hits, a cut which we also wore out: Angelo Branduardi doing a version of the Hebrew holiday song Chad Gadya

in the original Italian as Alla Fiera dell Est http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVwCOO0PYZA

in Spanish as En la Feria dell Este: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhyEwsW1OVk

in French as A la Fiore de l'Est: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaCxJyaMHgs

and in English as Highdown Fair:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhsOeFTjsRQ&playnext=1&list=PL0239FB69FE658DCD (sorry it's from a vinyl transfer just to hear the English words which are close enough to the Italian original).

The following few are from an Argentine multicolored compilation mostly-bubblegum LP called Verano con Alta Tension
(or Primavera..., or Otono... or Invierno..)

The albums were all mono, but you can find the tracks in stereo on Youtube all except for the live version of La Joven Guardia doing La Reina de La Cancion they used on here, a version which by the way blows past the studio version like a hurricane in Buenos Aires.

Tormenta was a popular South American singer in the early 70's and here she is doing a catchy little tune called Como Una Chica y un Muchacho: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3Zez7ZlEvk
but this encoding has too many artifacts of compression, but you get the idea anyway.

Famous lyricist Donald McCluskey, an Irishman singing one of his bigger hits Porque Si Porque No in Spanish: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9AbkhA_T-U

and finally Quique Villanueva doing Dime Linda Chiquilina severely overmodulated but you get the idea http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5TXE4AJauw Then listen to the remake (purple album cover) and see how inferior it is.

I warned you it was mostly Spanish bubblegum. (LOL)
 
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Oh ndiamone!!

It's nice to hear someone who appreciate italian artists and singers!!!

Prisencolinensinainciusol is a great example of what I call pre-hip hop stuff, though it's singed with no words at all!!! To us italian sounded like some kind of english though we knew he was not singing in english.

BTW if you like Celentano check out the first CD press of "Yuppi Du" which is different from it's former LP version and it's SURELY taken from the never issued before SQ quadraphonic master (I tested it personally), which is weird. No indication of a quad release back then.

Here's the "quad" version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl1BpgDqsRw

check it out on Grooveshark too


edit: from what I found on the net it seems actual version is SQ encoded as well
 
Oh ndiamone!!

It's nice to hear someone who appreciate italian artists and singers!!!

Well, being ``diamone'' is an Italian name (it's my great-grandfathers, and I've been using it in the music world forever) I suppose it was at least partially in my blood all this time waiting for my uncles to bring back Italian and other radio hits on records for me to love.

Like this one. Georgio Gaber doing Far Finta di Essere Sani:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9yvGh3qzxc
which is on the same Successi Grandi dell` Anni 1970 as the others.

Somebody needs to do the same to this as they did to the other and lay the stereo record mix
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xggzm4QqXtc
over the top of the mono RAIDUE lip-sync video and make stereo on Youtube.

Like they need to do for this other song on the sequel Successi Grandi dell` Anni 1970 II record Nicola de Bari doing Agnese. (couldn't find the Italian one online, his vocal in Italian has more conviction than the Spanish version): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEb87n6_BSc&playnext=1&list=PL29D9AEE8D5ACDEE0.

It's especially meaningful to me because my grandmother's name was Agnes.

Living as far out of town as she did, once we kids got tired of playing outside, there was little to do in those days to occupy the long days and nights when we used to go up for the summers in the `50's`60's and `70's.

Some years earlier, my granddad was given a real pipe organ, all in pieces, after surviving an abandoned church that had burned to the ground from lightning some two decades earlier, the manual protected as were most of the pipes by its’ brick-walled enclosure. By the time we kids were old enough to appreciate it, those forgotten pieces of organ had by then been laying around the cold, wet basement for the better part of two decades instead of being well-loved and well-worn by generations of worshippers.

So all these parts were just laying around deteriorating year after year, so a few years later, when my granddad came into a little bit of money, going against my grammom who said it was a frivolous waste, he decided, to get the bright idea of drafting an organ historian at the State University Music Department to help him restore it so that it could be rescued from the pile of parts laying for years all forlorn in a corner of the basement and be once again loved by a crowd of people.

So in the corner of the basement where all the organ parts once lay forgotten and rusting, my granddad built a huge fireplace and cozy woodgrain family room and library after the restoration was complete, into which to put the now-gleaming organ.

My grammom, who hadn’t played organ for years, ever since she used to be Church Organist at the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul when she and my granddad were still a struggling young couple, started out playing church hymns and other simple pieces on Saturday afternoons, and found out the neighbors would come from miles around to hear her practice in the basement.

This grew into a weekly Saturday night affair all summer long and became the highlight of the neighborhood for years. When we kids got a little older, she decided some numbers needed a choral accompaniment, and began teaching us all kinds of songs we never heard of before, probably to get us away from the ` cacophony of noise' offered forth on the radio by the likes of The Doors, Janis Joplin or Black Sabbath.

But it was a good way for a kid to occupy himself though in those more innocent and pleasant days.

So by then we had the real pipe organ that my granddad helped restore, we had the people in the form of aunts, cousins and neighbors, now all we needed was the pop and the pizza and we could have opened up a Pipe Organ Pizza (restaurants that featured Gay 90's through Roaring 20's sing-along lyric slides on a projector) 20 years before it became all the rage and `gotten rich overnight'. (LOL)

Today's Idol TV craze can't even hold a searchlight nevermind a candle to the kind of talent we used to get just from your basic average friends and neighbors in the Pipe Organ Pizza places of the 80's and early 90's.

But after years and years of learning and then singing all these old, old songs from my grammom like Some Sunny Day by Irving Berlin popularized by Ethel Merman in the early`30's, Sam the Old Accordion Man by Walter Donaldson popularized in the 20's by Ruth Etting, or Jazz Baby by M.K. Jerome, re-popularized by Carol Channing in the 1967 musical Thoroughly Modern Millie, we turned the tables on her for once, teaching her a song SHE'D never heard before, which subsequently became Her Song for a VERY long time.

In Spanish it's like (shrug) but in Italian you CANNOT sing this all the way through without at LEAST getting the sniffles if not bawling all the way out.

Back then, everytime we were over to my grammom's house, we'd always try and sing it for her, usually after supper when the dishes were done and the food was put up and everybody would go down into the basement, light the fireplace and spend the evening visiting in the nice cozy family room.

But every single time, she would get halfway thru the song on the organ, get to cryin' then that would get US to cryin' tryin' to sing it with her, and then after two or three tries the whole thing would just collapse into a puddle on the floor. We even sang it at her funeral. With the same results as always. (LOL)

Sad to say though, even the live professional singers nowadays never do any better onstage at the concert than we did as kids and teenagers at my grammom's house. In the concert series we do today, we've tried putting it in the show for years, but once them trumpets get to blowin', even the most stalwart masculine guys that can belt out any number of love songs with no problem, dissolves into the same puddle on the floor as we kids used to do by the time we get to the second chorus.

So, everytime we try it in concert, whoever's trying to sing it ends up standing there bawling like a baby thru the rest of the song and is reduced to holding the mic out for the audience to fill in.

By the time it's all over, they're all cryin' too, so we always use it as an Act I finale.

And keep Band Aids and salve onhand for fixing everybody up during Intermission that burnt their fingers trying to keep their cigarette lighters lit thru the song.
 
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Organist John Gart recorded several albums on Kapp Records and stereo versions decoder beautifully in SQ Mode as evidenced on these LPs:
Marches in Stereo KS-3011
Beloved Melodies if Stephen Foster KS-3023
Silent Night KS-3045 (my favorite)
and many others.
The Conn Electronic Organ never sounded so great in Quad!
 
I have been playing Some mouldy Oldies
With the Reality Tec.Decoder
Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin,Peggy Lee, Mancini
Like all decoders it works like it was Quad on some, and others like the Dean Martin
the mix is very stereo with the music
very left and right so that when there is a music break
it is all in the left front & left rear , than right front & right rear but when both channels
start together it's Quad
I have been playing FM,and the Ads. at times have amazing effects
But it gives up to 80-90pc of LPs a new life Solo pieces ther is not much you can do
the différance between the QSD 1 and Reality decoder is that
the reality holds the front center image more to the middle
I have to ajust the QSD1 a bit to get a bettter center but i can do that very easy
as I have a knob that moves from left to right the signal
I can switch strait between the 2 units
 
Blood, Sweat & Tears 2nd album (the self-titled) sounds amazing when decoded in Quad or 5.1! Vocals in the center, horns, effects and parts of the drums in the rears... Try it!

I used a program working with the Foobar media player called FreeSurround v.0.9 and the Mobile Fidelity CD, though it will probably work with any other copy. FreeSurround is the equivalent of a Dolby Prologic II decoder.
 
Same thing for Magma -Retrospektïw III.

Although it is a live recording, it has great fidelity and decodes wonderfully. The drums are centered, the backing vocals surround the listener and the audience (clapping, etc...) is heard in the rears. Sounds great.
 
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