Losing then Regaining Interest in Quad/Surround Sound

[gvl_guy]

Yes stereo was around for quite awhile, but I would hardly say that it was pretty well accepted, (by the industry maybe). The public didn't care all that much. Although It was just as easy to sell a console with two sets of speakers rather than one set, notwithstanding that the average person didn't actually get it (stereo vs mono). As I have repeated over and over most listening including music was primarily mono until the early to mid seventies. Large cities may of had FM stereo from an early date, but that usually was reserved for "serious music". The masses stayed with AM largely until the mid to late seventies. TV went stereo sometime in the eighties. Now today people are listening to their smartphones, Alexa or Google devices, so what is happening to stereo?

...not only correct par4ken, but we've come full circle. Unfortunately. So many people today get their music off of a mono smart speaker. Although you can get two of them, pair them make them stereo, most people don't. They just listen through that one mono speaker. Sad.

 

[par4ken]

That's because the color tube always cost much more. There was no way to dispense with the extra electron guns, the shadow mask, and the extra parts needed to align the three primary colors on one screen.

Yes cost was a factor but there was always an element of technophobia as well. Peoples excuses for not getting colour remind me a bit of the excuses people use for not getting a surround system. Colour TV is bad for your eyes. Colour TV only has three colours. My favourite TV show is in black and white. Colour is just a fad, etc.

The hype made of colour in the early days reminds me of how the AM stations hyped stereo in the eighties. A big deal made by the stations over what very few people had the ability to view/hear.

 

[Doug G.]

In answer to MidiMagic's post, above,

...Which are red, green, and blue in a subtractive system (light), not red, yellow, and blue, as in an additive system (paint).

I also meant to mention almost ALL my friends' families had console stereos in the sixties.

Doug

 

[gvl_guy]

The hype made of colour in the early days reminds me of how the AM stations hyped stereo in the eighties. A big deal made by the stations over what very few people had the ability to view/hear.

It's similar to what's happening today with HD radio. Most aren't hyping it, though. Like AM Stereo, most people can only hear it in a newer car. But it's actually not a terrible system. AM has a dramatic fidelity difference. FM is less noticable, but still really good. I like the extra stations available on the HD2, HD3 and HD-4 channels on FM. Some are commercial free, which is nice. Many FMs take their lesser quality and often weaker AM stations and give them new life on an HD channel.

 

[MidiMagic]

Interestingly, several Music Industry people (Ben Bauer, Louis Dorren, Brad Miller) became converts to Quad/Surround Sound sound in the early days and continued to fight for it throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s.

https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-All-Audio/Stereophile/80s/Stereophile-1988-04.pdf#page=5Even in the 1980s, the Colossus Quad Digital recording system was developed by Louis Dorren, I bought one Telarc (stereo) title that used this system for the master recording.

Kirk Bayne

Ben Bauer and Lou Dorren invented quadraphonic systems.

 

[MidiMagic]

In answer to MidiMagic's post, above,

...Which are red, green, and blue in a subtractive system (light), not red, yellow, and blue, as in an additive system (paint).

I also meant to mention almost ALL my friends' families had console stereos in the sixties.

Doug

You have that backwards.

Red, green, and blue are the additive primaries of light. Light adds to lighter colors, with white being the ultimate addition.

Magenta, yellow, and cyan are the subtractive primaries of pigment. Pigment subtracts light to darker colors, with black being the ultimate.

Red, yellow, and blue are obsolete primaries that were proved false in 1934. Yet some stupid artists still use them to "imitate the masters." They do work with oil paints (but not other media) because oil paints behave differently with different thicknesses of paint.

 

[MidiMagic]

I doubt most people watch TV / movies in surround at home. In my experience most people who buy a big new TV don't even bother to upgrade to a sound bar, let alone know or care about surround sound! Can't find any published figures to support my theory but I'd be amazed if it were more than a tiny fraction of all tv sales worldwide that find themselves being deployed as part of a surround sound system.

In my case, I bought 6 TV sets and one surround system. But I actually had all 6 TV sets for the same surround system. The first three were used all-tube TVs I got at pawnshops. Picture tubes failed on two of them. When tubes became unavailable, I had two solid state TVs. Lightning destroyed one of them and the change to digital made the other one obsolete. I still have the flat screen I bought to replace it.

 

[Doug G.]

You have that backwards.

Red, green, and blue are the additive primaries of light. Light adds to lighter colors, with white being the ultimate addition.

Magenta, yellow, and cyan are the subtractive primaries of pigment. Pigment subtracts light to darker colors, with black being the ultimate.

Red, yellow, and blue are obsolete primaries that were proved false in 1934. Yet some stupid artists still use them to "imitate the masters." They do work with oil paints (but not other media) because oil paints behave differently with different thicknesses of paint.

Oops, yeah - memory. It's been too long since I was actively involved in color TV theory/circuits/repair.

 

[kfbkfb]

https://books.google.com/books?id=t...&q="peter gruber" "the new ball game"&f=false
From the book RCA and the VideoDisc.

I always liked how Magnavox marketed their Color TV + AM/FM stereo radio + stereo record player systems in the late 1960s/early 1970s: "The Magnavox Color Stereo Theater".

Although Quad isn't mentioned in this quote from 1970, IMHO, it's implied, as is using a color TV.


Kirk Bayne

 

[barfle]

I got interested in quad in the early 70s, and although I’ve had lapses in my ability to play my vinyl quads, I never lost interest in being in the middle of the music. I started off with an SQ decoder because the format required a minimal change to my existing “prety good” stereo setup. I didn’t get CD-4 because it would pretty much require replacing the heart of the system, although I played a few QS records through my SQ decoder, and it was usually pretty groovy sounding (still into groovinesss after all these years).

My lapses are mostly due to the size of my vinyl collection being moved to new homes where I needed shelving (see my avatar from the house before the one I’m in nowj. Today, my vinyl is packed up in boxes, although my digital collection is available. I have decoders for SQ, QS, and CD-4, and as a retired electronics design engineer, I have a future project to build multi-channel audio to HDMI encoders so I can integrate them into my home theater. But first, the supply chain needs to get my Grass under-drawer slides into Idaho so I can get the shelves built. Looks like next year, but who knows?

 

[Doug G.]

I got interested in quad in the early 70s, and although I’ve had lapses in my ability to play my vinyl quads, I never lost interest in being in the middle of the music. I started off with an SQ decoder because the format required a minimal change to my existing “prety good” stereo setup. I didn’t get CD-4 because it would pretty much require replacing the heart of the system, although I played a few QS records through my SQ decoder, and it was usually pretty groovy sounding (still into groovinesss after all these years).

My lapses are mostly due to the size of my vinyl collection being moved to new homes where I needed shelving (see my avatar from the house before the one I’m in nowj. Today, my vinyl is packed up in boxes, although my digital collection is available. I have decoders for SQ, QS, and CD-4, and as a retired electronics design engineer, I have a future project to build multi-channel audio to HDMI encoders so I can integrate them into my home theater. But first, the supply chain needs to get my Grass under-drawer slides into Idaho so I can get the shelves built. Looks like next year, but who knows?

Like, groovy, man.



Doug

 

[kfbkfb]

I bought Quad albums whenever I could, including the Radio Shack EV Stereo-4 encoded prerecorded compact cassette (in 1973) and the Buddy Rich video album (SQ encoded Betamax HiFi prerecorded videocassette in 1985).

I didn't get a Quad system until the spring of 1991, 2 Pioneer SX-2300 stereo receivers (back when Walmart was selling some home HiFi equip. in their stores) and 4 Pioneer CS-G103 speakers ($30 ea. on sale at Best Buy) and my hand built decoder (using the 2 Pioneer "quadralizer" matrix decoding coefficients), I got a Technics SH-400 CD-4 demod. in late 1992 which works fairly well with my Shure V-15 Type 3 cartridge.

It was to be a temporary setup, but I ended up moving it from the living room to a bedroom in 1993 and kept using it until 2018.

In 2000, I replaced the receivers with a Pioneer VSX-D209 surround sound receiver which has Dolby Pro-Logic decoding and 4 analog inputs for the CD-4 demod.


Kirk Bayne