Q8 phase mismatch

[winopener]

Today i was doing a cleaning of the "Billy Paul Live in Europe" Q8 and found out - after been driven nut once - that Program 1 front left on my copy (USA release) is phase inverted; other 3 channels appears fine, and Program 2 all 4 channels appears ok too. The phase mismatch is crystal clear when trying to join togheter the two part of "Me and Mrs Jones" - BP's voice doesn't match between the two programs unless P1FL is phase inverted.

Bad mastering the source, bad duplication processing, or... ?
More important, similar problems (phase mismatch) had been already found in other carts?

 

[steelydave]

I mentioned this in the 'list of q8's with swapped channels' thread, but Earth Wind & Fire - That's The Way Of The World suffers from this problem, on side 2 one of the front channels has its phase inverted. It's very noticable, especially on a system that has a subwoofer and bass management because all the bass cancels itself out as a result of the inverted phase.

I think all these errors were in the duplication stage...it doesn't seem there was much QC at quad 8 track replication places. Q8 tapes suffer from all sorts of bad quality control, including having the front two speakers folded down to mono ('West, Bruce & Laing'), phase inversions, swapped channels (many of the blue GRT carts like Focus Live, Mountain's Greatest Hits, etc.) and severe bleedthrough between tracks caused by mis-aligned heads on the replication deck (most of the Canadian made A&M stuff is like this). I hope people will continue to add to this thread and the q8 swapped channels thread - it's a good resource to have and will help those who are still lucky enough to have these tapes to get the most out of them.

Dave.