“
The following quote is taken from an on line chat with Jim Fosgate over at the AVS
forum that took place in 2000.
“Do different listeners listen for “different things” in a surround sound field?
I think the answer is a most definite “yes”. I remember my early work with MR Wes Wruggles, the man behind the Tate Quad decoder, and MR Peter Schieber, the man who was first to the patent office with Matrix technology. Wes wanted to hear the highest separation we could get on that decoder, and the fact we were into some artifacts to get it didn’t bother him very much. He much preferred high separation at all costs. I finally talked him into including an ‘alternate logic” position on the “Tate” that slowed the logic a bit and removed some of the artifacts. I preferred the slower position.
When I started working with Peter on the Fosgate 3601 decoder I found that he was almost the opposite of Wes. Peter could hear the slightest modulation or anomalies and could not stand to listen to it. He was a classical musician and new how he wanted his music to sound. I remember when we were adjusting the 3601 decoder together; he kept hearing problems when I thought they were at the vanishing point. We had to adjust this decoder to compromise some separation in order to get rid of all the decoding side effects and keep things very smooth.”
I found this anecdote simple but profound, because we all listen for different things, and decide to purchase things based our special wants. What I want may not be what you want! My special wants began in 1963 when I heard the best sound I had ever heard in my life, and it just happened to be a 7 channel surround system at the Cinerama Town Theater in Baltimore. I was so stunned by what I heard that I traveled to the Cinerama Uptown Theater in Washington D.C. and the Cinerama Boyd Theater in Philadelphia to determine if the sound was equally spectacular. It was close but not as good as the Town sound system. The thought occurred to me while sitting in the Town theater before my 6th encounter with “How The West Was Won”, that this was just a big room and a super audio system which could, one day, be duplicated albeit on a smaller scale. I set out to understand why this particular sound system was so obviously superior and I was successful in gleaning that information which sent me down the mysterious road to high resolution surround. So at 16 my aural obsession began and I am happy to say that the equipment that I am discussing helped me to obtain my special wants.
Two of the three processors in this review are too familiar to QQ members, and I’m sure interest has gone south about the subject of their relative synthesizing ability, however the other unit, the Fosgate Space Matrix 3610 is Peter Schieber’s final statement regarding his Space Matrix technology and is an almost unknown entity on the QQ board, and so I feel it needs to be placed in proper perspective.
The Sansui Type A Variomatrix(VM) is represented here by a QuadBob QSD-1 that has been recently acquired. The Tate II SQ 101A is also a QB recapped and calibrated unit that has been in my possession since 1980. It is an early production unit and purchased shortly after the Tate was first introduced. The Fosgate Space Matrix 3610(SM) is stock, circa 1986, and has been in my possession for those twenty plus years. Just as a side note, I have also pulled out of my dustbin a Fosgate DSL-2, a Fosgate model 4, and a Rockford Fosgate RFQ5000 DPL II to refresh my aural memory as to the “why’s” of my peculiar dustbin. Only the RFQ5000 could possibly compete, IMHO, with the three units in question and I will allude to its attractive qualities later.
All three of these primary units produce seemingly discreet sound fields from two channel sources. The QSD-1 and Tate have synthesizer positions and the 3610 has a wide mode button for maximum separation. To a different degree, each decoder sends the hard right and left stereo signals to the right and left rear speakers, however it’s what’s up front that counts and this is where the units differ, with the VM and the SM being very similar as opposed to the Tate which is a different beast altogether. If one turns the rear output of the Tate off completely, one hears from the front speakers a consistently strange virtually monophonic signal with tiny glints of small right and left high frequency bursts. There are a lot of aural tricks going on here, with the rear channels apparently providing most of the directional information to our brains. If you turn the rear channels off on the VM and the SM you hear what could easily be accepted as a normal stereo signal up front. When the rear channels are brought back into play, the three units reassemble the signal into what sounds like a discreet sound field with different degrees of apparent separation and focus.
The Tate is for me the least satisfying synthesizer. There is always a very strong center front signal and plenty of right and left rear information from the Tate, but the unit seems to imply a front right to front left signal spread rather than actually producing one. Also, the Tate seems to consistently curtail reverberating space. But if the Tate is the least satisfying synthesizer, it redeems itself by being a spectacular SQ decoder. If you turn the rear channels off when listening in the SQ mode to SQ material, you do hear a full front stereo spread.. Turn the rear channels back on and you would swear you are listening to a discreet source. All of my SQ recordings were presented with unwavering fidelity and a solid three dimensional sound field that took my breath away at times, and made me wish that I had a much larger SQ collection.
The QB modified QSD-1 does for most stereo recordings what the Tate does for SQ recordings. Going through an entire stereo collection shouting “Eureka” after each cut is not out of the question with this unit in place, you simply can’t get enough. If you listen to any McCartney album you will be astonished by sound movement and placement with a rightness that seems to be planned by God himself rather than some random effect. For instance, cut four on McCartney’s TUG OF WAR is “What’s That You’re Doing?”, and it is spectacular under VM synthesis. All four channels are churning simultaneously with vocals positioned left, right and center up front with very hot instrumentals in the surrounds. Through the Tate the opening vocal pans hard right rear at first with all of the remaining vocals steered front center only. The entire back and forth across the front spread is lost entirely. Disc after disc produced similar results. Cut three from McCartney’s PRESS TO PLAY ends up losing the right to left play also. Cut three, ‘Talk More Talk”, opens with voices emenating from the four corners through the VM and the SM, but through the Tate all the front voices are relegated to front center. A lot of the fun is lost. The VM and the SM consistently produced a free flowing unrestricted sound field with an almost limitless sense of depth and width plus very high transparency, while the Tate produced a sort of triangular sound field that tended to collapse toward one of the two rear speakers. Even when moving around within the VM sound field, imaging remained solid. Standing between the front right and rear right speakers the front and rear signals were completely distinct. Doing the same with the Tate did not produce as satisfying a result. Of course the QSD-1 is also a QS decoder, but I cannot say that my meager QS collection fared very well. Even the QS DARK SIDE OF THE MOON obtained from Quad Bob could not be called overly impressive in the QS mode. This of course is the fault of the software not the magical QB QSD-1.
The Fosgate SM 3610 acts in almost the same fashion as the VM of The QSD-1 when listening in four channel wide mode. There is a broad frontal stereo image and very discreet panning to the rear channels with plenty of ambience. In fact, instruments and vocals were almost placed in identical fashion. Although discreet sounding, it is not quite as specific as the VM and leaves just the slightest sense of ambiguity on some recordings. The stock 3610 is far more satisfying than the Tate from almost every standpoint except of course SQ. It can place sounds in the four corners and everywhere else without ever negating the rest of the sound field. It is, after twenty plus years, perfectly transparent and sounds superior to the Tate from the standpoint of maintaining the purity of the original signal. Switching back and forth between the stereo input and the updated Tate one can hear a subtle shift in sound character. This is not the case with the 3610 or with the updated QSD-1. The 3610 is also a five or seven channel device with a derived center channel for watching movies in DPL. At the moment, a 3602, 3608, or 3610 can be had for around a hundred dollars. They are not quite the equal of the best VM, but they are close and are superior to all the other Fosgate incarnations. These units can really put sound into those back corners without messing up the front image. Even though the Fosgate RFQ5000 DPL II, is beautifully transparent, it really doesn’t put the sound in the back corners the way I like. It is a very easy processor to listen to and is not exactly a slouch form the standpoint of discreetness, but as has been alluded to several times on this board, it doesn’t seem to reach for those back channels. The Fosgate DSL 2 is sonically identical to the DSL 3A, which I once had in my possession, and along with the Fosgate Model four are not in the same league with the 3610. These units are discreet, but produce an audible warbling artifact that is, to me, annoying. The fact that this artifact appears in all three Digital Servo Logic units indicates to me that I’m not dealing with an aberrant issue, but something systemic to the DSL technology.
Here is the result of a sacrilegious experiment. If you use the front outputs of the QSD-1 and the rear outputs of the Tate, both in the surround mode, the result is sometimes an event superior to using the QSD-1 alone. Sometimes!
To sum up, If you can afford a unit with a Type A Variomatrix, preferably recapped with blend resistors removed, there is no possibility that you will be disappointed. Go for it! If you have a large SQ collection, the Tate is the only answer. If you do not have a large SQ or QS collection and can’t afford a Tate or type A VM and are interested in spectacular two channel synthesis, a Fosgate 3602, 08, or 10 will, in IMHO, bring you more pleasure than any DPL II or other Fosgate variant around. Get the real thing if you can, if you can't, than the 3610 is as close to VM synthesizing as you can get without spending hundreds if not a thousand dollars. We’re lucky aren’t we?
Thank You,
Dwight
The following quote is taken from an on line chat with Jim Fosgate over at the AVS
forum that took place in 2000.
“Do different listeners listen for “different things” in a surround sound field?
I think the answer is a most definite “yes”. I remember my early work with MR Wes Wruggles, the man behind the Tate Quad decoder, and MR Peter Schieber, the man who was first to the patent office with Matrix technology. Wes wanted to hear the highest separation we could get on that decoder, and the fact we were into some artifacts to get it didn’t bother him very much. He much preferred high separation at all costs. I finally talked him into including an ‘alternate logic” position on the “Tate” that slowed the logic a bit and removed some of the artifacts. I preferred the slower position.
When I started working with Peter on the Fosgate 3601 decoder I found that he was almost the opposite of Wes. Peter could hear the slightest modulation or anomalies and could not stand to listen to it. He was a classical musician and new how he wanted his music to sound. I remember when we were adjusting the 3601 decoder together; he kept hearing problems when I thought they were at the vanishing point. We had to adjust this decoder to compromise some separation in order to get rid of all the decoding side effects and keep things very smooth.”
I found this anecdote simple but profound, because we all listen for different things, and decide to purchase things based our special wants. What I want may not be what you want! My special wants began in 1963 when I heard the best sound I had ever heard in my life, and it just happened to be a 7 channel surround system at the Cinerama Town Theater in Baltimore. I was so stunned by what I heard that I traveled to the Cinerama Uptown Theater in Washington D.C. and the Cinerama Boyd Theater in Philadelphia to determine if the sound was equally spectacular. It was close but not as good as the Town sound system. The thought occurred to me while sitting in the Town theater before my 6th encounter with “How The West Was Won”, that this was just a big room and a super audio system which could, one day, be duplicated albeit on a smaller scale. I set out to understand why this particular sound system was so obviously superior and I was successful in gleaning that information which sent me down the mysterious road to high resolution surround. So at 16 my aural obsession began and I am happy to say that the equipment that I am discussing helped me to obtain my special wants.
Two of the three processors in this review are too familiar to QQ members, and I’m sure interest has gone south about the subject of their relative synthesizing ability, however the other unit, the Fosgate Space Matrix 3610 is Peter Schieber’s final statement regarding his Space Matrix technology and is an almost unknown entity on the QQ board, and so I feel it needs to be placed in proper perspective.
The Sansui Type A Variomatrix(VM) is represented here by a QuadBob QSD-1 that has been recently acquired. The Tate II SQ 101A is also a QB recapped and calibrated unit that has been in my possession since 1980. It is an early production unit and purchased shortly after the Tate was first introduced. The Fosgate Space Matrix 3610(SM) is stock, circa 1986, and has been in my possession for those twenty plus years. Just as a side note, I have also pulled out of my dustbin a Fosgate DSL-2, a Fosgate model 4, and a Rockford Fosgate RFQ5000 DPL II to refresh my aural memory as to the “why’s” of my peculiar dustbin. Only the RFQ5000 could possibly compete, IMHO, with the three units in question and I will allude to its attractive qualities later.
All three of these primary units produce seemingly discreet sound fields from two channel sources. The QSD-1 and Tate have synthesizer positions and the 3610 has a wide mode button for maximum separation. To a different degree, each decoder sends the hard right and left stereo signals to the right and left rear speakers, however it’s what’s up front that counts and this is where the units differ, with the VM and the SM being very similar as opposed to the Tate which is a different beast altogether. If one turns the rear output of the Tate off completely, one hears from the front speakers a consistently strange virtually monophonic signal with tiny glints of small right and left high frequency bursts. There are a lot of aural tricks going on here, with the rear channels apparently providing most of the directional information to our brains. If you turn the rear channels off on the VM and the SM you hear what could easily be accepted as a normal stereo signal up front. When the rear channels are brought back into play, the three units reassemble the signal into what sounds like a discreet sound field with different degrees of apparent separation and focus.
The Tate is for me the least satisfying synthesizer. There is always a very strong center front signal and plenty of right and left rear information from the Tate, but the unit seems to imply a front right to front left signal spread rather than actually producing one. Also, the Tate seems to consistently curtail reverberating space. But if the Tate is the least satisfying synthesizer, it redeems itself by being a spectacular SQ decoder. If you turn the rear channels off when listening in the SQ mode to SQ material, you do hear a full front stereo spread.. Turn the rear channels back on and you would swear you are listening to a discreet source. All of my SQ recordings were presented with unwavering fidelity and a solid three dimensional sound field that took my breath away at times, and made me wish that I had a much larger SQ collection.
The QB modified QSD-1 does for most stereo recordings what the Tate does for SQ recordings. Going through an entire stereo collection shouting “Eureka” after each cut is not out of the question with this unit in place, you simply can’t get enough. If you listen to any McCartney album you will be astonished by sound movement and placement with a rightness that seems to be planned by God himself rather than some random effect. For instance, cut four on McCartney’s TUG OF WAR is “What’s That You’re Doing?”, and it is spectacular under VM synthesis. All four channels are churning simultaneously with vocals positioned left, right and center up front with very hot instrumentals in the surrounds. Through the Tate the opening vocal pans hard right rear at first with all of the remaining vocals steered front center only. The entire back and forth across the front spread is lost entirely. Disc after disc produced similar results. Cut three from McCartney’s PRESS TO PLAY ends up losing the right to left play also. Cut three, ‘Talk More Talk”, opens with voices emenating from the four corners through the VM and the SM, but through the Tate all the front voices are relegated to front center. A lot of the fun is lost. The VM and the SM consistently produced a free flowing unrestricted sound field with an almost limitless sense of depth and width plus very high transparency, while the Tate produced a sort of triangular sound field that tended to collapse toward one of the two rear speakers. Even when moving around within the VM sound field, imaging remained solid. Standing between the front right and rear right speakers the front and rear signals were completely distinct. Doing the same with the Tate did not produce as satisfying a result. Of course the QSD-1 is also a QS decoder, but I cannot say that my meager QS collection fared very well. Even the QS DARK SIDE OF THE MOON obtained from Quad Bob could not be called overly impressive in the QS mode. This of course is the fault of the software not the magical QB QSD-1.
The Fosgate SM 3610 acts in almost the same fashion as the VM of The QSD-1 when listening in four channel wide mode. There is a broad frontal stereo image and very discreet panning to the rear channels with plenty of ambience. In fact, instruments and vocals were almost placed in identical fashion. Although discreet sounding, it is not quite as specific as the VM and leaves just the slightest sense of ambiguity on some recordings. The stock 3610 is far more satisfying than the Tate from almost every standpoint except of course SQ. It can place sounds in the four corners and everywhere else without ever negating the rest of the sound field. It is, after twenty plus years, perfectly transparent and sounds superior to the Tate from the standpoint of maintaining the purity of the original signal. Switching back and forth between the stereo input and the updated Tate one can hear a subtle shift in sound character. This is not the case with the 3610 or with the updated QSD-1. The 3610 is also a five or seven channel device with a derived center channel for watching movies in DPL. At the moment, a 3602, 3608, or 3610 can be had for around a hundred dollars. They are not quite the equal of the best VM, but they are close and are superior to all the other Fosgate incarnations. These units can really put sound into those back corners without messing up the front image. Even though the Fosgate RFQ5000 DPL II, is beautifully transparent, it really doesn’t put the sound in the back corners the way I like. It is a very easy processor to listen to and is not exactly a slouch form the standpoint of discreetness, but as has been alluded to several times on this board, it doesn’t seem to reach for those back channels. The Fosgate DSL 2 is sonically identical to the DSL 3A, which I once had in my possession, and along with the Fosgate Model four are not in the same league with the 3610. These units are discreet, but produce an audible warbling artifact that is, to me, annoying. The fact that this artifact appears in all three Digital Servo Logic units indicates to me that I’m not dealing with an aberrant issue, but something systemic to the DSL technology.
Here is the result of a sacrilegious experiment. If you use the front outputs of the QSD-1 and the rear outputs of the Tate, both in the surround mode, the result is sometimes an event superior to using the QSD-1 alone. Sometimes!
To sum up, If you can afford a unit with a Type A Variomatrix, preferably recapped with blend resistors removed, there is no possibility that you will be disappointed. Go for it! If you have a large SQ collection, the Tate is the only answer. If you do not have a large SQ or QS collection and can’t afford a Tate or type A VM and are interested in spectacular two channel synthesis, a Fosgate 3602, 08, or 10 will, in IMHO, bring you more pleasure than any DPL II or other Fosgate variant around. Get the real thing if you can, if you can't, than the 3610 is as close to VM synthesizing as you can get without spending hundreds if not a thousand dollars. We’re lucky aren’t we?
Thank You,
Dwight
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