quick update for Sunday

QuadraphonicQuad

Help Support QuadraphonicQuad:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

Bill Brent

300 Club - QQ All-Star
Joined
Apr 13, 2004
Messages
354
hi

hour 3 (should kick in about 11am) of my show The Vinyl Resting Place will feature all quad (well, except for the first song)
but after that it's a combination of my own remixes (including the full 5 minute version of All I want for Christmas) and
surround tracks from greatest hits albums - remixed with the Involve encoder (Gloria Estefan, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Carpenters)
these tracks will also be included in my other station's 36 hours of Christmas in Surround - but more about that later
http://radiomaxmusic.com/popup.html is th4 place on Sunday!
The show repeats at 9pm (NYC time) - so the quad portion should turn up around 11pm
but feel free to listen to the full 3 hours - hours 1 & 2 feature the top 2 Christmas songs of the past
two decades - but alas, in stereo

a short aside - I'm in discussions with Involve into infusing stereo with some proprietary phasing info
to enhance the stereo sound field, and give decoders - especially the surround master - enough to
decode into a convincing surround playback - sounds crazy no? stay tuned...
 
From the earliest days of Sansui patents to multiple posts made by me about out of phase blending to enhance stereo 2 surround decoding I can only say this: what is Involve bringing to the game that is proprietary that hasn't been done before?

It does not sound crazy I will stay tuned.
 
From the earliest days of Sansui patents to multiple posts made by me about out of phase blending to enhance stereo 2 surround decoding I can only say this: what is Involve bringing to the game that is proprietary that hasn't been done before?

It does not sound crazy I will stay tuned.

thanks for the comment - perhaps I should explain, or at least offer a bit of background. I really have no skin in this game - I've been captivated by quadraphonics since my first exposure to it in 1971 or so. I was never a fan of pop/rock music - but back in the day, buying records and tapes by performers I never heard of, simply because they were released in quad, opened up my world to music I probably never would have discovered otherwise.
I've always played any recordings though some simulated surround circuitry (from my first $19 Dynaco kit - through the Sansui X series and beyond).
I've usually found matrix LPs to sound better than their stereo counterparts; The Columbia LPs were a prime example (compare the dreary - overly compressed Chicago II stereo issue - to the SQ pressing) - CD-4 (when properly mastered) also sounded better - but more because there was more care taken in the pressing/mastering, not because the "mix" was any better.
About 15 years ago a DJ at WCBS in NY (who had been using elements from my collection for his shows) asked me to joining an Internet radio outfit hosting a show highlighting the world of vinyl. I had been writing a music review/history column called "My Vinyl Resting Place" - so I picked that as a titled for the show, and have been doing it every week since.
about 2 years back the owner of the station ask if I'd do a second show - playing complete LPs - and highlighting the differences between the LP and it's digital re-issue. I thought of the approach of playing LPs that contained something not available unless you had the LP.
putting all this together - the logical thing to do was play quadraphonic albums. Initially this limited me to QS and SQ releases. Then when it came to CD-4 I felt it was still fair to do a needle drop on these - demodulate them - then encode them for QS or SQ.
I had tinkered together a SQ encoder back in the 70s and was going down that route, then came across a java based software encoder that could do qs and sq. After going through a fairly extensive battery of testing - as long as I was fine with 16x44 (which I was) - the software encoder was flat out remarkable.
I used the Fosgate Tate II for SQ decoding - but it wasn't until I bought the Suzanne Cianni LP with it's included Surround Master decoder that I was able to do much beyond basic qs decoding.
That little circuit board really floored me. If that had been available in 1973 I doubt quad would have "died off" as it did.
So - what has all of this to do with radio? Eventually I'd run out of discrete sources - but that would take a while, the real issue was - so many recordings were only mastered in two track, or the multi-tracks were lost, or unavailable. of course, anyone with a home stereo (or home theater system) set up for surround sound could play these effectively - and, as it turns out, if you have a surroundmaster - they are much more effective than a Lafayette composer A circuit. But what if A) we could make the stereo source sound better - in stereo and B) in the process, make the decode even more effective.

This all brings me to where I am now - and it may lead to nothing - but I want to improve the stereo playback of a stereo source. AND make that stereo source decode so well into surround, that "up-mixes" are no longer considered (if in fact they actually are).

I really do overthink things, don't I.
 
Back
Top