Quad LP/Tape Poll Raiders: Indian Reservation [SQ/Q8]

[inquadwetrust]

One of the best SQ encoded mixes I've heard so far; it's punchy and discrete with swirls and pans plus call and response from corner to corner throughout. Smokes the stereo version for this listener and elevates the good into the great. Engaging in it's four corner reveries definitely does show consideration for the side wall imaging here, as pointed out by an earlier post. I'm hearing more wallop to the percussion, the bass seems tighter and the high end seems to sparkle more. When the horns show up in 'Come in, You'll Get Pneumonia' they cut though the centre of the mix from all corners like a ribbon of bright white light. Crank it some, sit back and then crank it some more. Tremendous orchestrations and great arranging abound and are spatially realized so well in the SQ mix. Everything sounds rich without overloading, even though sometimes every corner is stacked with instrumentation. The track order here, at least to my ears is preferable to the original stereo order.

 

[jaybird100]

One of the best SQ encoded mixes I've heard so far; it's punchy and discrete with swirls and pans plus call and response from corner to corner throughout. Smokes the stereo version for this listener and elevates the good into the great. Engaging in it's four corner reveries definitely does show consideration for the side wall imaging here, as pointed out by an earlier post. I'm hearing more wallop to the percussion, the bass seems tighter and the high end seems to sparkle more. When the horns show up in 'Come in, You'll Get Pneumonia' they cut though the centre of the mix from all corners like a ribbon of bright white light. Crank it some, sit back and then crank it some more. Tremendous orchestrations and great arranging abound and are spatially realized so well in the SQ mix. Everything sounds rich without overloading, even though sometimes every corner is stacked with instrumentation. The track order here, at least to my ears is preferable to the original stereo order.

The problems with this mix showed up when radio stations tried to play cuts from it on the air. It sounds fine in SQ, but since a lot of people were still listening on mono FM radios, this mix created compatibility issues. If you play "Birds of a Feather" in stereo, it sounds fine. But go mono, and the background vocals, plus some of the instrumentation, disappear completely. Any matrixed recording is going to have some issues when played in mono, but this one seemed to have more than most. I do agree it's a great album, but mixing sounds into center back, especially for SQ encoding, spells problems.

 

[inquadwetrust]

The problems with this mix showed up when radio stations tried to play cuts from it on the air. It sounds fine in SQ, but since a lot of people were still listening on mono FM radios, this mix created compatibility issues. If you play "Birds of a Feather" in stereo, it sounds fine. But go mono, and the background vocals, plus some of the instrumentation, disappear completely. Any matrixed recording is going to have some issues when played in mono, but this one seemed to have more than most. I do agree it's a great album, but mixing sounds into center back, especially for SQ encoding, spells problems.

That's really interesting - perhaps another reason why single inventory wasn't viable? Too many errant engineers not sticking to the rules.

 

[Eggplant]

The latest SQ album I have with anything located center-back was Garfunkel's "Angel Clare", released in 1974. That one was engineered by Roy Halee, "the" quad guru for Columbia. If he was then still placing vocals center-back, you can be pretty sure it was not yet against the official SQ mix manual. I've not heard any later CBS releases with center-back placement.

I sure had fun with it at the time, pressing the mono button and hearing the backing vocal disappear on "I Shall Sing" and "Mary Was an Only Child".

 

[EMB]

Actually, the problem was that AM (and for that matter, FM) was, in the grand plan which never happened, meant to upgrade to quad matrix playback--at least in theory, and when the records were there to showcase the upgrade. Unfortunately some stations that did not have that compatibility would on occasion play quad Lp cuts, which sometimes folded down to mono okay (and intentionally decently to stereo on FM), but weren't really meant to be summed to mono, any more than some stereo recordings, as stations transitioning from singles to albums and then compact discs found out to many listener's dismay when they couldn't hear some (probably out-of-phase) sounds in a given vintage stereo mix.

Which is why modern AM radio where you hear 'oldies' is generally worthless, because they're playing CD's, which are often from stereo albums, and not the original single mixes designed for AM airplay.

For quad, though, I enjoy some of the gimmicks and quirks and isolated stuff that some can't stand. Ah well....

ED

 

[jaybird100]

Actually, the problem was that AM (and for that matter, FM) was, in the grand plan which never happened, meant to upgrade to quad matrix playback--at least in theory, and when the records were there to showcase the upgrade. Unfortunately some stations that did not have that compatibility would on occasion play quad Lp cuts, which sometimes folded down to mono okay (and intentionally decently to stereo on FM), but weren't really meant to be summed to mono, any more than some stereo recordings, as stations transitioning from singles to albums and then compact discs found out to many listener's dismay when they couldn't hear some (probably out-of-phase) sounds in a given vintage stereo mix.

Which is why modern AM radio where you hear 'oldies' is generally worthless, because they're playing CD's, which are often from stereo albums, and not the original single mixes designed for AM airplay.

For quad, though, I enjoy some of the gimmicks and quirks and isolated stuff that some can't stand. Ah well....

ED

Ed, any FM stereo station could broadcast matrix-encoded quad without having to do anything. I don't know of any kind of "upgrade" to make the station quad matrix compatible; the station was fine as long as they were stereo. Simply playing a quad LP was all they needed to do unless they wanted to also encode discrete quad material themselves. Some stations did convert their production rooms for quad by adding a matrix encoder that was optimized for broadcast. It could be QS or SQ, although most used QS because it was easier to work with and sounded better in stereo. I worked on a station that did this, in QS, and the broadcast encoder was set up to avoid putting sounds in center back so they wouldn't be lost in mono. I wish the Dorren discrete quad broadcast system had come much sooner than it did. It might have been big. It was too little, too late.

 

[sjcorne]

The comments upthread pretty much have it down. The content isn't earth-shaking to say the least, but the quad mix really elevates it to new heights. A 9 from me.

This is one of the best mixes from that original series of Columbia quads with the gold borders. As you'd expect from Columbia, it's super dry and discrete. Vocals front center (though on the title track it sounds like vocals are time-delayed between the two fronts, it's a very cool effect), backing vocals rear, drums are generally a stereo spread across the rears, though there are a few moments where they do a full 360 around the room (chorus of the title track, breakdown of "The Shape Of The Things To Come"). Everything else- guitars, horns, strings, and organ- is variable. Sometimes front, sometimes rear. Definitely not a "set it and forget it" mix.

My nomination for the best mix is "Take Me Home". That track features these awesome dueling electric guitars isolated in each rear speaker, while horns and lead vocal are upfront. There also seem to be two distinct sets of backing vocals, one upfront and one in the rears. Awesome.

"The Turkey"- I actually love the arrangement and spread of instruments on this one, it's the vocals that kill it for me. I think it would work much better as an instrumental.

My Q8 of this is one of the best-sounding in my collection. No dropouts at all and amazing clarity. The SQ ain't bad either, both the Tate and Surround Master really hold the closing organ of the title track in the left rear.

It's another good one for D-V to look into (I know I say that a lot), but it seems to fit the bill. Sony title, relatively obscure, and I'm pretty sure it's never been done in Hi-Res.

 

[Q-Eight]

...though on the title track it sounds like vocals are time-delayed between the two fronts....

Actually, it's two different vocal tracks. Mr. Mark never liked how ADT could become phasey at times, so to avoid that; if he wanted to double-track his vocals, he'd just record his vocals twice! He's so good at it though, I could see how you'd think it was a time delay. But listen to the FL or FR channels by themselves and you can hear the differences. Well, I don't know about the SQ disc, but it's very obvious on the Q8.

Absolutely agree that D-V should give this one a whirl.