Space and Image Composer Manual

[Marcsten]

I have one of the early SAICs and as I was digging around through my manuals, I came across the original for Composer. Its really just a bunch of sheets stapled together, with a spec sheet, and a thank you letter from Charles Woods. Its not great, but better than nothing if you got yours second hand. I can scan and send to anyone that wants. Let me know.
Marc

 

[The Quadfather]

I still have my original manual for my Composer. It sounds like about the same affair.

The Quadfather

 

[Marcsten]

Did yo get one of the first run, or is yours one of the later runs after they "fixed" the chips?
Marc

 

[The Quadfather]

I have a first run composer. It has the earlier chips. I had to replace one of the chips one time and as I recall, I had to modify the power supply. I did it according to instructions from Audionics. I can't remember if it was one of the Tate chips or not. But it had it's markings covered by a magic marker and it was not available through normal channels once I exposed the chip number by rubbing it with alcohol. Anyway, It's a first run Composer. Tab made me a copy of my Billy Joel "Turnstiles" LP because he wanted to have it to distribute, (I had a real clean copy) and he used a Tate II to decode it. The Tate II (fosgate) is nice, but I'll stick with my Composer any day.

The Quadfather

 

[Marcsten]

Mine is the same as yours. Happily, I haven't had to do anything significant to it. I have never used a Fosgate Tate. One thing I lke about the Composer is the ability to adjust the Enhance coefficients. This is how I do qs as I have no actual qs decoder. What do you use fo qs?
Marc

 

[The Quadfather]

The Audionics Space and Image Composer is what I use for QS. It works OK.

The Quadfather

 

[Marcsten]

Where do you set the Enhance control? I had heard from Audionics uears ago that about 1:00 was right. I recently got a QS test record, and three of the four chanells are nearly correct when its set about 10:30 - 11:00. Any ideas?
Marc

 

[The Quadfather]

Up until recently, I haven't had a QS test record, so I just left it the way it was set for SQ. I have one now, so I might just look into that. I don't have the remote control for the composer, so I can't listen and adjust at the same time. Therefore I must use a test record and my scope. The speakers aren't in the same room as the system,

The Quadfather

 

[Marcsten]

Here's something that may be self evident to most of you with tates, but it bears repeating. The other day I happened to check the stylus force with a proper balance; I made the tiniest of adjustments. The gauge suggests that antiskating be zero for the adjustment, which I did. After the adjustment, I reset the antiskating. I then played a Chicago sq album and was surprised by how poor the performance of the space and image composer was. I pulled out the cbs sq test record and reset the axial tilt. One side was still perfect, while the other was off between one-quarter and one-eighth of a turn. I made this adjustment and replayed the same Chicago album. Like magic - near cd4-like separation!! The moral is, it really doesn't take much to throw these things off. Also, I am reminded of when I ran a lesser turntable/cartridge in college with the tate and the axial tilt correction never really seemed to make much difference. Not so now! Have I become a treaker? Say it ain't so.
Marc

 

[The Quadfather]

The axial tilt feeds a little signal from one channel to the other and vice versa. It is mixed in inverted in order to cancel the crosstalk between channels. The adjustment is there to properly match the correct amount of cancellation. The crosstalk is caused by the cartridge not being perfectly perpendicular to the record. At least that is the way I understood it. Since Audionics never put out a schematic, I can't look at it and verify this.

The Quadfather