SQ MATRIX Various Information ( BILLBOARD 1972-1976 )

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The credits, at the end of the movie had the Quintaphonic Sound and QS Logos. I made a point of staying to see it. In fact, if someone has the laserdisc of the movie, it's there in the closing credits.

FWIW .....It's on the Bluray edition , which offers the original Quintaphonic mix as a discrete 5.0 format .....
and additionally a discrete 5.1 version which is a different mix.
 
To the best of my knowledge regarding Polydor Japan ....the artists in both CD-4 and RM were all Japanese.
Polydor Japan's QS quintaphonic album of The Who's Tommy (75) is the only exception I know of.
 
Ok some more SQ tidbits :

An SQ licensing deal has been signed with the British Radio Corporation. (April 07th 1973 ; 60)

Sony unveils SQ Full Logic I.C. 'S (March 17th 1973 ; 01)

Connoiseur Recording Society issues their first SQ albums .(April 14th 1973 ; 29)

The CTI (Creed Taylor Inc) music label will be taken over by Motown Records (June 08th 1974 ; 56)
 
4-track magnetic prints with LCRS.

Theaters with QS ignored the mono surround track and instead decoded the two front channels into quad. Theaters without QS sent the mono surround track to the back and used the undecoded left and right in front. Both used the center channel unprocessed as usual.

Or at least that's my understanding. It implies that surround information would remain also in the front L-R channels for non-QS setups, so maybe it's wrong.

I believe the Dolby logo on the quintophonic prints simply refers to noise reduction, not matrix encoding.

But I wish we had a projectionist who remembers for sure to confirm or clarify!

There WAS no Dolby Stereo and no LCRS when Tommy was made in 1975. They didn't exist yet. Dolby Stereo was first used the following year. Tommy was LCR with the L and R encoded in QS and C being a discrete center channel. LCR was a standard release method at the time. There was no surround track.

They added the Dolby Stereo logo when Dolby Stereo went into use in 1977. But they did not really have to do anything to the film because QS plays perfectly in Dolby Stereo (and Dolby Surround).

From what I understood in the literature at the time, The Who did the actual QS mix, not Polydor. Polydor entered later to make and distribute the records.

The VHS and DVD copies of Tommy I have include the Dolby Surround, QS, and Quintaphonic logos on the case and in the film. The DVD case (in front of me now) says ORIGINAL QUINTAPHONIC MIX AUDIO, Dolby Digital 5.0, and 2 ch Dolby Surround.
 
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To the best of my knowledge regarding Polydor Japan ....the artists in both CD-4 and RM were all Japanese.
Polydor Japan's QS quintaphonic album of The Who's Tommy (75) is the only exception I know of.

RM was the JPRA and EIAJ code for for a square equal-separation matrix system such as Scheiber and QS. They also used it to get around trademark infringement.
 
There WAS no Dolby Stereo and no LCRS when Tommy was made in 1975. They didn't exist yet. Dolby Stereo was first used the following year. Tommy was LCR with the L and R encoded in QS and C being a discrete center channel. LCR was a standard release method at the time. There was no surround track.

LCRS has been around since at least The Robe. It was the standard from day one for CinemaScope and, with very few exceptions, was the theatrical stereo standard for 20+ years. Even longer if you consider that Dolby Stereo was also (at least eventually) LCRS. Dolby Stereo didn't change channel mapping at all, it simply allowed LCRS to be carried on standard, cheap, relatively robust optical soundtracks instead of expensive and delicate magnetic tracks.

Even the deliberate lack of high end on Dolby Stereo's surround track was a holdover from the magnetic days. As you can see in the picture at
Cinemascope magnetic sound restoration, the "effects" (old Projectionistese for "surround") track is narrower and, as a result, was not expected to be full-frequency.
 
Sure , why not.
I'm an adult. I think at the time , it was only available on lazer disc and I had both Beta HIFI and VHS HIFI not lazer.
But chances are I wouldn't know what would be best to observe.....THE SQ surround, or the porno performance. Maybe both.

Think of post production & creative decisions regarding the surround track. What sound goes where... the mind boggles.
 
Cinemascope was not just surround sound. Control track panning was used with it.

What is an SQ Tate soundtrack. Tate had nothing to do with encoding just as Vario-Matrix and Involve have nothing to do with the encoding. All use the standard SQ and QS encoders.
 
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Cinemascope was not just surround sound. Control track panning was used with it.

What is an SQ Tate soundtrack. Tate had nothing to do with encoding just a Vario-Matrix and Involve have nothing to do with the encoding. All use the standard SQ and QS encoders.
There were a lot of movies made in Cinemascope that had mono soundtracks, too. As for Tate SQ on the soundtrack of that movie, once Tate-Reber bought the patents for SQ from CBS, they added their own name to the system, too. There's also a CD, from Cafe Records (division of MoFi) by Buddy Rich that was identified on the rear cover as recorded in Tate SQ.
 
Hi Jaybird do you know the name of the Buddy Rich CD recorded in SQ? Im aware of two live dvds with a tate SQ soundtrack....maybe Reber is credited too.......for that matter David Bowies serious Moonlight DVD is also recorded in SQ I recall.
 
Cinemascope was not just surround sound. Control track panning was used with it.

Pretty sure you're thinking of Cinerama, which generally had 7 track sound (five screen, two surround). I've seen references to the surround channels having some kind of panning in some cases, but I can't remember the details.

Your subsequent reference to mono CinemaScope is a good point: For some reason, there were theaters that were willing to upgrade the screen but not the sound. Eventually 20th Century-Fox gave in and allowed that, but the initial CinemaScope features were all mandatory 4-track.
 
But chances are I wouldn't know what would be best to observe.....THE SQ surround, or the porno performance. Maybe both.

Depends too on where it was pressed. If it had to be done in Japan, it would have been edited down to softcore, which I remember Roger Ebert once describing as something like "the lowest artform on earth."
 
I bought the Buddy Rich LD specifically for the SQ encoding (around this time, Shure thought that surround sound might make a comeback via stereo music videos).

My Pioneer CLD-900 LD player had 1 DAC w/a time delay (I once calculated the error at 7kHz [for Dolby Surround processing]), so SQ decoding of the LD PCM soundtrack would have been incorrect.

The DVD includes a behind the scenes extra that shows a CBS Labs SQ Position Encoder being used in the preparation of the SQ encoded soundtrack.


Kirk Bayne
 
Pretty sure you're thinking of Cinerama, which generally had 7 track sound (five screen, two surround). I've seen references to the surround channels having some kind of panning in some cases, but I can't remember the details.

Your subsequent reference to mono CinemaScope is a good point: For some reason, there were theaters that were willing to upgrade the screen but not the sound. Eventually 20th Century-Fox gave in and allowed that, but the initial CinemaScope features were all mandatory 4-track.
This reminds me of when the local theatre "upgraded" to Dolby Surround the sound was actually worse. Originally the sound was mono using what appeared to be a large "Altec Voice of the Theatre"speaker, I don't know what electronics they were running but it could of been "Western Electric" perhaps even running 300B tubes! Anyway the sound after upgrade was far less clear, distorted even, I don't think that the system was even sized right for the large theatre. The surround effects were quite noticeable though, especially if you sat in the balcony. I always wondered why they didn't keep the original system for the centre channel at least!
 
Hi Jaybird do you know the name of the Buddy Rich CD recorded in SQ? Im aware of two live dvds with a tate SQ soundtrack....maybe Reber is credited too.......for that matter David Bowies serious Moonlight DVD is also recorded in SQ I recall.
I recall that David Bowie disc; I don't have it, but I remember seeing it advertised. The Buddy Rich album is "Live on King Street", Cafe Records CD2-732. On the back, in small print, it says "An SQ/Tate System Surround Sound Stereo Recording". The booklet that's included goes into detail about the encoding process.
 
I recall that David Bowie disc; I don't have it, but I remember seeing it advertised. The Buddy Rich album is "Live on King Street", Cafe Records CD2-732. On the back, in small print, it says "An SQ/Tate System Surround Sound Stereo Recording". The booklet that's included goes into detail about the encoding process.


DAVID BOWIE - SERIOUS MOONLIGHT
 

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