This clears things up.....not.

QuadraphonicQuad

Help Support QuadraphonicQuad:

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

gvl_guy

1K Club - QQ Shooting Star
QQ Supporter
Joined
Apr 23, 2019
Messages
1,049
Location
Greenville, SC (via NJ, Philly, ATL & SoFL)
I've never seen a more confusing explanation as to which matrix system to use to decode an album. This is a Vanguard Record of Joan Baez. (And I thought E-V was closer to QS, not SQ.)

And we all wonder why the public was confused and quadrphonic sound underwhelmed.)
Screenshot_20210217-074241_1.jpg
 
I agree.
SQ is nowhere near the other matrices. Vanguard 's info is misleading .
Not to worry, there is no perfect discrete four channel result possible from vinyl anyway, they probably wrote that little blurb to keep the reader/buyer from walking away from a potential purchase if they didn’t own an SQ decoding setup.
To me they were all compromised, just a matter of to what degree. This thread regarding the SQ/QS/EV/CD-4 incompatibility conundrum illustrates perfectly why quad on vinyl eventually failed commercially.
 
The engineers tasked with encoding four separate signal paths (quad) to a single V-groove pressed into a flat plastic disc had to have known that there was no way it would ever deliver discrete high fidelity quad, even that fiddly stroke of genius called CD-4 had its Achilles heel with its own practical difficulties.

It was the greed of record company accountants and lawyers (who were certainly warned it was a deeply flawed pursuit), that kept them hell bent on beating out their competitors at selling the public more quad as cheaply as possible, all because the alternative which at that time was all magnetic tape, primarily Q-8 and 1/4” reels required double the amount of recording material and therefore at higher cost.

A vinyl disc that has true quad content magically encoded to it’s one groove is essentially the same cost as mono and stereo to produce and get out into inventory.
That’s what drove whole push for all 4-ch matrix schemes for vinyl discs.

I will concede this much, when I listen to a QS disc thru the QSD-1 it is pretty cool, so I can say yes, they did a commendable job of it, the SQ is good too, my CD-4 works well also, but then, none of it is as purely 4-ch discrete, highly dynamic and “audiophile” grade as any of my 4-ch open reel machines, especially the Ampex ATR 1/2” 4-trk running mastering tape at 15 ips!
Even my tascam 234 quad cassette at its native 3.75” IPS outperforms my matrixed quad vinyl titles.

The big fly in this ointment is always the near impossibility of finding or accessing high quality properly mastered 4-ch versions of music that is so much easier to find on vinyl. We do have the boutique audiophile 1/4” stereo tape sellers offering a few select titles, but they are $350~$500 each! But of course, No quads ....yet.
 
I've never seen a more confusing explanation as to which matrix system to use to decode an album. This is a Vanguard Record of Joan Baez. (And I thought E-V was closer to QS, not SQ.)

And we all wonder why the public was confused and quadrphonic sound underwhelmed.)View attachment 63349

With EV's newer "universal" decoder design that system was brought closer to that of SQ, so that is what that bit of (fake news?) is about. In the early days it was normal to play any encoded record through any decoder, most had no logic enhancement. All records produce a pleasing quad effect that way but the result most likely would not be what was originally intended. Yes, the original EV decoder would be more compatible with QS and not very much so with SQ. The EV-44 decoder was much more compatible with SQ than with QS.
 
I've read that same vague guidance on my copy of Buffy Saint-Marie: Moonshot, I think. I laughed to myself when I read it.
Given the time of those albums release (1972) and the fact that the Electro Voice EVX-44 decoder would of produced a decoded result very close to that of an actual SQ decoder utilising 10-40 blend, that guidance makes perfect sense. To elaborate further that the older EVX-4 decoder was not really compatible would of simply muddied already cloudy waters!
https://worldradiohistory.com/hd2/I.../HiFi-Stereo-Review-1972-12-OCR-Page-0040.pdf
 
Back
Top