Quadraphonic sound (was it really any good?)

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by dave walsh

I suppose the history of techno improvisation is littered with things that didn't work very well or did but didn't catch on. The World Space Radio Satellite System may be a more recent example.

Yet in the US Sirius/XM satellite-radio has a surprising level of takeup, specially in cars.

[Ted Kendall]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

I see a modern parallel here with the "SACD": a nice idea in principle but hampered by an almost total absence of mainstream content.

Some people never learn. The EMI Stereosonic tape debacle was caused as much by the lack of desirable repertoire as the cost and scarcity of equipment...

[Grubhead]

Some pictures from the 1974 magazine.
One is a JVC Quad tape deck
The other a report by Gordon King showing some Quad hi-fi.

I enjoy my reproduced audio, mainly plays/dramas etc., I can see the point of 'putting you in the scene' for quad. I have yet to find a quad recording of such. With these days of cheap USB sound devices and a second hand (probably thrown out) stereo for the rear set it would cost almost nothing to set up.

[Ted Kendall]

BBC Transcription Service recorded The Tempest in discrete quad - it probably was issued as a QS disc, but no doubt the master still exists.

[m0cemdave]

I vaguely remember seeing a write-up of that somewhere at the time, maybe in Studio Sound?

[Ted Kendall]

Indeed there was - TS were in the vanguard of quad techniques, as they were with stereo in the 1960s. Stereo was being transmitted in the US from 1960-odd, but the BBC took until 1966 to begin regular stereo transmissions. The idea with quad was to be ahead of the curve, but as we know quad radio didn't catch on anywhere - Matrix H was quietly abandoned in the early 80s, to the relief of Proms balancers.

[Synchrodyne]

Originally Posted by dave walsh

Synchrodyne. What's your take on the Hafler low key background reproduction I wonder, particularly as it remains as an available option?

I don’t recall ever having heard a Hafler setup, so I can’t comment from experience. It certainly looks to be simple enough and appears to fall into the “first, do no harm” category. And I’d take Ted Kendall’s comments in post # 18 as being authoritative:

Originally Posted by Ted Kendall

Agreed - the Hafler rig was more effective subjectively than most intentional quad, simply because it provided a pleasant sort of ambient wash and had no pretensions to anything else.

Cheers,

[vidjoman]

I think the Haffler system was something I tried when it first appeared. My recollection was that it was quite good but not suited for my room due to doorways and windows where I wanted the extra speakers.
I recall that the resulting sound was= left ~ left + right crosstalk ~ right + left crosstalk ~ right. The main front speakers are just as normal = L or R +crosstalk and the extras are the channel - the crosstalk. It used 2 extra speakers with the + connected to each channels + terminal and the speakers - connected together so the speakers are in series across the + terminals.

[Courtney Louise]

I have used my Mac to convert a Quad SQ album (Tubular Bells) to 4.0 Surround and then recorded it to a DVD-Audio disc so I can play it through my surround system. It actually sounds pretty damn good.

[Courtney Louise]

The way I did it was :

4ch decoder through an app called soundflower, mapped these through to 4 channels in a multichannel recorder (Adobe Audition) then save the FL-FR-RL-RR channels as a 5.1 mix ready for DVD-A recording.

[Nicklyons2]

Let's face it manufacturers are in business to sell, whether we really need it or not and whether it really works or not. My belief was Quad was just another ploy to extract more money from the public who'd been persuaded to ditch old mono box record players and radio-grams for stereo, and that market had just about reached saturation. Next thing then persuade them they need Quad. Unquestionably the acrimony between manufacturers and the lack of agreement on standards did little to enthuse the potential buyers. It was my belief, however the thing which finally finished Quad off was video. The public had something which was an obvious advantage over existing equipment - it could record the picture! This was a big chunk of electronics which the manufacturers could make a good mark up on and the advantages were very obvious; the manufacturers had something of high value to sell and the public had the money to buy - the bandwagon/fad, had moved on.

[Hartley118]

Originally Posted by Ted Kendall

Agreed - the Hafler rig was more effective subjectively than most intentional quad, simply because it provided a pleasant sort of ambient wash and had no pretensions to anything else.

I remember in the early 1970s installing rear speakers fed by the 'difference' channel. It could be very effective, particularly with additional speakers to the side of the listener as well as the rear - the best-sounding halls are known to provide lateral reflections in addition to front and rear. So in addition to two front speakers, it's good to have at least four rear speakers, preferably more.

I gave a few public demonstrations in theatres of up to 500 seats. Results depended greatly on the actual recording used: well-recorded choral and organ could capture a cathedral acoustic very effectively.

The piece de resistance was the 1972 Philips record No 6588 011 of the Last Night of the Proms under Colin Davis. The audience participation in 'Land of Hope & Glory and Jerusalem is particularly prominent in the difference signal and really envelops the listeners. It never failed to convince my audience that there was something rather special going on.

I understand that the Albert Hall recording was actually made by the BBC Transcription Unit, the tape master being one of their experimental quad recordings of the time. I remember a Transcription Unit engineer confessing to me once that they had cheated somewhat by lifting the rear channel levels specifically during the audience participation. However, it still makes for a good surround sound demo!

Martin

[Ted Kendall]

Originally Posted by Hartley118

I remember a Transcription Unit engineer confessing to me once that they had cheated somewhat by lifting the rear channel levels specifically during the audience participation.

I'm not sure I'd call that cheating, more balancing, in fact he'd be more likely to rein them in than boost them - the sheer SPL six thousand revved-up Prommers can produce (and I spent two whole seasons in the arena, so I know it from both sides of the mic) can easily drown the whole BBCSO and the organ going full chat. Add to that the dynamic range window of 22dB domestic balancers had to shoot through, and there would be times on the last night when the faders would be fairly flying about - not that you'd hear it as such in the output of course, but that is where the skill comes in...

[Hartley118]

I can well imagine the challenge! I think that the 'cheating' reference may have referred to the level of the difference signal relative to the main L/R outputs: it's certainly unusually high. Perhaps the rear channels just weren't reined in as much as usual.

Martin

[bluepilot]

Originally Posted by Nicklyons2

My belief was Quad was just another ploy to extract more money from the public who'd been persuaded to ditch old mono box record players and radio-grams for stereo, and that market had just about reached saturation.

To a certain extent I agree, but isn't that true of almost anything? After stereo, quad was the next logical step but there doesn't seem to have been much thought given to whether the FL, FR, RL, RR arrangement was best, or even any good at all. I remember discussing at the time whether e.g. a triangular arrangement with a fourth speaker on the ceiling would be better. The manufacturers seem to have been obsessed with trying to achieve four discrete channels, something which was ahead of the record technology available at the time. I've often wondered why if four channel was so wonderful, quad tape systems didn't catch on. Obviously the public didn't really want to sit in the middle of the orchestra.

There was also discussion at the time, possibly in Wireless World, as to whether it was really necessary to have four discrete channels. E.g. in one example I remember, if you started off with a FL signal which was matrixed on to two channels and then dematrixed to four, you ended up with the signal 50% FL and 25% each RL and FR. A lot of crosstalk but the signal still appeared to come from FL. It would have been much simpler and probably much better than some of the systems produced. Nowadays where you can have almost as many channels as you want, it's noticeable that the original quad arrangement isn't very popular.

In general I think badly thought-out gimmick which was ahead of the available technology is a good description of quad.

[Synchrodyne]

Wireless World (WW) certainly provided ongoing coverage of quadraphonic developments during the 1970s, but it did seem to have a leaning towards matrix systems, which received much more extensive treatment. It published decoder designs for virtually all matrix systems through to 45J (but not, I think, for HJ and UHJ). CD-4 had some coverage, including a decoder design, but UD-4 coverage was apparently minimal, except that the base BMX matrix was covered in decoder designs.

Here is a partial list of WW quadraphonic articles and items through the 1970s. It is not the outcome of exhaustive research, so I could well have missed a few. It is an updated version of the list that I included in post #23 in this thread: http://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/s...d.php?t=134028.

WW Surround Sound Articles.xlsx

Nick Lyons’ mention of video in juxtaposition to quadraphonics in post #52 reminded me that I had kept a copy of the magazine “Practical Hi Fi & Audio” for 1975 October. This had quite an extensive article (12 pages) on quadraphony, entitled “Quadrophony – Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad?”. It was basically a buyer’s guide, listing all of the quadraphonic equipment then available in the UK. But it also provided a reasonable amount of background on the various systems, including polar diagrams of their channel separation capabilities. In the same issue was a shorter article (3 pages) entitled “Where Next for Video”, which looked at the recent history and future prospects for domestic video equipment. At the time domestic video had existed for a decade, if one takes the introduction of the Sony CV2000 in the USA as a reasonable start date, and as yet had not passed the sharp upturn part the growth curve; rather that came after the introduction of VHS and Beta. On the other hand, quadraphonics had been around for maybe 6 years, and although probably unknown at the time, was then at or near its not-very-high peak.

The video article indicated that the development of a video disc was an important, if not critical step in the wider use of domestic video systems. At the time the Philips VLP system was an unfulfilled promise in production terms. This thinking was probably derived from established audio practice. Yet it didn’t turn out that way. The public readily accepted video tape cassettes for pre-recorded materials as well as for time-shifting, and when VLP reincarnated as LaserDisc finally appeared, it was a minority format. It wasn’t until much later, after the physically smaller DVD arrived that disc usurped tape. That turn of events suggests that just perhaps the disc was not a sine qua non for quadraphonics, which might have been helped had an adequate discrete four-channel tape format been developed, and as previously suggested the Elcaset probably could have done the job. Even so, quadraphonics would still likely have been stymied by the inherent inconvenience of its four-square speaker arrangement.

From the collection of WW articles and items I have attached just one page, selected not so much for the content of the quadraphonics item, but more for the preceding item with the Handelian title. Did that portend the direction in which quadraphonics was headed?




Cheers,

[Ted Kendall]

I don't think for a moment that the public for quadrophonics would have moved to tape - the first marketing of stereo in this country was on open-reel tape, and that failed utterly in commercial terms. Video recording on cassettes, albeit big, bulky and expensive things, succeeded because it did something a lot of people actually wanted to do, and was an advance different in kind, not degree. In the days before wall-to-wall TV on umpteen channels, missing a wanted programme could be a real frustration, as there might or might not be one repeat and then maybe none for months, if ever.