I have that in my bathroom and kitchen. Background. MY desktop SVS wireless prime are "decent". but not "high fidelity. Even in stereo, quality is mitigated by bluetooth, and the cheap built in class d amps. The Sonos one and klipsch the three sound good, not great. Better than those google dots.
I still have my father's Quad Stereo by Fisher. It was very exuberating when you could hear the extra speakers. Changed the orientation of a lot of songs for the better.
My audiophile housemate owned four Klipschhorn speakers (one in each corner of the den), a McIntosh 4 channel amp., a Thorens vinyl player, and a Studer Revox reel to reel. It was never a pleasure to listen to because I found it to be a "busy" distraction where each cut played seemed like an exaggerated demo. My personal stereo was a 2 channel Bang Olufsen Beomaster and it was good enough for me. I've owned four of them over the years and love them. When I moved out my bedroom was quickly filled with a pipe organ, hah!
My 1972 Panasonic stereo system was actually 4 channel-ready. All you had to do was to purchase 2 extra speakers. Considering the added cost of 4 channel recordings, I opted not to pursue it. However, at one point it appeared that Quadrophonic was the future of audio.
There were many such systems but all they did was connect the rear two speakers in series with a blocking capacitor also on series, across the left and right channels providing a difference signal to the rear. The SQ system had 4 discreet channels, the additional two derived from a complex arrangement of sum and differences subencoded in the primary left and right.
A famous quadraphonic album was Tommy by The Who, which was encoded in SQ. The movie (1975) took it to an even higher level, being encoded in _quintaphonic_ sound, five discrete tracks. On the DVD release there is a bonus track, where it is shown how much effort they have done to retrieve the 1970s equipment needed to remaster the original multi-channel sound.
Tommy is not in quadraphonic - Quadrophenia was planned to be but Pete Townshend was not satisfied with the playback quality through the matrix system so it was never released that way. They did the Tommy film in quintaphonic as you say - the only other Who quadraphonic release was a bootleg of a king biscuit flower hour radio show
Maybe you're thinking of the Tommy SACD and DVD-A releases from the early 2000s? No vintage quad of that album exists. I have the SACD and it is STUNNING!!!
Half speed delivered higher sonic articulation on all channels...big bro had a Teac reel, and a Pioneer receiver with quad and a bunch of the best support equipment!!! Helped our band in the pre-dj early days... and the BSR turntable, Teac cassette just Killed the audience at break between sets... those were the greatest days😎🎶✔️👆✌️🔥💥
The house my family moved into in the early 1980s had a quadraphonic hi-fi setup installed in the sunken family room (the two most 70s home items I can think of), and there was even a set of headphones with two 1/4" plugs and four drivers so you could experience quadraphonic bliss without bothering anyone else, but we never had any quadraphonic recordings. When I was a kid, my favorite move was the switch the unit from stereo to quadraphonic when there was an 8-track in there, because then it would play two tracks simultaneously
'Ole Audiophile to LC: You pretty much nailed the story I lived. I was inspired to purchase a full Quadrophonc setup after attending a concert, you nailed it, Pink Floyd in 1973, the dark side of the moon tour. I bought the speakers and the decoding gear built into a preamp with a rear amplifier, one tape looped it to a stereo reciever for four authentic channels. It had Matrix & SQ, this Pioneer unit with inputs for a CD-4 demodulator which I purchased. I had all three mediums, the reel to reel was the best but lacked quad sources to record from other than records. 8Tracks made dreadful source material. It actually all really worked quite well if one had it all but damn few did ( I was all alone as far as I knew.) The real problem turned out to be finding source material, recordings in Quad. Nobody and I mean ONE single record store had quad records (Recordlland mall store) & them damn few. One had to buy quad to hear quad so it slowly all got strangled by economics of the day. I went straight to Dolby Surround into every generation since. Thanx.
Today, I own & use a 6.2 Channel setup with Super Audio multichannel & a format you forgot, DVD-Audio multichannel. Both require decoding (Sound famiiiar?), one's a Sony format , the SACD, the other requires a DVD-Audio player, not to be confused with DVD-Video which is why the format suddenly persished. A decade later & more, they still release mulitichannel recordings in both formats even though both are considered dead.
You are correct to point out the issues of the listening room. Most people are not sufficiently committed to home hifi to have 4 speakers around a room. This is clearly part of the reason why most people nowadays don't have a sound system that's even comparable to a 1970s stereo ... they make do with a Bluetooth box of some description, or listen via their questionable quality TV soundbar. For most people the only place nowadays where multichannel sound is feasible is in their car. The speakers are built in and have a consistent position that doesn't compromise the internal physical layout of the vehicle, unlike at home where your partner decides that the room needs a redesign ... "do we really need these big boxes in the way?" !
Indeed, I can understand the problems of room placement. Growing up in the '80s-'00s, we had home theater setups in both the rec room and (eventually) the living room.* But thanks to Dad, we _also_ had office-style suspended ceilings in both the rec room _and_ the basement room below the living room -- which made it _very_ easy to run hidden wires back to the rear speakers in both rooms. These ceilings also came in handy for running a phone line to our second desktop computer (when we had dial-up internet in the mid to late 90s), running ethernet cables (after we got broadband internet in 2000), and moving Dad's bedroom TV to a different corner of his room (where there was more space for a bigger TV and a small stereo). Since moving to a different house with my stepmom, Dad replicated his living room setup in his man cave; he ran speaker wire along the baseboards, since the room has no side doors ahead of his chair or his couch. He also set up surround in his living room -- where a basement workshop beneath (with a suspended ceiling) makes for easy access for hiding speaker wires under the floor. Meanwhile, I and several other relatives have never bothered with surround at all -- either due to lack of money, lack of interest, lack of over-ceiling or under-floor access to hide wires above or beneath doors ... or just lack of practical places to _put_ rear speakers given the room layout. * Our house was a split level, with the bedrooms half a story up from the living/dining/kitchen level, and a lower level (rec room, office, and extra bedroom) underneath the bedrooms (so, half a story down from the living room). There was also a lower basement under the living room level, half a story down from the rec room.
I did a lot of hifi/stereo setups in the early 70s on behalf of a major electronics store in Toronto. I did one quad setup and this client had the ideal setup - a high end 4 track reel to reel deck and a large room where the intended listening location was in the middle - away from the walls. He also had excellent source tapes. Aside from the format issues(significant) and running/hiding wires for rear speakers, the main issue was that most potential users didn’t have a suitable physical space or weren’t willing to compromise a “stylish” room layout for audio realism. My first question for any setup was “is it for listening or “background”?” If listening, I placed the speakers, if background then they identified the locations. As a rule, older clients with upscale systems( and fancier digs) more often went for “background” setups. I was always disappointed that binaural recording didn’t have a bigger following - although the fact that the whole performance rotated with your head was a bit disconcerting. I still remember listening to a radio broadcast of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida lying in bed while they were “hopping around on the ceiling.
Great video. Both of my late 70's Lincolns have Quadraphonic... or Quadrasonic 8 track players. The effect is surprisingly effective, so long as you can find quadraphonic 8 tracks in working condition.
Pioneer quadraphonic system in the early 70s changed my life Allman brothers live at the Philmore, got a job at a tv repair shop working with an electrical engineer learned more from him in 3 months than everything i never learned listening to some drone at school, back when America was America, and you could trade labor for amazing education in the real world instead of being dumbed down by the school system.
FYI, the Dark Side Atmos mix is its own thing, unrelated to the 70s quad mix by Alan Parsons (I just caught myself typing Alan Partridge 🤦♂️, now THAT would be an experience!). The recent Atmos version was mixed by James Guthrie who also created the 5.1 SACD mix in the early 2000s. I haven’t closely compared the two, but I suspect the 5.1 at least served as a starting point for the Atmos mix. Incidentally, the “Immersion” boxed set of Dark Side contains a discrete high resolution version of the 70s quad mix AND the 2000s 5.1- perfect for comparison. The quad mix is more “discrete” in the sense that the sounds are separated more clearly in space, and the panning and other effects are more primitive. However, I prefer it in many ways over the more diffuse and sophisticated 5.1 mix, which sounds significantly better overall, but does get a bit swirly and cloudy at times.
The Alan Partridge version is epic! 😂 Thanks for the clarification of the two versions. Now I have to listen to the original. Another good one I found on Dolby Atmos was Bohemian Rhapsody. Now if they could only do the Beatles' "LOVE" mix in Dolby Atmos...
@@LittleCarI neglected to mention that it’s true, the Beatles “LOVE” isn’t available in Atmos, but it is readily available in the usual 5.1 formats. I own the DVD Audio version, and it’s glorious. If you’re a Beatles fan, I think you’ll find the Atmos version of Abbey Road to be transcendent. Start at the beginning, or cut right to “Here Comes the Sun” for a quick hit. Either way, play loud. 🔈 🔊 🔈 🔊 🔈 🔊 🔈 🔊
Ohhh man, I still remember Pink Floyd’s The Wall complete with laser show at The Palace of Fine Arts in SF playing to full house every weekends, and on week days, the same venue would just be another planetarium.
@@MrAntennaBall we had the same thing here in Seattle. I think they still do Dark Side. Last time I went (ten+ years ago) the place looked run down, one of the lasers was out of focus, and the speakers rattled. Clearly Laser Floyd’s time had passed.
Very cool that you‘re branching out to consumer electronics history. There are so many potential stories waiting to be told! BTW: the Lafayette catalogs available online are an additional excellent resource.
I had a Motorola 4 channel 8 track player in my car before most people had anything more than a radio. It was amazing, I fitted 2 speakers in the front doors and 2 in the rear parcel shelf. Most people I knew then were simply blown away by the experience.
We had a Quadraphonic system at home growing in the 70s, using LPs and a Sony amp. The only album I specifically remember having identifiable four channel sound was “Switched on Bach” by Wendy Carlos. The sound whizzed around all corners of the room. Most of the Columbia albums had the original cover art shrunken down and surrounded by a broad gold band, to indicate they were Quadrophonic versions - an example is included in the Big Car video. The only variation we had - and I still have it - was the Carpenters “Now & Then”. It has a gatefold cover that unfolds into a triptych image, and has a very narrow Quadrophonic band only in the front cover, presumably so it didn’t disrupt the triptych.
Thanks for your presentation! I jumped on the quad bus early on. Lafayette store in town at the time carried Sony and Marantz. I TOOK A LOAN to buy the Sony TC 338 deck, a Marantz 4140 integrated (with those four Mac type BLUE meters), and FOUR Keff speakers = ($1300 in 1974)! I STILL have the deck and the 4140 to this day, although, only in storage. I now have dedicated theater with 7.2.4 Atmos, but do enjoy SACD audio in there as well.
Even if they had chosen a single standard for it from the start, quad still would've failed. In order to hear the quadraphonic effect, you have to be exactly in the "sweet spot" between all four speakers; if you're getting up and doing other things while listening to music, as people often do, the effect is lost. That's why surround sound is fine for movies, but has never caught on for music, despite repeated attempts over the past 50+ years. (Same thing with 3D film/video, which keeps coming back every few decades, just to prove over and over again that it's a novelty that quickly wears off.)
Maybe that could try again as it sounds like stereo people like me wold enjoy such a sound w have the sweet spot in stereo so that wouldn't be a problem and I bet it could be done alot cheaper today ☺️ps hi @vwestlife 👌👋
Although it's a real shame. Some music back in the 90s had simple Dolby Surround encoding, and some music that came on DVDs even had proper Dolby Digital/AC3 encoding, which is a real upgrade from just stereo. But yeah, never really caught on mainstream. Seems they now try again with music streaming services offering Dolby Atmos encoded music.
@@graealex I think you may be referring to DVD Audio. These discs usually had 2 different formats on them. The first was the album mixed in usually Dolby Digital (AC3) the same format most movies on DVD were mixed. Sometimes it was DTS. This version was able to be decoded by any DVD player that could decode DD or DTS. The 2nd format was called DVD Audio. This was the album remixed with a higher resolution usually 96KHZ 5.1 while the standard DD or DTS version was 48KHZ 5.1. The higher resolution version required a DVD player that could decode the DVD Audio’s higher resolution. While the AC3 version was slightly higher definition than CD’s 44.1KHZ the 96KHZ version was noticeably better sounding. Some DVD Audio discs also had a stereo 192KHZ version that was even cleaner sounding yet. Unfortunately most DVD players weren’t DVD Audio compatible but still offered somewhat better sound than standard CD with the added surround sound benefit.
@@mikee2923 I was actually thinking about special feature music DVDs. As you wrote, with AC3 encoding. I have an awfully small collection of these, but listening to them really is an experience. Heck, even the Dolby Surround encoding, which is compatible with normal CD audio is already a much better experience, at least for dedicated listening in a home cinema setup. Also, no, the 96kHz has no discernable difference to normal CD audio at 44.1kHz. That's a myth. Audio University has a bunch of videos on the topic.
@@mikee2923 Watch the Audio University "Debunking the Digital Audio Myth: The Truth About the 'Stair-Step' Effect" video. For me, it cleared up numerous misconceptions about stair steps, aliasing and the Nyquist limit. Basically, unless you are some super-human being that can hear well into the ultrasonic range, going above 48 kHz makes zero difference, unless you are mastering. Same with more than 16 bit resolution. At least if the DAC is properly implemented and bandwidth-limited. Doesn't account for the possibility that Audio DVDs were simply mastered better.
Considering that the way stereo works was totally lost on most people I'm not surprised quadraphonic failed to catch on. People would do things like placing one speaker in a corner and the other up on shelve, sometimes even behind other furniture so any chance of a stereo image was completely lost anyway.
my best experience with quadraphonic sound was listening to Iron Butterfly's "In a Godda da Vida" with four-channel headphones! The drum solo in 3D is the best musical experience in my life!
We bought a Magnavox Quadraphonic system sometime around the early to mid seventies. We also purchased the 8-Track to support the format. It sounded pretty amazing as tape could sound. Best of all were LP Albums. Definitely a new dimension of listening!
Great video and information! I was a Marine stationed at Okinawa in "73". I was a quad guy but really didn't understand the whole concept of stereo vs quadrophonic! But I bought a Toshiba Quad System, PT-884 reel to reel, SB-404s Amp, SB-400 Turner, Frt SS-47'S and Rear SS-37'S speakers Akai 1721W reel to reel with built-in speakers! We used the shit out of that Akai, but it was only after I was out of the Service "76" that I really started to learn how to use the Quad System! No quad stations, so it was mostly reel to reel tapes and quad records, later bought a Panasonic Technics SA-8000x that had more technology built into it, than the Toshiba SB-404s but just on power I still think the Toshiba sounded better! Now all the 5.1, 7.2 Ect especially with movies but Rock music the systems just sound lame! I'll take a quad or especially an older quality Stereo System with a passive or active subwoofer hook into the "B" speakers so I can feel the Bass in my balls! With a good pair of speakers with at least 12" woofers on "A" speakers! I still have my equipment I purchased on the Rock! Good, Bad or indifferent they still work after 50 years! Now the Quadrophonic concept seems so yesterday? But a good Stereo System still kicks ass! Go figure?
Believe the first attempt at surround sound was with Fantasia. BTW, that turntable you showed was my first turn table. Briefly had a Realistic Quad receiver in the 70s when I worked at RS, returned it when my boss fired me.
Enjoyed that thanks. I vaguely remember the BBC doing quad demos in the 1970s, where you had to use two stereo radios - tuned to two BBC channels (Radio 1 and Radio 2, I think?)
One of my friends father had a quad system! A big Sansui receiver with 4 KLH speakers . Never got too many quad records ,he was a jazz enthusiast and already had a nice collection of records in 2channel ! So he was just listening to 4 speakers with stereo. It sounded very good !
When CD-4 , which was the "new" system of Quad hit RCA, I was a recording engineer at RCA recording studios in Hollywood. .One of the other engineers said that CD-4 was "a great system of Quad as long as you had two engineers to setup and maintain it." Which was a very true statement.It was very difficult to get it to work in the average home by the average person. At RCA Hollywood we were tasked with remixing just a few albums into Quad and it was a very minor priority.Finally, we were told to "put the most in important things in front and the minor elements in back." When remixing in Quad it was done by the engineer alone with no producer input. I remember a friend of mine, who was familiar with both the stereo and the Quad versions of a "Jefferson Airplane" album, say that both versions sounded very different from each other.
Thanks for an informative video. As a young teenager in Australia in the early 1970s, I could only dream of owning a Quadraphonic system. That was until Electronics Today magazine published their version of the Hafler method using a wirewound potentiometer and a couple of cheap, low quality speakers for the out-of-phase rear speakers. I quickly cobbled it together and was absolutely amazed by the effect. It wasn't quadraphonic per se but it certainly gave an expanded soundstage on many (but not all) albums in my meagre collection. One of my favourite albums, Pink Floyd's Ummagumma was outstanding. Even Electronics Today themselves described the experience with that album as "particularly delightful".
Oddly, Ive had Quad systems in the past and dug it, I will always remember it from the movie Convoy, when Pigpen is braggin about his truck havin a warm water waterbed and a Quadraphonic stereo.
Great video! I've talked to a lot of friends and family that were really big into music in the 70's, and asked them if they ever got into the quadraphonic craze. A few weren't interested, but every other person I talked to said that they didn't only because they had no idea which version to buy, and were essentially waiting for one version to win out and become the norm before buying all new equipment. Of course this never happened, and none of them ever bought anything. I can relate to this myself, where my parents waited quite some time to buy a VCR, waiting to see which format (Betamax or VHS) would win out.
I bough my entire setup in early 1976 when they were on sale. Federated store on West Olympic Boulevard in West L.A. Still have them, not sure which type it is but it is definitely not the CD-4. So it must be one of the other. No big shake either way, no rocket science, either.
Nice and well detailed video. I work for a radio station that was an "experimental" Quad radio station years ago. It was a "Dolby FM" station for a while as well. I still own a "Quadraphonic Receiver" made by Marantz.
In the late 80s I purchased a used Pioneer quadraphonic receiver/amplifier from a pawn shop for around $50. On its front display it had a circular screen about the diameter of a soda can that had printed markings that resembled the site from a fighter planes machine gun. Just in front of that was a small joystick that controlled a green dot that appeared on the screen you could use to maneuver the sound to any position where you placed the dot. It had a few different switchable options that allowed you to use it in quadraphonic mode, stereo mode or a mode that allowed you to place different channels in different areas and then mix the whole thing around with the joystick. It was one of the most awesome sounding receivers that I have ever owned but sadly sometime in the mid 90s our young son spilled his cup of milk on the top of it and it never turned on again :-( That thing was heavy and huge and the speakers in each corner, which I believe were 2 pairs of zenith 3-ways consisting of a 15 inch woofer, a 8 inch mid-driver and horn tweeter was absolutely amazing, though it did take up most of the living room at the time, lol! I love the sound, convenience and size of my newer equipment, but I don’t think it would be too hard to convince me to trade it out for that 80s set up…
Great video, I’ve just restored one of the early Sony Quad decoders, and it has got hardly any separation. Not the best experience, but now making my own with the latter CBS Motorola chip sets. Liked and subscribed.
It was absolutely awesome! I had a Kenwood KR-9940 Quad receiver that synthesized stereo radio stations into quad. I had 4 Bose 301 speakers and it was immaculate sound! Too bad it went belly up.
Lovely walk through of the history. Many thanks.Interesting how the music and film industry persists with surround despite public indifference. I love hearing old Quad recordings and now Atmos is fast becoming the default in music streaming and the stereo product likely to, in future, just be a stereo fold-down from that. Downside is the preferred listening environment is now headphones so it'll be spatial audio. Even Harmon Kardon's Logic 7 has had some modest success in prestige cars (and that's essentially just synthesizing surround from 2 channel sources). Our neighbour had a Quad setup. As a youngster I was a tad put off at quite how much easy listening seemed to dominate the Quad records that he played us. I did get to hear David Essex's Rock On as it was intended to be heard though.
I own Dark Side of the Moon an SQ vinyl recording I bought as a teen back in 1985. To this day that quadraphonic recording sounds amazing on my stereo system. In fact it is the only vinyl LP I own that sounds sonically better than a compact disc.
this channel is such a nostalgia trip! I was just young enough to miss the whole quadraphonic thing but still remember those strange out of place looking 8-track tape decks in some peoples cars when they came in for repair at our garage in the early 80s. however, the whole HIgh FIdelity movement paid dividends for my generation because music clarity had become a thing. my Alfasud had a high-end Clarion car stereo, my walkman was a Sanyo and my bedroom had a collection of separates including Rotel, Technics, JVC, Aiwa and Koss. by wearing those Koss studio headphones and also running a pair of speakers the effect was similar to modern surround sound. then came Funky Town by Lips Inc with sounds being placed with a 3D effect (wearing headphones) and a journey into having my own home music studio trying to emulate that in heavy rock music.
Cool to see both Grand Prix and Pink Floyd in this video. Two of my favourite things. A bit disappointed though that you didn't produce this with quadrophonic sound ;-)
Back in the 1970, I tried to listen to a few of Pink Floyd's songs.... never could stay wake until the end of any one of them. More of a Ten Years After and Chicago type of guy I am.
There was also holophonic audio and Tomita's "Pyramid of sound". These two offered the usual 4 channel quad effect but also went up and down. With holophonics, you could use regular headphones and still achieve 3D sound.
I am a professional archivist, and four-channel 8-track tapes had twice as much tape in the same cartridge. Standard two channel 8-track tapes could hold up to 90 minutes of material so in four channel mode, a quad 8 track could hold about 45 minutes.
2:17 Audio engineer Conny Plank also had something like that worked into his studio. There are several Quadrophonic mixes done by him. I think even Kraftwerk's 1974 Album "Autobahn" has a quadrophonic mix. It was the last album of that band recorded and mixed at Conny Plank's Studio.
I remember years ago when i heard the Quadro mix of "Dark side of the Moon", which was also done by Alan Parsons himself. It was an amazing experience and with that mix the whole Album gets an entirely new dimension. Especially the tracks "On the Run" and "Time" really make for an impressive Quadrophonic experience. You almost don't even wanna go back to Stereo afterwards. Also there were a few Quadrophonic CD releases without phase encoding but rather DTS encoding, so you could only play these CDs with an CD player that had Toslink or S/PDIF out, conected to an AV receiver that had a DTS Decoder in it. And of course there were the more common Dolby Surround encoded Albums that didn't require any special decoding hardware but only really showed their true effect if played back via AV receivers that have Dolby Surround ProLogic mode. When i was a kid in the 90s, my parents had a Dolby Surround Home Theater System and we often watched movies like that and it really felt like cinema. There were also occasional Magazine CDs with Dolby Surround calibration sounds and demo songs on them. We had a few of them and that always felt really special and High-Tech to me. Isao Tomita's album "Pictures at an Exhibition" from 1975 also has a Dolby Surround encoded CD release from the early 90s.
The CD4 standard had the intrinsic problem that when playing CD4 encoded records with a normal stylus, it would just "sand away" the 40kHz additional signal on the tevoedz. You'd lose your rear channels. So when buying an expansive Shibata stylus, you were disappointed for getting very distorted or no sound at all on the rear speakers.
"Sound does not just come from the front" - Actually in case of classical stage music, it does. The stage is in front of you and all sound you hear is produced on that stage and only comes from there. Sure, sound is reflected of walls, ceiling, and floor in the room you are sitting but that is also true in your living room, where sound from the speakers in front of you is reflected by walls, ceiling, and floor. That means multi-speaker sound, in case of music, is not about reproducing audio sources to your sides or behind you, as those do not exist in a live concert, but about reproducing the "room" of the concerts, making your small living room sound like a huge concert hall. The question is: Is that even desirable? I like the warm, damped sound of my living room way better than I like the cold, wide open, reverberating sound of most concert halls. That's personal taste but I have no interest in making my living room sound like a big opera building. It's a different thing when it comes to movies, as of course, when you reproduce sounds of an environment, that sound will come from all directions in reality as sound sources are scattered all around you when you are standing in that environment.
@senorverde09 I think it's good that you talk about "effects", because that's all stereo really is, an effect. If you want to reproduce a live orchestra properly, you need one speaker per instrument and you need to place those speakers in the way that the relative spacing of the instruments on stage has been. Stereo does not reproduce a stage correctly because in reality your head is not pointed at the stage at a constant angle, and if the angle changes even slightly, what your ears will hear will also change. The same goes for stereo sound and the angle at which you point your head at the speakers, but it's not the same. It's more like you have a wall with two holes between you and the live stage, and initially the holes fit your ear position perfectly, but now if you turn your head a little, the angle between your head and the holes changes, and that results in you not hearing the same sound you would hear if there wasn't a wall with holes in front of you, since that wall will block direct sound paths that would otherwise exist. Instead you still get pre-filtered sound paths that now no longer matches your ear position, as they only match if your ears are perfectly aligned to the holes. More speakers in front of you would improve that situation, as the wall will then have more holes allowing more sound paths to pass through, but to get a near perfect reproduction, you'd need either an almost infinite number of speakers in front of you (in which case the wall would have more holes than wall and basically disappears) or, as I said, at least one speaker per sound source, in which case there is no wall to begin with. So stereo is more about selling you an illusion, like a picture that looks three-dimensional to you as long as you look at it from the right angle, even though it's not really three-dimensional and doesn't behave the way a real 3D object would behave when your eyes move around or the lighting conditions change. Multichannel sound tries to "enhance" this illusion, but "enhancement" is subjective. In the 80s, for example, just about every compact stereo (that came with speakers) had an "enhanced stereo" or "wide stereo" mode (they may have used some other silly name). When you activated this mode, a signal processor boosted the difference between the two stereo channels while attenuating the mono signal common to both stereo channels. Often, some reverb is also added to the signal. In this way, you get a sound as if the room were much larger and the speakers further apart than they actually are. Depending on the room, speaker placement, type of music and personal taste, this mode can actually sound better, for me it sounded rather awful most of the time. Apple's HomePod does something similar today: it has sensors to measure the sound characteristics of the room and then uses a DSP to adjust the audio signal to compensate for any deficiencies in the room. It may sound good to some people, it may sound horrible to others. But what none of these enhancements do is making it sound more realistic, rather the opposite. And this is a problem that you have with all multi-channel systems, right up to Dobly Atmos. They can't reproduce reality any better than stereo, they just create an artificial soundscape that may sound impressive, but not what reality would sound like. These systems were not designed to reproduce reality, but to reproduce a sound engineer's vision, as the sound they produce was not recorded in a real environment, but generated entirely in a recording studio on a computer. The quality of the results depends heavily on how good the computer software is at what it does and on the sound engineer's skills and knowledge of real sound reproduction. TH-cam is full of video that criticize that many Dolby Atmos soundtracks sound rather poor and they usually blame the sound engineers for that, who apparently often have no idea what they are doing, since to them it may sound "good" and "real" but apparently they have never been in a real life situation like that, otherwise they'd know that this is absolutely not what a real helicopter sounds like that approaches you from the back and then flies over you head. That's how a helicopter sounds in a PlayStation video game but again, that sound was produced by a sound engineer on a computer who also had no idea what reality sounds like. On the other hand, a computer rendered movie is also not reality, yet as long as it is close enough to reality, you can convince your brain to buy it, so I guess it's okay anyhow but that doesn't make it objectively "better" than some other system which also sells you a different kind of illusion.
@@senorverde09No you are still listening in a three dimensional space. Other than the rare antiphonal performance all the direct sound still comes from the front. Properly mic'ed live performance will have phase and reflection information for depth perception.
Not in my experience. As I mention in a nearby comment, for years I produced DVDs of choir concerts in Europe, and recorded with four discrete audio channels. I was surprised to discover early on that the rear channels were only a few db's down from the front channel levels. And the sound is completely different. Sure, if I wanted to hear a jazz quartet playing in front of me in my living room, plain old stereo would do fine. But if you want to re-live the experience of hearing an excellent choir performing in, say, Chartres Cathedral, the surround-sound effect of four separate channels (LF, RF, LR, RR) will blow you away. And by the way, Hollywood doesn't do this. They fill the rear channels with fake crowd cheers and the like. It would be very difficult to record actual surround sound for everything, real time.
I remember these systems being in many of my friends’ older brothers’ bedrooms in the 80’s. As a teenager into audio/music I wanted to hear the quadraphonic effect but only one of them actually had the 4 speakers connected and he had no media in the format.
Interesting you mentioning the Hafler circuit. David Hafler was an American engineer well known for having founded first the Dynaco and then Hafler audio equipment companies. Notably you could buy kits of their equipment, of which I built 3 Dynaco and 2 Hafler units. (The Hafler DH200 still powers my garage system, albeit having only one channel, making it a Halfer now I suppose. 😂) As a budding young audiophile we looked askance at the Quad systems as the sound was indeed inferior to the stereo systems of the day. My take is that many in the US felt the same, leading ultimately to the failure of the format. (As for 8 track, don't get me started. All those tracks and the best songs on a album were invariably interrupted as the player clicked and clacked changing to another track. Arggg!
We had a Quad Reel to Reel and a quad 8 Track. As far as I know the 8 track didn't run at half speed. I remember we had both the Regular and Quad 8 Track Albums "The Plastic Cow goes Moog" Both had the same song count but the Quad 8 Track had more tape than the Regular 8 Track, and I think the Quad used thinner tape stock, too - it constantly buggered up later in its life (hence I remember helping my dad fix it an noting the amount of tape). The Quad 8 Track deck was also able to record in quadraphonic (I think it was a Technics unit) via 4 mic inputs on the front or 4 line inputs on the back. The Reel to Reel deck (an Akai, I think) had quad recording via a DIN connector on the back or two 1/4 inch Stereo mic jacks on the front (?). The whole system ran through a Heathkit AM/FM Quadraphonic amplifier that powered 4 Altec-Lansing Voice Of The Cinema speakers. We still have the Quadraphonic Headphones somewhere...
Correct, Q8 cartridges ran at 3 & 3/4 ips (same as stereo 8-track tapes), but with four channels, the tapes were necessarily twice the length of the stereo versions. One advantage of Q8 tapes is that there was only one automatic er, "program change" needed at the halfway mark (when the foil bit on the tape caused the tape head to shift to the second program), which meant there were fewer interruptions or fade outs/fade ins, whereas stereo 8-tracks had four such interruptions over the course of an entire album. The biggest advantage with Q8 tapes (and the much rarer and more expensive quadraphonic reel-to-reel tapes) was their completely discrete channel separation -- no smearing of channels as occurred with the vinyl decoding schemes (QS, SQ and CD-4). I have many quad LPs and Q8 tapes. Sadly, the tapes are only gathering dust any more, but I still enjoy the quad LPs, albeit only with "Dolby Pro Logic" which is not a faithful reproduction for SQ and CD-4 sources. I dream of finding a working Tate, Sony or other "full SQ logic" decoder some day!
I have a National Panasonic music centre from 1975 that supports quadraphonic with the addition of extra speakers. There is a mode switch at the back. I'll have to check what format it supports, but I think it's SQ. Dark Side of the Moon is the first album I'll get for it.
I have an LP "Deep Purple Machine Head" recorded in SQ quadraphonic. Requires the stereo signal to be processed through a proprietry decoder (CBS licensed) and then 4 power amps. It was impressive.
Any Dolby Surround analog receiver made in the last 25 years will decode that record more or less properly. I use a vintage Onkyo (pre-HDMI) to do this, all it lacks is a phono preamp so I use an external one.
I wish I had a quid for each time I have I seen stereo systems in people's homes with the stereo speakers placed side by side or just either side of micro-systems. I don't really think the mass market is there even for ideal stereo reproduction (aside from through headphones), let alone set-ups that require more faff.
Reproducing any type of surround sound requires proper placement of at least two speakers and the listener. For most people, it's just not worthwhile - they'll be up and moving around the room, or have music on in the background while they work or read. There's no reason to lay out their furniture for optimum sound-field reproduction.
I was only a few years by the end of the old '70's quadraphonic era, so missed it. However, I really liked SACD, and was disappointed that it didn't catch on. Dark Side of the Moon and Nine Inch Nails The Downward Spiral sound amazing on SACD, and I still listen to them. I've been told Wish You Were Here on SACD is even better than Dark Side of the Moon, but I refuse to pay the insane prices copies of it usually go for these days. When they were current releases back in the early 2000's, SACD's were not that much more then normal CD's.
Just buy a blue-ray of said PF album. Chances of you hearing the difference between it and the SACD are nil. They're probably the same master anyway. One can, however, hear distinct differences between 5.1 and good old Quad mixes of aforementioned albums. In the 70's they (e.g. Alan Parsons) tended to mix each instrument to it's own channel (left, right, back L and back R) for Quad whereas for 5.1 they mixed it less "discretely" in strictly separated channels, as in stereo. I don't hear a real separated stereo effect: it all sounds like 2 x mono to me. As does 5.1. However, those Quad mixes are great!
The additional speakers and amp costs was just not the problem, but I know that was an easy pick. I owned a huge library of music in the 70's. Music manufacturers just keep changing formats and I didn't want my music taking up all my living room. Today if I shop around I'll buy an SACD player and start collecting whatever I can find. I'll buy powered monitors and maybe a preamp/SACD combo?
Decades ago I had a quadrophonic vinyl record with a organ concert in Freiburg cathedral. In that church there are four organs on different places which can be played from one console single or combined and the idea was four organs together on a quadrophonic record. But sadwise I had no equipment, no record player to create quadrophonic so and so I could not hear the quadrophonic effect at all
Speaking of Pink Floyd they were my introduction to Quad, at the Hollywood Bowl in 1972, the last tour that Rick was panning the band. To say I became obsessed with Quad is a huge understatement….,
I went to a Roger Waters dark side of the moon tour in 2012 if I remember right and they played the song sheep and I could hear the sheep sounds behind me, I think the whole concert was in surround sound. It was an epic concert at the Hollywood bowl!
I honestly haven't heard a true quadrophonic track but I have a 200 watt Yamaha amp running a KEF floorstander in each corner (All second hand of course!) and it sounds fantastic. You still get that stereo separation from side to side and totally enveloping sound.
Even today, I have a rear set of speakers that are wired as a "difference" channel. Obviously, not true quadraphonic, but it really enhances the reverberations of the singers of most rock and pop music. The front speakers play the singers, and the rear speakers play the echo. This effect is the strongest on Billy Joel The Stranger, but it's also very good with most 70's rock music, and it still plays well with today's pop music. This is what Radio Shack called "quatravox", and I'm glad it was mentioned in this video.
Hungarian Radio regularly broadcasted quadrophonic programs on two of its channels btw. the late seventies and 1992. Even radio plays were made in this format.
9:51They said, you coud listen the records in stereo and later in quadro, but reality was, the quadro signal was so fragile and easily damaged. You doesn't hear, if frequencies above 16 kHz are gone, but CD4 doesn't work, when they are gone.
I never did go for quad. The closest I ever got was wiring rear speakers in a Hafler configuration when listening to the VHS Hifi tape of The Empire Strikes Back. But I do have the surround sound version of The Dark Side of the Moon, and it's amazing. My prepro upmixes to my overhead Atmos speakers.
No mention of MiniDisks, or the fact that with MD-DATA disks you could record up to 8 discreet channels. You could back up any of the 4 or 5-channel formats onto an MD-DATA disk and remix it to any format you wanted. I use them for recording separate channels of myself playing different parts and then mixing down an entire band of myself onto stereo or quad.
Another problem with multi-channel, high resolution CD size media was that SACD had a competitor call DVD-Audio. They were incompatible and also at that time MP3 players were in ascendancy.
I bought a Sony record player player in the early 70s. In the place where a cassette player would be in the stereo version, a black plastic (useless) tray was fitted. Inside there were FOUR separate SANYO amplifiers. Of course, four identical speakers were included. I think it cost £132 and was purchased in Edinburgh. I still have a few SQ records but not the player.
Interesting video...Now sat listening to 50th anniversary remaster of "The Dark Side of the Moon" via Dolby Atmos... they did make great use of those extra channels!
I built an SQ decoder from an Electronics Australia design in the 70s. I built the additional amps for the additional channels. I still have some quadraphonic records, including Dark Side of the Moon.
I discovered quad in the mid 80's, in my late teens, when I found an SQ decoder in a second hand shop, (it was the joystick balace control that got my attention LOL). It was ony 15 watt per channel, so after some rewireing I gave it 4 line out sockets, and plugged them into two matching 75 watt amplifiers with a speaker at each corner of my bedroom. I built an input switch box and it all sounded great. One day when I was off work, (or possibly between jobs), the whole lot magically appered in the lounge. My dad was none too pleased, until I played a Chicago album. He was also hooked.
I still have my old Marantz quadraphonic receiver in the garage but the four Kenwood speakers with 15 inch woofers are long gone and the plug in CD-4 card is on the fritz. I have however kept some of the Quad LP’s. My present Dolby Atmos setup sounds better, the quadraphonic revolution failed because the analog format just wasn’t adequate to the technical challenges.
My brother had a pair of Quadrophonic headphones he bought in the 70s. In the early 90s, his son needed a guitar amp for his guitar and my brother knew I had a spare/unused amp. I offered to trade my Squier Sidekick 15 for those headphones and he agreed. I still have those headphones somewhere.
Fun fact: early versions of the Compact Disc specification include a provision for 4-channel audio, but it never got used and was dropped from later versions.
A friend’s parents had a furniture store so he had a room full of JVC stereo gear. We would take turns sitting in a chair in the center of the room with a joystick sending the sound around in circles to all 4 speakers. Never bothered to listen to a whole album because the only place it sounded great was in that chair!😂
My living room Hifi is based around 2 stereo setups, 1 amp driving 2 speakers each. Most of the time the rear is just sent a copy of the front audio to fill the room better, but for films I send 4 discreet channels out from my pc, 2 to each amp. I temporarily connect a 5th powered speaker for use as a centre channel. It's a bit Heath Robinson, but provides a good enjoyable surround sound experience without buying expensive surround decoders or having to use non Hifi home cinema systems.
There's DTS releases of Pink Floyd stuff (other albums), I also have some bootleg 4 channel WAV of various other albums. Autobahn by Kraftwek is good in quad as you might expect. My 5.1 system is driven into 4.1 (quad). Tomita also released quad and Dolby surround albums. He also released a 5 channel album, the write up says you need a speaker above your head! I forget the album though.
Great 8-rack Quad tapes were: Band On the Run (Paul McCartney), Best of the Doors, Doobie Brothers (Vices), Santana, Simon & Garfunkel, and Eagles. For a short while, most everyone had Quad 8-tracks. My 1973 Gran Torino Sport had great factory speakers for my self-installed player. The only drawback was having to wait twice as long to get back to a favorite song as a standard 8-track. But i loved the sound! Thanks for the memories.
I remember this in the 1970s....I made my own Quad System out of my Airline wards stereo...by cutting a few wires...it was not any different from any other recordings...I did some expansion of it it was the same
Never realised that Japan had TV in 1939. The more I look into the history of the development of TV the more complicated it seems! A history of the Philips company could also be an interesting Little Car topic.
I used to sell quadrophnic hi-fi systems in the 7Os at the RSC Hi-Fi Centres, they were absolutely brilliant when hooked up to good quality, large loudspeakers, the effect was amazing. The problem was they just didnt seem to sell well, dispite being impressive. Its so sad, but I think what killed them off was the cost of the system, considering that four loudspeakers were needed and of course they still used magnetic tape technology. They would be even better now if they were re-introduced in a digital version.
Just sold my Sony SQR-6650. Had problems with the knobs kept shorting out causing erratic input selection and volume random spikes. Def a different experience
Great video thanks for making it. I have about 10 Quad LPs in the various formats, but I don’t have a Quad amp. I have to say all of the Quad albums I own sound fantastic - even in Stereo. The Quad versions on Dark Side of The Moon, Tubular Bells and Abraxas that I own sound better than the stereo versions to me. I had been thinking of buying a Quad processor, but I don’t own enough Quad albums to justify it really, although I suspect maybe I would soon buy more once I had one. More recently I hooked the turntable up to my surround sound amp and have got some great results listening to Quad recordings through that. I’m not sure how accurately the sound is being presented, but it does sound good - and that’s probably enough for me tbh. I have found certain discs sound better in either Dolby Pro-logic IIx, DTS Neo 6: Music or even basic Dolby Pro-logic and I do tend to disable the centre channel.
Quadrophonic was fantastic, I bought my quad immediately and enjoyed it very, very much. But for many the problem was the nature of listening to this music. Only few listened while sitting in a quiet "theatre", enjoying amazing effects. Most listened to a "random" music while i.e. vacuuming. Quadrophonic was therefore insignificant. This is what killed it.
Stereo and quad 8 track tapes both run at 3.75 fps. The notch in the case allowed a switch to move the head to the correct position(to read 4 tracks at once). Choosing the correct format selection via the selector switch allowed for the 4 channel output. If you have a quad receiver with a channel burned out, you can usually rout that channel from the "source" output jack to another receiver/amplifier(two stereo receivers can produce true quad sound, although you lose the easy "spatial" or single volume control.
Ironically now we have Bluetooth speakers, which are mono. How advanced is that!
and sometimes no better than AM radio..
Crazy
I have that in my bathroom and kitchen. Background. MY desktop SVS wireless prime are "decent". but not "high fidelity. Even in stereo, quality is mitigated by bluetooth, and the cheap built in class d amps. The Sonos one and klipsch the three sound good, not great. Better than those google dots.
😁🤣
You really don't know how Bluetooth speakers work do you... Technically it's stereo it's just stereo pumped through a single speaker.
I still have my father's Quad Stereo by Fisher. It was very exuberating when you could hear the extra speakers. Changed the orientation of a lot of songs for the better.
My audiophile housemate owned four Klipschhorn speakers (one in each corner of the den), a McIntosh 4 channel amp., a Thorens vinyl player, and a Studer Revox reel to reel. It was never a pleasure to listen to because I found it to be a "busy" distraction where each cut played seemed like an exaggerated demo. My personal stereo was a 2 channel Bang Olufsen Beomaster and it was good enough for me. I've owned four of them over the years and love them. When I moved out my bedroom was quickly filled with a pipe organ, hah!
My 1972 Panasonic stereo system was actually 4 channel-ready. All you had to do was to purchase 2 extra speakers. Considering the added cost of 4 channel recordings, I opted not to pursue it. However, at one point it appeared that Quadrophonic was the future of audio.
There were many such systems but all they did was connect the rear two speakers in series with a blocking capacitor also on series, across the left and right channels providing a difference signal to the rear.
The SQ system had 4 discreet channels, the additional two derived from a complex arrangement of sum and differences subencoded in the primary left and right.
I have a 1975 National Panasonic music centre like that.
A famous quadraphonic album was Tommy by The Who, which was encoded in SQ. The movie (1975) took it to an even higher level, being encoded in _quintaphonic_ sound, five discrete tracks. On the DVD release there is a bonus track, where it is shown how much effort they have done to retrieve the 1970s equipment needed to remaster the original multi-channel sound.
Tommy is not in quadraphonic - Quadrophenia was planned to be but Pete Townshend was not satisfied with the playback quality through the matrix system so it was never released that way. They did the Tommy film in quintaphonic as you say - the only other Who quadraphonic release was a bootleg of a king biscuit flower hour radio show
Six-track surround sound with the Todd-AO film process started with the Oklahoma! musical in 1955.
Maybe you're thinking of the Tommy SACD and DVD-A releases from the early 2000s? No vintage quad of that album exists. I have the SACD and it is STUNNING!!!
I still have that album I. It's cover, he's on the front of it, AND a 330 watt rms 4 way amp but need 2 more matching speakers
@haweater1555 I had a 6 track cassette player in my 69 Voxel Velox car, sounded better than today's digital CDs
Stepping into Techmoan territory now, I like it.
Half speed delivered higher sonic articulation on all channels...big bro had a Teac reel, and a Pioneer receiver with quad and a bunch of the best support equipment!!! Helped our band in the pre-dj early days... and the BSR turntable, Teac cassette just Killed the audience at break between sets... those were the greatest days😎🎶✔️👆✌️🔥💥
In England the BSR turntable was ubiquitous.
The house my family moved into in the early 1980s had a quadraphonic hi-fi setup installed in the sunken family room (the two most 70s home items I can think of), and there was even a set of headphones with two 1/4" plugs and four drivers so you could experience quadraphonic bliss without bothering anyone else, but we never had any quadraphonic recordings. When I was a kid, my favorite move was the switch the unit from stereo to quadraphonic when there was an 8-track in there, because then it would play two tracks simultaneously
'Ole Audiophile to LC: You pretty much nailed the story I lived. I was inspired to purchase a full Quadrophonc setup after attending a concert, you nailed it, Pink Floyd in 1973, the dark side of the moon tour. I bought the speakers and the decoding gear built into a preamp with a rear amplifier, one tape looped it to a stereo reciever for four authentic channels. It had Matrix & SQ, this Pioneer unit with inputs for a CD-4 demodulator which I purchased. I had all three mediums, the reel to reel was the best but lacked quad sources to record from other than records. 8Tracks made dreadful source material. It actually all really worked quite well if one had it all but damn few did ( I was all alone as far as I knew.) The real problem turned out to be finding source material, recordings in Quad. Nobody and I mean ONE single record store had quad records (Recordlland mall store) & them damn few. One had to buy quad to hear quad so it slowly all got strangled by economics of the day. I went straight to Dolby Surround into every generation since. Thanx.
Today, I own & use a 6.2 Channel setup with Super Audio multichannel & a format you forgot, DVD-Audio multichannel. Both require decoding (Sound famiiiar?), one's a Sony format , the SACD, the other requires a DVD-Audio player, not to be confused with DVD-Video which is why the format suddenly persished. A decade later & more, they still release mulitichannel recordings in both formats even though both are considered dead.
You are correct to point out the issues of the listening room. Most people are not sufficiently committed to home hifi to have 4 speakers around a room. This is clearly part of the reason why most people nowadays don't have a sound system that's even comparable to a 1970s stereo ... they make do with a Bluetooth box of some description, or listen via their questionable quality TV soundbar. For most people the only place nowadays where multichannel sound is feasible is in their car. The speakers are built in and have a consistent position that doesn't compromise the internal physical layout of the vehicle, unlike at home where your partner decides that the room needs a redesign ... "do we really need these big boxes in the way?" !
Indeed, I can understand the problems of room placement.
Growing up in the '80s-'00s, we had home theater setups in both the rec room and (eventually) the living room.* But thanks to Dad, we _also_ had office-style suspended ceilings in both the rec room _and_ the basement room below the living room -- which made it _very_ easy to run hidden wires back to the rear speakers in both rooms.
These ceilings also came in handy for running a phone line to our second desktop computer (when we had dial-up internet in the mid to late 90s), running ethernet cables (after we got broadband internet in 2000), and moving Dad's bedroom TV to a different corner of his room (where there was more space for a bigger TV and a small stereo).
Since moving to a different house with my stepmom, Dad replicated his living room setup in his man cave; he ran speaker wire along the baseboards, since the room has no side doors ahead of his chair or his couch. He also set up surround in his living room -- where a basement workshop beneath (with a suspended ceiling) makes for easy access for hiding speaker wires under the floor.
Meanwhile, I and several other relatives have never bothered with surround at all -- either due to lack of money, lack of interest, lack of over-ceiling or under-floor access to hide wires above or beneath doors ... or just lack of practical places to _put_ rear speakers given the room layout.
* Our house was a split level, with the bedrooms half a story up from the living/dining/kitchen level, and a lower level (rec room, office, and extra bedroom) underneath the bedrooms (so, half a story down from the living room). There was also a lower basement under the living room level, half a story down from the rec room.
@@AaronOfMpls Wow....
I did a lot of hifi/stereo setups in the early 70s on behalf of a major electronics store in Toronto. I did one quad setup and this client had the ideal setup - a high end 4 track reel to reel deck and a large room where the intended listening location was in the middle - away from the walls. He also had excellent source tapes. Aside from the format issues(significant) and running/hiding wires for rear speakers, the main issue was that most potential users didn’t have a suitable physical space or weren’t willing to compromise a “stylish” room layout for audio realism. My first question for any setup was “is it for listening or “background”?” If listening, I placed the speakers, if background then they identified the locations. As a rule, older clients with upscale systems( and fancier digs) more often went for “background” setups.
I was always disappointed that binaural recording didn’t have a bigger following - although the fact that the whole performance rotated with your head was a bit disconcerting. I still remember listening to a radio broadcast of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida lying in bed while they were “hopping around on the ceiling.
Great video. Both of my late 70's Lincolns have Quadraphonic... or Quadrasonic 8 track players. The effect is surprisingly effective, so long as you can find quadraphonic 8 tracks in working condition.
Yep! My 78 Lincoln had one!
I have a player from my friends 82 Lincoln. Im trying to find the best way to incorporate it into my hifi system in my living room
Pioneer quadraphonic system in the early 70s changed my life Allman brothers live at the Philmore, got a job at a tv repair shop working with an electrical engineer learned more from him in 3 months than everything i never learned listening to some drone at school, back when America was America, and you could trade labor for amazing education in the real world instead of being dumbed down by the school system.
FYI, the Dark Side Atmos mix is its own thing, unrelated to the 70s quad mix by Alan Parsons (I just caught myself typing Alan Partridge 🤦♂️, now THAT would be an experience!). The recent Atmos version was mixed by James Guthrie who also created the 5.1 SACD mix in the early 2000s. I haven’t closely compared the two, but I suspect the 5.1 at least served as a starting point for the Atmos mix. Incidentally, the “Immersion” boxed set of Dark Side contains a discrete high resolution version of the 70s quad mix AND the 2000s 5.1- perfect for comparison. The quad mix is more “discrete” in the sense that the sounds are separated more clearly in space, and the panning and other effects are more primitive. However, I prefer it in many ways over the more diffuse and sophisticated 5.1 mix, which sounds significantly better overall, but does get a bit swirly and cloudy at times.
The Alan Partridge version is epic! 😂
Thanks for the clarification of the two versions. Now I have to listen to the original. Another good one I found on Dolby Atmos was Bohemian Rhapsody. Now if they could only do the Beatles' "LOVE" mix in Dolby Atmos...
@@LittleCar The Great Alan in the Sky - 🎶AH HA! Ah haaa ahhh hahaha aaaaaah aaaaaah🎶
@@LittleCarI neglected to mention that it’s true, the Beatles “LOVE” isn’t available in Atmos, but it is readily available in the usual 5.1 formats. I own the DVD Audio version, and it’s glorious. If you’re a Beatles fan, I think you’ll find the Atmos version of Abbey Road to be transcendent. Start at the beginning, or cut right to “Here Comes the Sun” for a quick hit. Either way, play loud. 🔈 🔊 🔈 🔊 🔈 🔊 🔈 🔊
Ohhh man, I still remember Pink Floyd’s The Wall complete with laser show at The Palace of Fine Arts in SF playing to full house every weekends, and on week days, the same venue would just be another planetarium.
@@MrAntennaBall we had the same thing here in Seattle. I think they still do Dark Side. Last time I went (ten+ years ago) the place looked run down, one of the lasers was out of focus, and the speakers rattled. Clearly Laser Floyd’s time had passed.
Very cool that you‘re branching out to consumer electronics history. There are so many potential stories waiting to be told!
BTW: the Lafayette catalogs available online are an additional excellent resource.
I love listening to him talk about things
I had a Motorola 4 channel 8 track player in my car before most people had anything more than a radio. It was amazing, I fitted 2 speakers in the front doors and 2 in the rear parcel shelf. Most people I knew then were simply blown away by the experience.
Not the same as quad records
Played 4 channels front left and right rear left and right all separate. Quadraphonic. Could also play standard stereo 8 track cartridges.@@domfer2540
I love your car content and wished you covered other topics I’m interested in as well. That’s when this secondary channel popped up! Awesome!
We had a Quadraphonic system at home growing in the 70s, using LPs and a Sony amp. The only album I specifically remember having identifiable four channel sound was “Switched on Bach” by Wendy Carlos. The sound whizzed around all corners of the room.
Most of the Columbia albums had the original cover art shrunken down and surrounded by a broad gold band, to indicate they were Quadrophonic versions - an example is included in the Big Car video. The only variation we had - and I still have it - was the Carpenters “Now & Then”. It has a gatefold cover that unfolds into a triptych image, and has a very narrow Quadrophonic band only in the front cover, presumably so it didn’t disrupt the triptych.
Thanks for your presentation! I jumped on the quad bus early on. Lafayette store in town at the time carried Sony and Marantz. I TOOK A LOAN to buy the Sony TC 338 deck, a Marantz 4140 integrated (with those four Mac type BLUE meters), and FOUR Keff speakers = ($1300 in 1974)! I STILL have the deck and the 4140 to this day, although, only in storage. I now have dedicated theater with 7.2.4 Atmos, but do enjoy SACD audio in there as well.
Even if they had chosen a single standard for it from the start, quad still would've failed. In order to hear the quadraphonic effect, you have to be exactly in the "sweet spot" between all four speakers; if you're getting up and doing other things while listening to music, as people often do, the effect is lost. That's why surround sound is fine for movies, but has never caught on for music, despite repeated attempts over the past 50+ years. (Same thing with 3D film/video, which keeps coming back every few decades, just to prove over and over again that it's a novelty that quickly wears off.)
Maybe that could try again as it sounds like stereo people like me wold enjoy such a sound w have the sweet spot in stereo so that wouldn't be a problem and I bet it could be done alot cheaper today ☺️ps hi @vwestlife 👌👋
Although it's a real shame. Some music back in the 90s had simple Dolby Surround encoding, and some music that came on DVDs even had proper Dolby Digital/AC3 encoding, which is a real upgrade from just stereo. But yeah, never really caught on mainstream. Seems they now try again with music streaming services offering Dolby Atmos encoded music.
@@graealex I think you may be referring to DVD Audio. These discs usually had 2 different formats on them. The first was the album mixed in usually Dolby Digital (AC3) the same format most movies on DVD were mixed. Sometimes it was DTS. This version was able to be decoded by any DVD player that could decode DD or DTS. The 2nd format was called DVD Audio. This was the album remixed with a higher resolution usually 96KHZ 5.1 while the standard DD or DTS version was 48KHZ 5.1. The higher resolution version required a DVD player that could decode the DVD Audio’s higher resolution. While the AC3 version was slightly higher definition than CD’s 44.1KHZ the 96KHZ version was noticeably better sounding. Some DVD Audio discs also had a stereo 192KHZ version that was even cleaner sounding yet. Unfortunately most DVD players weren’t DVD Audio compatible but still offered somewhat better sound than standard CD with the added surround sound benefit.
@@mikee2923 I was actually thinking about special feature music DVDs. As you wrote, with AC3 encoding.
I have an awfully small collection of these, but listening to them really is an experience.
Heck, even the Dolby Surround encoding, which is compatible with normal CD audio is already a much better experience, at least for dedicated listening in a home cinema setup.
Also, no, the 96kHz has no discernable difference to normal CD audio at 44.1kHz. That's a myth. Audio University has a bunch of videos on the topic.
@@mikee2923 Watch the Audio University "Debunking the Digital Audio Myth: The Truth About the 'Stair-Step' Effect" video. For me, it cleared up numerous misconceptions about stair steps, aliasing and the Nyquist limit. Basically, unless you are some super-human being that can hear well into the ultrasonic range, going above 48 kHz makes zero difference, unless you are mastering. Same with more than 16 bit resolution. At least if the DAC is properly implemented and bandwidth-limited.
Doesn't account for the possibility that Audio DVDs were simply mastered better.
-Great informative video - as usual! -You are THE BEST, Techmoan!
...Wa-a-a-it a minute... 😄
Considering that the way stereo works was totally lost on most people I'm not surprised quadraphonic failed to catch on. People would do things like placing one speaker in a corner and the other up on shelve, sometimes even behind other furniture so any chance of a stereo image was completely lost anyway.
my best experience with quadraphonic sound was listening to Iron Butterfly's "In a Godda da Vida" with four-channel headphones! The drum solo in 3D is the best musical experience in my life!
We bought a Magnavox Quadraphonic system sometime around the early to mid seventies. We also purchased the 8-Track to support the format. It sounded pretty amazing as tape could sound. Best of all were LP Albums. Definitely a new dimension of listening!
Great video and information! I was a Marine stationed at Okinawa in "73". I was a quad guy but really didn't understand the whole concept of stereo vs quadrophonic! But I bought a Toshiba Quad System, PT-884 reel to reel, SB-404s Amp, SB-400 Turner, Frt SS-47'S and Rear SS-37'S speakers Akai 1721W reel to reel with built-in speakers! We used the shit out of that Akai, but it was only after I was out of the Service "76" that I really started to learn how to use the Quad System! No quad stations, so it was mostly reel to reel tapes and quad records, later bought a Panasonic Technics SA-8000x that had more technology built into it, than the Toshiba SB-404s but just on power I still think the Toshiba sounded better! Now all the 5.1, 7.2 Ect especially with movies but Rock music the systems just sound lame! I'll take a quad or especially an older quality Stereo System with a passive or active subwoofer hook into the "B" speakers so I can feel the Bass in my balls! With a good pair of speakers with at least 12" woofers on "A" speakers! I still have my equipment I purchased on the Rock! Good, Bad or indifferent they still work after 50 years! Now the Quadrophonic concept seems so yesterday? But a good Stereo System still kicks ass! Go figure?
Believe the first attempt at surround sound was with Fantasia. BTW, that turntable you showed was my first turn table. Briefly had a Realistic Quad receiver in the 70s when I worked at RS, returned it when my boss fired me.
Enjoyed that thanks. I vaguely remember the BBC doing quad demos in the 1970s, where you had to use two stereo radios - tuned to two BBC channels (Radio 1 and Radio 2, I think?)
One of my friends father had a quad system! A big Sansui receiver with 4 KLH speakers . Never got too many quad records ,he was a jazz enthusiast and already had a nice collection of records in 2channel ! So he was just listening to 4 speakers with stereo. It sounded very good !
The quad sound sounded great in concert but not on a regular audio system. Pink Floyd shows had quad sound and I was blown away..
When CD-4 , which was the "new" system of Quad hit RCA, I was a recording engineer at RCA recording
studios in Hollywood. .One of the other engineers said that CD-4 was "a great system of Quad as long
as you had two engineers to setup and maintain it." Which was a very true statement.It was very difficult
to get it to work in the average home by the average person. At RCA Hollywood we were tasked with
remixing just a few albums into Quad and it was a very minor priority.Finally, we were told to "put the
most in important things in front and the minor elements in back." When remixing in Quad it was
done by the engineer alone with no producer input. I remember a friend of mine, who was familiar
with both the stereo and the Quad versions of a "Jefferson Airplane" album, say that both versions
sounded very different from each other.
I had my office on Hollywood Blvd at Whitley back then, and used to go down to Sunset to the RCA bldg for lunch.
Thanks for an informative video. As a young teenager in Australia in the early 1970s, I could only dream of owning a Quadraphonic system. That was until Electronics Today magazine published their version of the Hafler method using a wirewound potentiometer and a couple of cheap, low quality speakers for the out-of-phase rear speakers. I quickly cobbled it together and was absolutely amazed by the effect. It wasn't quadraphonic per se but it certainly gave an expanded soundstage on many (but not all) albums in my meagre collection. One of my favourite albums, Pink Floyd's Ummagumma was outstanding. Even Electronics Today themselves described the experience with that album as "particularly delightful".
Oddly, Ive had Quad systems in the past and dug it, I will always remember it from the movie Convoy, when Pigpen is braggin about his truck havin a warm water waterbed and a Quadraphonic stereo.
Great video! I've talked to a lot of friends and family that were really big into music in the 70's, and asked them if they ever got into the quadraphonic craze. A few weren't interested, but every other person I talked to said that they didn't only because they had no idea which version to buy, and were essentially waiting for one version to win out and become the norm before buying all new equipment. Of course this never happened, and none of them ever bought anything. I can relate to this myself, where my parents waited quite some time to buy a VCR, waiting to see which format (Betamax or VHS) would win out.
I bough my entire setup in early 1976 when they were on sale. Federated store on West Olympic Boulevard in West L.A. Still have them, not sure which type it is but it is definitely not the CD-4. So it must be one of the other. No big shake either way, no rocket science, either.
Nice and well detailed video. I work for a radio station that was an "experimental" Quad radio station years ago. It was a "Dolby FM" station for a while as well. I still own a "Quadraphonic Receiver" made by Marantz.
Marantz is the name I associate with the Quad years.
In the late 80s I purchased a used Pioneer quadraphonic receiver/amplifier from a pawn shop for around $50. On its front display it had a circular screen about the diameter of a soda can that had printed markings that resembled the site from a fighter planes machine gun. Just in front of that was a small joystick that controlled a green dot that appeared on the screen you could use to maneuver the sound to any position where you placed the dot. It had a few different switchable options that allowed you to use it in quadraphonic mode, stereo mode or a mode that allowed you to place different channels in different areas and then mix the whole thing around with the joystick. It was one of the most awesome sounding receivers that I have ever owned but sadly sometime in the mid 90s our young son spilled his cup of milk on the top of it and it never turned on again :-(
That thing was heavy and huge and the speakers in each corner, which I believe were 2 pairs of zenith 3-ways consisting of a 15 inch woofer, a 8 inch mid-driver and horn tweeter was absolutely amazing, though it did take up most of the living room at the time, lol!
I love the sound, convenience and size of my newer equipment, but I don’t think it would be too hard to convince me to trade it out for that 80s set up…
Great video, I’ve just restored one of the early Sony Quad decoders, and it has got hardly any separation. Not the best experience, but now making my own with the latter CBS Motorola chip sets. Liked and subscribed.
It was absolutely awesome! I had a Kenwood KR-9940 Quad receiver that synthesized stereo radio stations into quad. I had 4 Bose 301 speakers and it was immaculate sound! Too bad it went belly up.
Lovely walk through of the history. Many thanks.Interesting how the music and film industry persists with surround despite public indifference. I love hearing old Quad recordings and now Atmos is fast becoming the default in music streaming and the stereo product likely to, in future, just be a stereo fold-down from that. Downside is the preferred listening environment is now headphones so it'll be spatial audio. Even Harmon Kardon's Logic 7 has had some modest success in prestige cars (and that's essentially just synthesizing surround from 2 channel sources). Our neighbour had a Quad setup. As a youngster I was a tad put off at quite how much easy listening seemed to dominate the Quad records that he played us. I did get to hear David Essex's Rock On as it was intended to be heard though.
I own Dark Side of the Moon an SQ vinyl recording I bought as a teen back in 1985. To this day that quadraphonic recording sounds amazing on my stereo system. In fact it is the only vinyl LP I own that sounds sonically better than a compact disc.
this channel is such a nostalgia trip!
I was just young enough to miss the whole quadraphonic thing but still remember those strange out of place looking 8-track tape decks in some peoples cars when they came in for repair at our garage in the early 80s. however, the whole HIgh FIdelity movement paid dividends for my generation because music clarity had become a thing. my Alfasud had a high-end Clarion car stereo, my walkman was a Sanyo and my bedroom had a collection of separates including Rotel, Technics, JVC, Aiwa and Koss. by wearing those Koss studio headphones and also running a pair of speakers the effect was similar to modern surround sound. then came Funky Town by Lips Inc with sounds being placed with a 3D effect (wearing headphones) and a journey into having my own home music studio trying to emulate that in heavy rock music.
Cool to see both Grand Prix and Pink Floyd in this video. Two of my favourite things. A bit disappointed though that you didn't produce this with quadrophonic sound ;-)
It is, honest! Just add another couple of speakers to your setup. 😉
Back in the 1970, I tried to listen to a few of Pink Floyd's songs.... never could stay wake until the end of any one of them. More of a Ten Years After and Chicago type of guy I am.
There was also holophonic audio and Tomita's "Pyramid of sound". These two offered the usual 4 channel quad effect but also went up and down. With holophonics, you could use regular headphones and still achieve 3D sound.
I am a professional archivist, and four-channel 8-track tapes had twice as much tape in the same cartridge. Standard two channel 8-track tapes could hold up to 90 minutes of material so in four channel mode, a quad 8 track could hold about 45 minutes.
Komm Jesu Komm. Good stuff. I love the texture of those blue covers. My Bach Magnificat is the same.
2:17 Audio engineer Conny Plank also had something like that worked into his studio. There are several Quadrophonic mixes done by him. I think even Kraftwerk's 1974 Album "Autobahn" has a quadrophonic mix. It was the last album of that band recorded and mixed at Conny Plank's Studio.
I remember years ago when i heard the Quadro mix of "Dark side of the Moon", which was also done by Alan Parsons himself. It was an amazing experience and with that mix the whole Album gets an entirely new dimension. Especially the tracks "On the Run" and "Time" really make for an impressive Quadrophonic experience. You almost don't even wanna go back to Stereo afterwards. Also there were a few Quadrophonic CD releases without phase encoding but rather DTS encoding, so you could only play these CDs with an CD player that had Toslink or S/PDIF out, conected to an AV receiver that had a DTS Decoder in it. And of course there were the more common Dolby Surround encoded Albums that didn't require any special decoding hardware but only really showed their true effect if played back via AV receivers that have Dolby Surround ProLogic mode. When i was a kid in the 90s, my parents had a Dolby Surround Home Theater System and we often watched movies like that and it really felt like cinema. There were also occasional Magazine CDs with Dolby Surround calibration sounds and demo songs on them. We had a few of them and that always felt really special and High-Tech to me. Isao Tomita's album "Pictures at an Exhibition" from 1975 also has a Dolby Surround encoded CD release from the early 90s.
thanks! I had no idea of the different products/designs for quad.
3:42 - I believe for the quadraphonic version, they simply used tape thinner than the typical 1.5mil. This created it's OWN set of problems!
There were 80 minute blank tapes available which could record 2 albums in stereo, so these could hold one quad album.
The CD4 standard had the intrinsic problem that when playing CD4 encoded records with a normal stylus, it would just "sand away" the 40kHz additional signal on the tevoedz. You'd lose your rear channels. So when buying an expansive Shibata stylus, you were disappointed for getting very distorted or no sound at all on the rear speakers.
"Sound does not just come from the front" - Actually in case of classical stage music, it does. The stage is in front of you and all sound you hear is produced on that stage and only comes from there. Sure, sound is reflected of walls, ceiling, and floor in the room you are sitting but that is also true in your living room, where sound from the speakers in front of you is reflected by walls, ceiling, and floor. That means multi-speaker sound, in case of music, is not about reproducing audio sources to your sides or behind you, as those do not exist in a live concert, but about reproducing the "room" of the concerts, making your small living room sound like a huge concert hall. The question is: Is that even desirable? I like the warm, damped sound of my living room way better than I like the cold, wide open, reverberating sound of most concert halls. That's personal taste but I have no interest in making my living room sound like a big opera building. It's a different thing when it comes to movies, as of course, when you reproduce sounds of an environment, that sound will come from all directions in reality as sound sources are scattered all around you when you are standing in that environment.
Then by that logic, the most a two channel system could reproduce is two dimensional effects.
@senorverde09 I think it's good that you talk about "effects", because that's all stereo really is, an effect. If you want to reproduce a live orchestra properly, you need one speaker per instrument and you need to place those speakers in the way that the relative spacing of the instruments on stage has been. Stereo does not reproduce a stage correctly because in reality your head is not pointed at the stage at a constant angle, and if the angle changes even slightly, what your ears will hear will also change. The same goes for stereo sound and the angle at which you point your head at the speakers, but it's not the same. It's more like you have a wall with two holes between you and the live stage, and initially the holes fit your ear position perfectly, but now if you turn your head a little, the angle between your head and the holes changes, and that results in you not hearing the same sound you would hear if there wasn't a wall with holes in front of you, since that wall will block direct sound paths that would otherwise exist. Instead you still get pre-filtered sound paths that now no longer matches your ear position, as they only match if your ears are perfectly aligned to the holes. More speakers in front of you would improve that situation, as the wall will then have more holes allowing more sound paths to pass through, but to get a near perfect reproduction, you'd need either an almost infinite number of speakers in front of you (in which case the wall would have more holes than wall and basically disappears) or, as I said, at least one speaker per sound source, in which case there is no wall to begin with.
So stereo is more about selling you an illusion, like a picture that looks three-dimensional to you as long as you look at it from the right angle, even though it's not really three-dimensional and doesn't behave the way a real 3D object would behave when your eyes move around or the lighting conditions change. Multichannel sound tries to "enhance" this illusion, but "enhancement" is subjective. In the 80s, for example, just about every compact stereo (that came with speakers) had an "enhanced stereo" or "wide stereo" mode (they may have used some other silly name). When you activated this mode, a signal processor boosted the difference between the two stereo channels while attenuating the mono signal common to both stereo channels. Often, some reverb is also added to the signal. In this way, you get a sound as if the room were much larger and the speakers further apart than they actually are. Depending on the room, speaker placement, type of music and personal taste, this mode can actually sound better, for me it sounded rather awful most of the time. Apple's HomePod does something similar today: it has sensors to measure the sound characteristics of the room and then uses a DSP to adjust the audio signal to compensate for any deficiencies in the room. It may sound good to some people, it may sound horrible to others. But what none of these enhancements do is making it sound more realistic, rather the opposite.
And this is a problem that you have with all multi-channel systems, right up to Dobly Atmos. They can't reproduce reality any better than stereo, they just create an artificial soundscape that may sound impressive, but not what reality would sound like. These systems were not designed to reproduce reality, but to reproduce a sound engineer's vision, as the sound they produce was not recorded in a real environment, but generated entirely in a recording studio on a computer. The quality of the results depends heavily on how good the computer software is at what it does and on the sound engineer's skills and knowledge of real sound reproduction. TH-cam is full of video that criticize that many Dolby Atmos soundtracks sound rather poor and they usually blame the sound engineers for that, who apparently often have no idea what they are doing, since to them it may sound "good" and "real" but apparently they have never been in a real life situation like that, otherwise they'd know that this is absolutely not what a real helicopter sounds like that approaches you from the back and then flies over you head. That's how a helicopter sounds in a PlayStation video game but again, that sound was produced by a sound engineer on a computer who also had no idea what reality sounds like. On the other hand, a computer rendered movie is also not reality, yet as long as it is close enough to reality, you can convince your brain to buy it, so I guess it's okay anyhow but that doesn't make it objectively "better" than some other system which also sells you a different kind of illusion.
@@senorverde09No you are still listening in a three dimensional space. Other than the rare antiphonal performance all the direct sound still comes from the front. Properly mic'ed live performance will have phase and reflection information for depth perception.
Not in my experience. As I mention in a nearby comment, for years I produced DVDs of choir concerts in Europe, and recorded with four discrete audio channels. I was surprised to discover early on that the rear channels were only a few db's down from the front channel levels. And the sound is completely different.
Sure, if I wanted to hear a jazz quartet playing in front of me in my living room, plain old stereo would do fine. But if you want to re-live the experience of hearing an excellent choir performing in, say, Chartres Cathedral, the surround-sound effect of four separate channels (LF, RF, LR, RR) will blow you away.
And by the way, Hollywood doesn't do this. They fill the rear channels with fake crowd cheers and the like. It would be very difficult to record actual surround sound for everything, real time.
I remember these systems being in many of my friends’ older brothers’ bedrooms in the 80’s. As a teenager into audio/music I wanted to hear the quadraphonic effect but only one of them actually had the 4 speakers connected and he had no media in the format.
Interesting you mentioning the Hafler circuit. David Hafler was an American engineer well known for having founded first the Dynaco and then Hafler audio equipment companies. Notably you could buy kits of their equipment, of which I built 3 Dynaco and 2 Hafler units. (The Hafler DH200 still powers my garage system, albeit having only one channel, making it a Halfer now I suppose. 😂)
As a budding young audiophile we looked askance at the Quad systems as the sound was indeed inferior to the stereo systems of the day. My take is that many in the US felt the same, leading ultimately to the failure of the format. (As for 8 track, don't get me started. All those tracks and the best songs on a album were invariably interrupted as the player clicked and clacked changing to another track. Arggg!
I actually have a Hafler circuit in use in my main stereo system ... very effective esp. if playing QS matrix Lps
We had a Quad Reel to Reel and a quad 8 Track. As far as I know the 8 track didn't run at half speed. I remember we had both the Regular and Quad 8 Track Albums "The Plastic Cow goes Moog" Both had the same song count but the Quad 8 Track had more tape than the Regular 8 Track, and I think the Quad used thinner tape stock, too - it constantly buggered up later in its life (hence I remember helping my dad fix it an noting the amount of tape). The Quad 8 Track deck was also able to record in quadraphonic (I think it was a Technics unit) via 4 mic inputs on the front or 4 line inputs on the back. The Reel to Reel deck (an Akai, I think) had quad recording via a DIN connector on the back or two 1/4 inch Stereo mic jacks on the front (?). The whole system ran through a Heathkit AM/FM Quadraphonic amplifier that powered 4 Altec-Lansing Voice Of The Cinema speakers. We still have the Quadraphonic Headphones somewhere...
That's probably more likely. Then they don't need to make a player that runs at two speeds.
I concur, they ran at same speed 3 3/4ips
Correct, Q8 cartridges ran at 3 & 3/4 ips (same as stereo 8-track tapes), but with four channels, the tapes were necessarily twice the length of the stereo versions. One advantage of Q8 tapes is that there was only one automatic er, "program change" needed at the halfway mark (when the foil bit on the tape caused the tape head to shift to the second program), which meant there were fewer interruptions or fade outs/fade ins, whereas stereo 8-tracks had four such interruptions over the course of an entire album. The biggest advantage with Q8 tapes (and the much rarer and more expensive quadraphonic reel-to-reel tapes) was their completely discrete channel separation -- no smearing of channels as occurred with the vinyl decoding schemes (QS, SQ and CD-4). I have many quad LPs and Q8 tapes. Sadly, the tapes are only gathering dust any more, but I still enjoy the quad LPs, albeit only with "Dolby Pro Logic" which is not a faithful reproduction for SQ and CD-4 sources. I dream of finding a working Tate, Sony or other "full SQ logic" decoder some day!
Ha, I own 'The Plastic Cow Goes Moog' on import vinyl, it's a hoot!
Yes, I have an 8-rack quad recorder. It only works at 3.75"/sec., which is standard for 8-track.
Please explain to me htf the guitarist at levitated at 5:05!!!
I think he's just jumped off the speaker stack.
I have never heard anything more amazing than Quad headphones.
I have a National Panasonic music centre from 1975 that supports quadraphonic with the addition of extra speakers. There is a mode switch at the back. I'll have to check what format it supports, but I think it's SQ. Dark Side of the Moon is the first album I'll get for it.
My passion for cars is only equaled by my interest in hifi audio-it’s great that you feel the same!
Tangerine Dream 1970s cathedral tour.You had to be there!
I have an LP "Deep Purple Machine Head" recorded in SQ quadraphonic.
Requires the stereo signal to be processed through a proprietry decoder (CBS licensed) and then 4 power amps.
It was impressive.
Any Dolby Surround analog receiver made in the last 25 years will decode that record more or less properly.
I use a vintage Onkyo (pre-HDMI) to do this, all it lacks is a phono preamp so I use an external one.
Very interesting item. I have some quad LP's and one quad 8 track. Sure at one point i had an early 70's music centre with a 4 channel decoder.
Quadraphonic (or surround sound) still thrives in small circles. And there are several mediums, including streaming, that offer multichannel sound.
I wish I had a quid for each time I have I seen stereo systems in people's homes with the stereo speakers placed side by side or just either side of micro-systems. I don't really think the mass market is there even for ideal stereo reproduction (aside from through headphones), let alone set-ups that require more faff.
Reproducing any type of surround sound requires proper placement of at least two speakers and the listener. For most people, it's just not worthwhile - they'll be up and moving around the room, or have music on in the background while they work or read. There's no reason to lay out their furniture for optimum sound-field reproduction.
I remember when the radio would broadcast the stereo test between regular programs.
Is it in phase?
I was only a few years by the end of the old '70's quadraphonic era, so missed it. However, I really liked SACD, and was disappointed that it didn't catch on. Dark Side of the Moon and Nine Inch Nails The Downward Spiral sound amazing on SACD, and I still listen to them. I've been told Wish You Were Here on SACD is even better than Dark Side of the Moon, but I refuse to pay the insane prices copies of it usually go for these days. When they were current releases back in the early 2000's, SACD's were not that much more then normal CD's.
Just buy a blue-ray of said PF album. Chances of you hearing the difference between it and the SACD are nil. They're probably the same master anyway.
One can, however, hear distinct differences between 5.1 and good old Quad mixes of aforementioned albums. In the 70's they (e.g. Alan Parsons) tended to mix each instrument to it's own channel (left, right, back L and back R) for Quad whereas for 5.1 they mixed it less "discretely" in strictly separated channels, as in stereo. I don't hear a real separated stereo effect: it all sounds like 2 x mono to me. As does 5.1. However, those Quad mixes are great!
@@meneerjansen00 Thanks. I may well try that - I didn't know it was available on blu ray.
Imho Jeff Wayne's - War of The World is even better. It really sucks you into the story. Mmm should listen it this evening again.
@@schuncken Unfortunately WotW multti-channel it's only available on SACD, not on DVD or Bluray (well: the live performance).
A lot of classical and jazz is now recorded in SACD/MC and sounds fantastic at the same price.
The additional speakers and amp costs was just not the problem, but I know that was an easy pick. I owned a huge library of music in the 70's. Music manufacturers just keep changing formats and I didn't want my music taking up all my living room. Today if I shop around I'll buy an SACD player and start collecting whatever I can find. I'll buy powered monitors and maybe a preamp/SACD combo?
Decades ago I had a quadrophonic vinyl record with a organ concert in Freiburg cathedral. In that church there are four organs on different places which can be played from one console single or combined and the idea was four organs together on a quadrophonic record. But sadwise I had no equipment, no record player to create quadrophonic so and so I could not hear the quadrophonic effect at all
Speaking of Pink Floyd they were my introduction to Quad, at the Hollywood Bowl in 1972, the last tour that Rick was panning the band. To say I became obsessed with Quad is a huge understatement….,
I went to a Roger Waters dark side of the moon tour in 2012 if I remember right and they played the song sheep and I could hear the sheep sounds behind me, I think the whole concert was in surround sound. It was an epic concert at the Hollywood bowl!
I honestly haven't heard a true quadrophonic track but I have a 200 watt Yamaha amp running a KEF floorstander in each corner (All second hand of course!) and it sounds fantastic. You still get that stereo separation from side to side and totally enveloping sound.
Thanks for this no-nonsense explainer. Please wii you make one about domestic surround sound and all it's variations?
That would be a fun one.
Even today, I have a rear set of speakers that are wired as a "difference" channel. Obviously, not true quadraphonic, but it really enhances the reverberations of the singers of most rock and pop music. The front speakers play the singers, and the rear speakers play the echo. This effect is the strongest on Billy Joel The Stranger, but it's also very good with most 70's rock music, and it still plays well with today's pop music. This is what Radio Shack called "quatravox", and I'm glad it was mentioned in this video.
Hungarian Radio regularly broadcasted quadrophonic programs on two of its channels btw. the late seventies and 1992. Even radio plays were made in this format.
9:51They said, you coud listen the records in stereo and later in quadro, but reality was, the quadro signal was so fragile and easily damaged. You doesn't hear, if frequencies above 16 kHz are gone, but CD4 doesn't work, when they are gone.
Nice to see an audio related subject, thanks!
I never did go for quad. The closest I ever got was wiring rear speakers in a Hafler configuration when listening to the VHS Hifi tape of The Empire Strikes Back. But I do have the surround sound version of The Dark Side of the Moon, and it's amazing. My prepro upmixes to my overhead Atmos speakers.
Thank you so much for a such wonderful trip into vintage audio theme!
No mention of MiniDisks, or the fact that with MD-DATA disks you could record up to 8 discreet channels.
You could back up any of the 4 or 5-channel formats onto an MD-DATA disk and remix it to any format you wanted.
I use them for recording separate channels of myself playing different parts and then mixing down an entire band of myself onto stereo or quad.
But that's a completely different era.
Everything in this discussion is purely analog.....
Another problem with multi-channel, high resolution CD size media was that SACD had a competitor call DVD-Audio. They were incompatible and also at that time MP3 players were in ascendancy.
7:10 Epic was *NOT* a separate entity. It was, like the Portrait, Philadelphia International and Blue Sky labels, an in-house brand of CBS Inc.
I bought a Sony record player player in the early 70s. In the place where a cassette player would be in the stereo version, a black plastic (useless) tray was fitted.
Inside there were FOUR separate SANYO amplifiers. Of course, four identical speakers were included. I think it cost £132 and was purchased in Edinburgh. I still have a few SQ records but not the player.
Interesting video...Now sat listening to 50th anniversary remaster of "The Dark Side of the Moon" via Dolby Atmos... they did make great use of those extra channels!
I built an SQ decoder from an Electronics Australia design in the 70s. I built the additional amps for the additional channels. I still have some quadraphonic records, including Dark Side of the Moon.
I discovered quad in the mid 80's, in my late teens, when I found an SQ decoder in a second hand shop, (it was the joystick balace control that got my attention LOL). It was ony 15 watt per channel, so after some rewireing I gave it 4 line out sockets, and plugged them into two matching 75 watt amplifiers with a speaker at each corner of my bedroom. I built an input switch box and it all sounded great. One day when I was off work, (or possibly between jobs), the whole lot magically appered in the lounge. My dad was none too pleased, until I played a Chicago album. He was also hooked.
Love the icon. I played that game a LOT.
@@LittleCar It's a great game, just a pitty I'm so bad at it. LOL.
Aren't we all?
I still have my old Marantz quadraphonic receiver in the garage but the four Kenwood speakers with 15 inch woofers are long gone and the plug in CD-4 card is on the fritz. I have however kept some of the Quad LP’s. My present Dolby Atmos setup sounds better, the quadraphonic revolution failed because the analog format just wasn’t adequate to the technical challenges.
My brother had a pair of Quadrophonic headphones he bought in the 70s. In the early 90s, his son needed a guitar amp for his guitar and my brother knew I had a spare/unused amp. I offered to trade my Squier Sidekick 15 for those headphones and he agreed. I still have those headphones somewhere.
Fun fact: early versions of the Compact Disc specification include a provision for 4-channel audio, but it never got used and was dropped from later versions.
A friend’s parents had a furniture store so he had a room full of JVC stereo gear. We would take turns sitting in a chair in the center of the room with a joystick sending the sound around in circles to all 4 speakers. Never bothered to listen to a whole album because the only place it sounded great was in that chair!😂
One of the problems with quad (w/o headphones) is the "sweet spot" for listening was usually quite small.
My living room Hifi is based around 2 stereo setups, 1 amp driving 2 speakers each. Most of the time the rear is just sent a copy of the front audio to fill the room better, but for films I send 4 discreet channels out from my pc, 2 to each amp. I temporarily connect a 5th powered speaker for use as a centre channel. It's a bit Heath Robinson, but provides a good enjoyable surround sound experience without buying expensive surround decoders or having to use non Hifi home cinema systems.
There's DTS releases of Pink Floyd stuff (other albums), I also have some bootleg 4 channel WAV of various other albums. Autobahn by Kraftwek is good in quad as you might expect. My 5.1 system is driven into 4.1 (quad). Tomita also released quad and Dolby surround albums. He also released a 5 channel album, the write up says you need a speaker above your head! I forget the album though.
Great 8-rack Quad tapes were: Band On the Run (Paul McCartney), Best of the Doors, Doobie Brothers (Vices), Santana, Simon & Garfunkel, and Eagles. For a short while, most everyone had Quad 8-tracks. My 1973 Gran Torino Sport had great factory speakers for my self-installed player. The only drawback was having to wait twice as long to get back to a favorite song as a standard 8-track. But i loved the sound! Thanks for the memories.
I remember this in the 1970s....I made my own Quad System out of my Airline wards stereo...by cutting a few wires...it was not any different from any other recordings...I did some expansion of it it was the same
Never realised that Japan had TV in 1939. The more I look into the history of the development of TV the more complicated it seems! A history of the Philips company could also be an interesting Little Car topic.
I used to sell quadrophnic hi-fi systems in the 7Os at the RSC Hi-Fi Centres, they were absolutely brilliant when hooked up to good quality, large loudspeakers, the effect was amazing. The problem was they just didnt seem to sell well, dispite being impressive. Its so sad, but I think what killed them off was the cost of the system, considering that four loudspeakers were needed and of course they still used magnetic tape technology. They would be even better now if they were re-introduced in a digital version.
Excellent video,I'm a huge fan of vintage audio!
I am restoring an Pioneer QX-747 quadraphonic receiver at the moment I have been buying quad records so I will have them ready when I am done.
How does the Dolby Spacial audio version of DSOTM compare to the SACD version?
Just sold my Sony SQR-6650. Had problems with the knobs kept shorting out causing erratic input selection and volume random spikes. Def a different experience
I have an old Sharp musicenter from 1975 with 4 speakers that has a matrix setting on the controls, always wondered what that was for.
So glad I missed out on quad. I couldn't keep up with it at the time.
Great video thanks for making it. I have about 10 Quad LPs in the various formats, but I don’t have a Quad amp. I have to say all of the Quad albums I own sound fantastic - even in Stereo. The Quad versions on Dark Side of The Moon, Tubular Bells and Abraxas that I own sound better than the stereo versions to me. I had been thinking of buying a Quad processor, but I don’t own enough Quad albums to justify it really, although I suspect maybe I would soon buy more once I had one. More recently I hooked the turntable up to my surround sound amp and have got some great results listening to Quad recordings through that. I’m not sure how accurately the sound is being presented, but it does sound good - and that’s probably enough for me tbh. I have found certain discs sound better in either Dolby Pro-logic IIx, DTS Neo 6: Music or even basic Dolby Pro-logic and I do tend to disable the centre channel.
Quadrophonic was fantastic, I bought my quad immediately and enjoyed it very, very much. But for many the problem was the nature of listening to this music. Only few listened while sitting in a quiet "theatre", enjoying amazing effects. Most listened to a "random" music while i.e. vacuuming. Quadrophonic was therefore insignificant. This is what killed it.
Stereo and quad 8 track tapes both run at 3.75 fps. The notch in the case allowed a switch to move the head to the correct position(to read 4 tracks at once). Choosing the correct format selection via the selector switch allowed for the 4 channel output. If you have a quad receiver with a channel burned out, you can usually rout that channel from the "source" output jack to another receiver/amplifier(two stereo receivers can produce true quad sound, although you lose the easy "spatial" or single volume control.
That is 3.75 IPS not FPS!