The Return of Quad Vinyl
One thing I get asked every now and then is "When are you going to do a video about Quad". Unfortunately as far as a proper retrospective of the various quad record formats goes, that's still quite some way off. I'm hampered by a severe lack of space in my house to properly set everything up. No doubt this issue was also a barrier to entry for any potential customers back in the early 1970s.
However in this video, with the help of a small temporary set-up, I'm going to be playing what is thought to be the first new quad vinyl record release in over thirty years. I'm sure Tab Patterson, a long time patron and my go-to quad expert, would be able to confirm whether that thirty year claim is accurate. But regardless, it's definitely been quite a while and it's fun to see the vinyl revival creating a knock-on effect resulting in projects like this and last week's VinylVideo.
Next stop, DBX Discs?
(I know there's no chance of that - but one can dream).
Playing the first new Quadraphonic Vinyl Record in over 30 years (YouTube)
Comments (51)
As someone who worked briefly in a Hi-Fi store and a record store in the waning days of quad, I was quite amused whenever, several years after quad died, it suddenly came back to life, in the form of Dolby Surround. (I know it's not exactly the same, but you get my point.) BTW, when you get around to testing the SQ quad format, check out the first album by the group Chase. The beginning of that album is what I always used to demonstrate the capabilities of the format.
Now, that was interesting. Nice to see Quad still lives, though true audiophiles would insist you had 4 evenly matched speakers the size of a Stonehenge upright, plus gold plated mono directional cables, gold plated 13A plugs, blah blah. Oh, and is that my ringtone under the puppets? You must have had a Capri, I recall having to thump the passenger one in my mate's 2 litre GT when it rained :)
Mat, I've just finished watching through the new Maniac series on Netflix and noticed a wire recorder in the background of one of the episodes. Yours by any chance? It looks identical.
Yes someone sent a screencap over earlier and it’s definitely the same model I have.
you know.. i used to call myself an audiophile.. but it seems like whenever I hear the term now it seems like it is a group of extremists. I look at your quadraphonic setup and all i think is " he's giving it due diligence, since this isn't a permenant fixture" and so i'm 100% kool with how you did this (and really, all of your video's) . So I guess I'm not unreasonable enough to be an audiophile. odd that.
Great video (as always)! My favourite old video of Suzanne Ciani is this appearance from 1980 on the US kid's show '3-2-1 Contact,' where she explains analog synthesizers to one of the hosts (though it makes me feel old, as I remember watching this show). Nonetheless, she seems like a pretty chill person, or maybe that was just leftover from the 70's. :) <a href="https://youtu.be/36WMySitV74" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/36WMySitV74</a>
For some reason I find any videos recorded in this room (conservatory?) oddly comforting. Would love a little space like that with all that natural lighting. Oh and fascinating album release too! Intrigued to see more quadraphonic goodness in the future, always tempted by quad-capable devices while thrifting.
Funnily enough I shot a few of my earliest videos in this room because it was the only room in the house that was bright enough. However when winter came around I decided to invest my youtube income into a set of studio lights. The conservatory is a very difficult room in which to shoot segments where I'm talking to camera as the background can blow everything out and leave me as a silhouette if I'm not careful. At times like these it would be very handy to have someone else controlling the camera to compensate. I'm sure there's been more a few times when you've been shooting things and wished you had an extra pair of hands on the camera.
I wonder if the outro sketch is based on a true story :-)
Totally. Capris really were light in the rear ... <a href="http://picks.getpatina.com/2016/07/ford-capri-car-promised/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://picks.getpatina.com/2016/07/ford-capri-car-promised/</a>
I really liked the conversation by the son & dad. And when it was the muppet show, the scene would have ended with the son with a frown on his face, while the camera zoomed in. I'm glad you didn't do that.
'Moog' rhymes with 'Vogue' , Mat!
Oh I’ll no doubt get it for that in the comments. Fortunately I won’t be reading them again after all the nonsense that happened on the Vinylvideo video.
Fascinating video as always! Never realised Grandad Puppet was so louche as to own a Capri - respectable folk had a Cortina Mk3 or an Escort. Back in the 1970s I SO nearly bought a Sony Quad hi-fi - you could get a Music centre with a turntable, AM/FM tuner and either a cassette deck or a quad decoder and two extra speakers for the same price. In the end the cassette deck swung it for me especially as it had the then novel ‘pause’ button so you could cue your music precisely. I think I’m right in saying that Columbia/CBS released a number of popular albums in SQ format at the time
My big question is how does it sound through the Sennheiser Surrounder?
Probably uncomfortable and ridiculous.
I am tempted, but it sounds like a Quad format war...
Hahaha, love the Muppets
This is why ebay should have a breathalyzer; I've just caught myself browsing Ford Capris.
The truth is out now. Mat and The Missus share the family room with the Outro Muppets. One hopes they don't keep you up at night, what with their constant squabbling!
The Outro guys are back! Flipping 'Eck! That makes me unreasonably happy! I am old enough to remember quad, though Dad never bought a system (we ended up with a department store stereo in the late 70s). What a time to be alive - rockets to the moon every other week, quadraphonic sound, leisure suits ... Sigh ...
BTW...you may have been exposed to the quadraphonic bug. It's a rather large rabbit hole. Enjoy your stay.
The last quad releases were in the early 80s and done for the Fosgate Tate SQ system. I believe one of them was a Buddy Rich live CD. Not sure if it was ever out on vinyl. This, however is really the QS format.
Fun! Thanks for sharing.
Yay!!!! Puppets!!!! Great skit!
In the 70s I remember Dark Side Of The Moon and Tubular Bells getting a quad release. Also, the BBC did experimental quad radio broadcasts using a system called Matrix H.
Okay, I'm confused. They have a limited run of 227 copies (leaving the economics of turning a profit on such a limited run for another discussion) why is your copy numbered 25 E? What does the E mean? Are they pressed in groups of 5, meaning that yours is the last of the 5th group? I'm not sure how such a limited run could possibly be expected (or even hoped) to respark an interest in Quad.
The only answer I can give (to all questions) - is that I just don't know.
Another great video! I'm interested in buying this more for the decoder board than the LP. I have a CD-4 decoder (JVC 4dd-5) and a Lafayette SQ-W decoder (which also does a pretty decent job of decoding QS encoded music), but have not been able to find a real QS decoder (ala Sansui QSD2, which has steering logic for better front/rear separation) for a reasonable price (most are > $400 on eBay). So this could be a good option. BTW... When you do your quad video you could use this decoder board for QS rather than the one in the Toshiba quad amp you showed as that amp will probably only do about 3db front/rear separation on QS/SQ rather than the 20-25db on later decoders. What CD-4 decoder do you have?
That amp only supports SQ - although I've yet to test it. The CD4 decoder is BNIB and untested too. I think it's by JVC from memory.
Dolby Pro Logic can matrix surround sound from any stereo source. With QS, can it matrix a stereo record...or would the sound be distorted (that it has to be a source that's encoded in QS)?
Fantastic Video. I love my Marantz receiver with Quad sound. Sounds great through the two speakers I actually have hooked up and never played Quad through.
I noticed that your old AV receiver in your lounge (before you went Dolby Atmos) had a multi-channel input. If you hadn't upgraded that system, you could have just wired the decoder to that input and listened to the record in your lounge.
I didn't remember that detail but I was definitely thinking "doesn't he have a full home theater system, couldn't he use that for listening?" Might be a good thing to address in a re-edit or in the text. (Doing a little internet research myself, it seems that analog to modern digital surround is a rare thing — lots of threads looking for one and no product recommendations that aren't pro-audio.)
YES, Ford Capri's and the 70's!! Wait a minute I had a 3.0 Ghia Capri in 1982 and the 2.8i didn't come out until later.. IIRC. But it might just be my dementia kicking in. Closer to topic, in about 1979 I do recall hooking up a 3rd speaker across the speakers of my "stereo record player" so it would play the "difference" between the stereo channels and if you placed it behind you got a sort of surround sound. Ah good days. The deck and the amp were by Amstrad and are in the attic somewhere.
I think his memory is a bit spotty.
Fun project! Like the packaging and the decoder, wow! That’s why it’s so expensive plus the encoding of the signal. 😃 But, I think would have preferred traditional music and not avantgarde bleeps and bloops. I get enough of that kind of stuff on the Facebook groups I’m in. 😜
YES, puppets.
Fascinating! And I happen to live a mere 15 km from Involve Audio in Melbourne! :-)
Any clue why the disc and decoder were issued at exactly 227 copies....?
Oh... I get it. It´s from the Bucla 227. There were some synthesizers built in the University of California Los Angeles in the early 70-ties. I did not know that one of them mas this "Model 227".
Grandpa Muppet made me laugh :D
If I can occasionally make someone laugh - that makes me happy too.
My Uncle had a Ford Capri!
Oooh so few videos on quad sound, will watch after work tonight
Eeeehhh you kids, you call that music?! ;) p.s, wow! <a href="http://www.obsoletemedia.org/quadraphonic-8-track/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.obsoletemedia.org/quadraphonic-8-track/</a>
Yes Quad 8-track. Perhaps I assumed that was more well known than it is. This was really the reason in the outro that the son deduced that the dad's 'quad' car setup wasn't really quad - because he used cassettes and not 8-tracks. Now I think about it - that's quite some assumption for me to make. BTW - Expect a Quad 8-Track video in the not too distant future because it's the easiest retro quad system to set up.
I used to have an SQ decoder as a kid, but we didn't really know what it was right then, let alone know how to use it... I just used it as a stereo amplifier. Now I'm listening my records usually through the Dolby Pro Logic IIx Music decoder. Probably not the uttermost perfect best sound quality, but the best listening experience ;-)
If that had been an SQ decoder rather than QS I would be ordering one right now instead of typing this comment. I've been wanting to find some way of decoding SQ for years, so that I can play my old Mike Oldfield records in their original format!
There's a Spny SQD-2050 for sale on Ebay at the moment...
Oh interesting!