Quadraphonic Sound Died In the 1970s. So Why Is Somebody Bringing It Back?

[One and a half]

Good question! One reason why it died was the various incompatible formats, QUAD, SQ, QS.....

 

A podcast to listen to.

[Kal Rubinson]

Also, it was based on a fundamental reconfiguration and distortion of real-world soundstage presentation.  A gimmick.

 

 

[davide256]

Saw plenty of quadraphonic records but very few decoders in the 70's. Had to tell customers getting in to quad that their basic elliptical stylus wasn't good enough,

 sold a lot of Shure V15 Type III/IV hyper elliptical stylii because of quad along with Shibata and Van den Hul stylii

[STC]

Quadraphonic is the easiest of all other surround formats to make. You cover the front stage with stereo and the rear stage with another stereo giving somewhat better realism than stereo playback. Technically, it is inferior to 4.0 DTS. 

[astrotoy]

Pentatone has issued a bunch of SACD's which are derived from quadraphonic recordings in '70's and '80's.  They are mostly from Philips and DGG classical recordings.  I have many of them.  They were pretty inexpensive.  Not at the level of the sonics of the Channel Classics or the Pentatone Julia Fischer 5.0 recordings.  But interesting stuff.  Some baroque music is definitely not HIP style.  Avvording to the website they completed the series this year.  They are called Remastered Classics. Go to Series and click under both Philips and DGG.  There are 8 albums in the Philips series and 25 in the DGG series.  I bought them pretty cheap from Amazon.

 

http://www.pentatonemusic.com/catalog

 

Larry

[hipstone]

For every pink-pong so-called "gimmick" there are several wonderful well thought out quad mixes found on SACD lovingly transferred from 70's recordings.

 

Many listeners prefer Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and Tull's Aqualung in their original quad mixes over the more recent 5.1 mixed album.  These vintage quadraphonic mixes are but a few of the hundreds that have been resurrected in the modern era on SACD, BluRay, or DVD.  Audio Fidelity was issuing many until they decided on closing up shop, as it seems Dutton - Vocallion in the UK have stepped up in their place with many audiophile grade quad titles on SACD.

 

With so many folks owning home theater and surround audio systems in this day and age, it was a no-brainer to get at least some of these classic vintage 4.0 mixes out there in a good format that works.  The record companies seem to have come to a conclusion about releasing surround music, and that is adding to to a big DELUXE box set, helps the bottom line more than a standalone product will.  (See recent Beatles, Hendrix, Lennon sets)

 

It's really not at all over for quadraphonic & 5.1 surround for music listening.

[hipstone]

On 11/10/2018 at 5:52 PM, STC said:

Quadraphonic is the easiest of all other surround formats to make. You cover the front stage with stereo and the rear stage with another stereo giving somewhat better realism than stereo playback. Technically, it is inferior to 4.0 DTS. 

Quad is a mixing technique.  It is found on many different format discs.  When it is found on SACD, or a lossless format like DVD-A and BluRay it blows DTS outta the water.  DTS is just a (lossy) deliver system, and not a mixing choice.