Going Quadraphonic

I am intrested in this as well...

discuss, Please!

 

At least four speakers for a start

Seriously though, there are two main types of quad LPs: SQ and CD-4 (then there are variants of the technology used in those, such as QS and UD-4).

The two formats are not compatible (one of the many reasons why quad just didn't take off). Both require hardware decoders. SQ ones aren't too hard to find. But good SQ decoders are quite rare. SQ does not provide true discrete quad, it's more like Dolby Pro Logic.

CD-4, on the other hand, does provide true quad. Unfortunately, CD-4 decoders are fairly hard to find. For this format you will also need a cartridge that can track upwards of 35KHz. If the record has been played with some crappy ceramic cart tracking at 50 grams, it's possible that the carrier signal has been shredded right out of the record.

 

Can't quad kind of work in a modern surround sound format using just 4 speakers w/ a regular turntable? I was wondering this too.

 

The right equipment is kinda rare these days, and going for big bucks depending on what you need.

There are trading circles of people who have transferred quad Q-8's and Q-4 Reels to DTS so you can, with a DTS compatible HT setup, hear what those recordings were like. Most new DVD players are DTS able with simple analog outs, some of them digital via coax RCA. Both work fine. Your pre or receiver have to be totally DTS compatible. A lot easier to do in this age.

IMHO, don't bother buying Quad equipment. Some of the original Quads range from brilliant to YUCK. People have really gotten into this hobby and spent SICK money on rare quads.

 

I must attest to this too. There is one individual who has done magnificent work with quad eight-tacks, adapting a Fostex 8 track reel to play the tapes at much better fidelity with substantially less channel bleed. These DTS transfers have the hiss removed with the audio unbelievable for an eight-track (he also works with quad reels). Join one of the quadraphonic circles for these, it's well worth it. Some people have taken it upon themselves to sell his work on Ebay, but he has no connection to that.

 

DANGER! SHAMELESS PLUG AHEAD!!!



www.quadraphonicquad.com



:-jon

 

You beat me to it oblio! There is a wealth of info at that forum.

Yes, Gary, quad equipment is rare but it is possible to find. See my profile for a description of my equipment. It isn't the best stuff by a long shot (although the JVC 4DD-5 CD-4 demodulator is acknowledged as one of the best) but it is fun to listen to. If you have the cash go for a Sansui QRX-7001, 8001, or 9001: those old units were built to last, and the built-in decoders and demodulators are among the very best. There is a guy on the above plugged forum (quadbob) who rebuilds the old Sansui units to perform to new spec, as soon as I can win one on eBay I intend to use his service. For SQ and QS any phono cartridge will do, for CD-4 you will need a cart that can track the 30khz-50khz carrier (it works just like FM radio X 2) and one with a line contact stylus is best (I've been told that the Shure V15x... will pick up the carrier signal as well as the Audio Technica AT 440ML). BTW, Muscle of Love is awsome in quad, you should also snag a copy of Billion Dollar Babies as well. One thing about the old Sansui recievers: even though they seem underpowered by today's standards, the power they produce is very clean and the sound is beautiful (a friend of mine still has his, and it plays perfectly 28 years later) very transparent, excellent soundstage and they have absolutely awesome FM tuners in them.

To sum it all up: "Come on in, the water's fine!"

 

Quote:
Can't quad kind of work in a modern surround sound format using just 4 speakers w/ a regular turntable? I was wondering this too.

Not really, a regular turntalble as stated above will play SQ and QS records but you still need a decoder, otherwise the best you can expect is DplII.

 

Jon (oblio) has done amazing work getting antique Quad to DTS, as well as a very nice guy called Tab Patterson. They're both so into Quad, they should really write a book on the technology of how Quad was marketed.

It's an aging time that is being revisited now, is not without it's dissapontments, and pitfalls. Don't expect all Q8 carts to be bad, don't expect all Q4's to be good.

The mixes used for such things are long gone and may never be heard again... It's sad they didn't bank some good money into a lot of these mass produced tapes and LPs. Many were done on a shoestring budget....

DTS does a very good job bringing back these to life.

 

That's the place for Quad!!!!!

 

Here is a link to an auction for probably the finest quad receiver made, and this one is fully restored to better than original spec's.

It will not go cheap, but it is a hell of a start to a quad system:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3049313215&category=50596&rd=1

 

Gary,

This is just what I was talking about in my previous post. Droool, I wish I could afford that right now, but I can't. I'm going to watch this baby on eBay just to see what it goes for!

 

I second this. If you are not into vinyl, or maybe if you are, it is too much trouble to restore 70's gear and albums.

The DTS transfers will probably be everything you'd ever want, 'cept for sequencing on Q8s, which faithfully replicate the 8-track cartridge sequence.

Do as I say, not as I do. I DO collect Quad albums.

 

I don't want this to sound like a thread crap, but since I've been running a 4-channel setup for years and years and years, and actually owned a 9001, a couple of years ago, for about two weeks, I thought I should share my experience with it.

I can honestly report that it was an unlistenable piece of audio garbage.
In fact, it's the only "expensive" piece of vintage gear that I ever sold off; I didn't want to ever hear it again.

Yes, mine was stock, not modified, but I did pop the top and bottom to clean up the switches (I was warned in advance that the input selector switches tend to sieze up and then tear themselves apart if you force them to move using the knob). My point is that the build quality was very, VERY low, no better than the cheapest Sansui sets, except that a 9001 is stuffed full of wires and cheap circuit boards like a spaghetti dinner for six served over waffles.

But the real problem is that the 9001 sounded like ****, plain and simple.

Obviously, somebody likes those old boxes full of rubbish enough to rebuild them, but consider this: for less money you could get a clean Pioneer 949A or even a nice Marantz 4400 (the one with the 'scope built in!).

Please understand that this isn't a thread crap at all, but rather a warning from someone who ended up having to pay the shipping just to get rid of that ugly sounding old boat anchor!

And so, IMHO, it would be a shame if any forum members started lusting after junk like the old Sansui quad receivers. Wait until you hear one before you decide you need one, and then you won't want it, if my experience is any guide.

BTW, I agree with Sckott and proufo that it's best to stick with the DTS quad transfers and stay away from the old quad gear entirely.

As always, this is just MHO, and YMMV.

FFF
------------
Mike Patrick

ps God bless this forum!

 

I love Quad and play around with it from time to time. The equipment is listed in my profile. My favorite is CD-4. It is the hardest of all the formats to set up well but when you do it is glorious!. A decent demodulator should run you about 100 bucks. If you have a V15VxMR it will work great and decode very well.
I love "Machine Head" and "Aqualung" in CD-4. "Machine Head" is NOT the same mix found on the current SACD or DVD-A. I find it superior to both.

The Sansui 8001/9001 series is nice if you find a good one. They have excellent synthesizers in them and a really nice CD-4 decoder built in. They are unreliable in stock condition, though. Solders and caps are usually bad. It takes hours and hours to redo them all. I sold mine in frustration.

I have a lot of those DTS transfers that some people on the net have done. It has allowed me to collect Quad mixes that ,on some titles, are near impossible to find. The real problem with most of them is that the people doing them are VERY heavy handed with digital noise reduction which I feel just KILLS the life out an otherwise nice transfer. I would rather hear the hiss than dead, lifeless music MHO, of course.

If I was you and wanted to experiment, I would get a Marantz CD-400 or 400b CD-4 demodulator and hook it to the MC inputs of your receiver or use your tube setup for the front and something else for the back channels. Spend a little time setting up the demodulator and have fun with that Alice Cooper. If that wets your appetite, then you can explore the rest of the quad world.



Good luck!

 

Mike,

I respect your opinion, but as an owner of a Sansui QRX-999 (which I think is just a black faced 9001) since I bought it new in Italy, I must disagree. When mine was new, it blew away most everything that was out there, including the Marantz 4400 and the QRX-949A, which many of my Navy buddies all bought. We set them up in the shop and listened to them on the same Pioneer speakers on the ship (USS Independence), and more often than not, the 999 was cleaner and more full sounding. Of course, we were playing high tech stuff like Q8's and CD-4 LPs , so we were not dealing with Hi-Fi per se, but even after many years, the unit was and still is a formidable audio unit today, even when comapred to my surrent Denon AVR-5800 (which also is a monster).

Maybe you got a crappy one, or maybe we hear differently (I did spend way to much time on the flight line!), but as I said, I would have to disagree. But, then again, there are milions of opinions out there, and that is good!

As far as killing DTS conversions with NR, it is very easy to do, as a converter strives to get a nice sounding result. I myself have learned through experience to lay off of the NR and allow the hiss to come through to a point. Some of my early conversions were so "quiet" that you could not even hear the music!!

Now, I only NR where applicable, and I always leave hiss, in fact some have complained about this - to those folks I say "convert them yourself!"

Jon Urban
Board Operator
QuadraphonicQuad

 

Remember folks, not all Quad mixes from times of yore were great. Some of them just were mastered, mixed and transferred horribly.

The equipment used had to do technical somersaults to get things as close to intention as possible. Your results may vary once you get hundreds of dollars and knee-deep into it....

The only people who can find AND resurrect these dinos are Quad fanatics. And believe me, some really straaaange things came out in Quad, and they've got it. A lot of them have used DTS to preserve the mix ideas, and sometimes NR was a very evil thing to do, but some recordings, especially from Q8 carts were snake pits.

This ain't no hobby for wussies. Fighting on eBay for a rare Columbia Q8 8Track, sometimes worth $50, can go for hundreds of dollars.

I mean, vinyl's neat. SACD isn't tough to make user-friendly. Quad collecting is brutal. And the real fanatics will turn out your Enoch lights.

Makes Star Trek fanatics look like kindergarten.

 

QUOTE:

"Now, I only NR where applicable, and I always leave hiss, in fact some have complained about this - to those folks I say "convert them yourself!" "

AMEN!

One of these days, (when I have some time!), I'm going to do some of those transfers myself. In fact, I upgraded my computer a year ago so I could but just never got around to it.

Jon, I guess I should hear some of the transfers you Guys have done recently w/o so much NR. Like I said, I don't mind the hiss!

 

Jon, thanks for not being pi**ed off!

I'm glad that your 999 has served you so well. In my first post, I didn't mention that I have still have a couple of vintage Sansui units that I like a lot. In fact, it was my little Sansui 1500 quad receiver that made me take a chance on a 9001, because the 1500 actually sounds sort of wonderful! So I was expecting the 9001 to bowl me over, but when it came, it sounded nothing like the 1500, and that's why I sold it so quickly. Now all this Sansui talk makes me want to dust off the 1500 and have my own bakeoff!

My other old Sansui is a 5500 quad reel deck which came in the original packing and still had the PX price sheet stuffed in the box! It's nice and big and still works fine.


FFF - Mike Patrick .as.always.just.M.H.O.

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3049313215&category=50596
not mine - yet interesting

 

a pic

 

Sansui QRX-9001

Well Mike, for someone with 2 weeks worth of experience with a used piece of audio equipment, why don't you tell us what you really think? Giving you every benefit of your experience, I could pretty much be sure that yours was not in very good condition, if you check the Ebay link to the
Totally Restored QRX-9001 you'll see the "design flaws" that are inherent in every QRX-8001/9001. However, these flaws do not exist because of any poor engineering.....if anything just the opposite is true, the Sansui engineers were designing some of the most complex audio circuits in existence at the time, and incorporating technology and design that had never been implemented prior......although their techniques are standard practice today! The main flaw is the pass-through solder joints that
they were forced to use as the circuit boards were so complex that they had to lay runs on both sides of the pcbs. Unheard of at the time, but try to find a "modern" pcb that doesn't utilize runs on both sides of the pcb!

I guess the main point is best made by an analogy. The Sansui QRX-9001 is widely respected by the majority of us quadraphiles who have been at this for almost 30yrs now as the Ferrari of quadraphonic receivers. When it is tuned up and ready to go, nothing matches it. But, keeping it tuned up and firing on all four cylinders isn't cheap or easy. For those that either don't appreciate its capabilities or can't afford the price of admission
......well thats why they make Ford Escorts too!

You obviously got some expert advise there. I've only worked on over 50 of them now......and I've never seen a switch in the 9001 "seize up", nor have I had to replace any of them. But, then again.......just like you its only my experience.

Hmmmmmm, opinion on "build quality"........ Well, obviously Sansui in the '70s made their reputation on their very low build quality and ability to sound like ****. Which probably contributed to the QRX-9001's list price of $1,150.00 in 1977! How could anyone logically expect it to outperform the $340 QR-1500 or $750 Pioneer 949A? I can only guess that it's 580 watt Toroidal transformer that weighed 16lbs by itself along with 40,000 uf of main power filtering caps contributed to its poor performance. And, for another reference just look at how frowned upon the Sansui 9090DB (the stereo equivalent "twin" of the QRX-9001) is looked upon today! Ebay prices for the Sansui QRX-9001 and even the 9090DB reflect their poor reputation! Of course I would have to agree that the Ebay prices for the
Pioneer QX-949A or your QR-1500 faithfully represent their performance and value too!

Now, you may have noticed that I didn't reference the Marantz 4400 (list price of $1350.00) in the above discussion. Back in the "heyday" of quad...the Marantz 4400 was well respected even if the $350 o'scope contributed heavily to its entry price while adding nothing to its
audio performance (Definitely the most awesome feature ever put into a receiver without any audible improvement!). For over 20years when judged by dedicated quadraphiles the Marantz 4400 AND the Sansui QRX-9001 were consistently ranked as the two top quad receivers of all time.
The discovery and correction of the design flaws in the QRX-9001 along with the appreciation of Sansui's Vario-Matrix decoder design has resulted in its present ranking today, and the willingness of those that have lived and enjoyed them for over 20 years to invest some very serious $$ into them rather than just go out and buy the latest plastic crap on the
market.

I guess I need to hang out here more often, so that I can see what your "thread craps" look like......must be pretty interesting! Although, you do make a good point Mike. I only have a degree in Biomedical Engineering along with 25 years of experience dealing with life support and diagnostic medical electronics. So, my opinion of what is "good" engineering design obviously would differ from your own. The electronics
that I'm used to dealing with result in life or death for people. And, I have to admit I've seen some poor engineering!! Drilled into my brain during college was my Professor's question "What is your point of reference?"
Without a common point of reference it is virtually impossible to obtain understanding! In this discussion, Oblio98 and my own point of reference is a Totally Restored Sansui QRX-9001........yours is obviously a QR-1500!

You might consider "upgrading" your point of reference to something even more capable like a Montgomery Ward or Sounddesign quad or stereo receiver! Then you could join us at www.quadraphonicquad.com to discuss the newest releases in multichannel DVD-Audio and SACD which we listen to through our ugly sounding old boat anchors!

On this we totally agree......I have a clear concept of your Point of Reference!