Quadraphonic mixes that still wait to be released

According to the accompanying booklet of the box set, Miles Davis' Complete Jack Johnson Sessions.

 

ELO's Eldorado was announced for a quad release, but never appeared.

 

The Eagles Self Titled Debut and Desperado were announced but unreleased.
Yoko Ono's "FLY" was also announced but remains lost.
Ringo's "Ringo" album.
Blue Swede's "Hooked on a Feeling" was announced but unreleased.
Foghat's "Energized" and "Rock & Roll Outlaws" never appeared.
Jimi Hendrix's "Crash Landing" was prepared but remains in the vault.
James Gang's 16 Greatest Hits never happened.
Gordon Lightfoots "Gord's Gold" was dropped at the last minute.
Bob Marley's "Natty Dread" was never completed.
ROD STEWART - Atlantic Crossing and Smiller.
James Taylor's "Sweet Baby James"
Yes - Close to the Edge (missing multitracks - incomplete)
ZZ Top - Fandango

These were all supposedly prepared or almost complete when announced but for one reason or another only appeared in tape catalogs. There are many others that appeared in catalogs as well but never issued. Alan Parson's DSOTM Quad mix is available on the British Q8 and was also given away with new purchase of DVD players equipped with an on-board DTS decoder (ro so the rumor goes).

Jeff Beck Wired, E. Winter's Shock Treatment, Ten Years After, Aqualung etc were all released in Quad format so there are copies of those floating around.
There are easily almost 1,000 Quad albums that actually WERE put out in the 70's. Every major Record Co. got on the Quad band wagon and even many of the smaller companies did as well. Heck, even the Mob got involved in Quad and put out some albums that weren't available anywhere else.

Quad was a lot bigger than people try to make you think. Was it really such a disastrous failure? I think not.

 

Canned Heat-"Future Blues"
ELP-"Trilogy"

Both were featured in the Schwann catalog as Quad Q8s but never appeared.....the Quad "Twilight Zone"....

 

James Gang -Miami (well on CD anyway.)

 

I believe the story is:a quad Mamas & Papas project-most likely the '16 Greatest Hits' album was proposed,and work was started on it.But instead of pulling ALL of the multis at once,they pulled only a handful of them,started to do the quad mixes,and when they went back for more,the infamous "Let's dump all the multitracks and mono masters purge" had already occured.So the handful of mutis they had pulled are the only surviving ones today.(If,of course,they survived the fire at Universal,they nobody wants to talk about...)--And,it appears that the Grass Roots multis that survived,are because they were elsewhere,being mixed to quad,when the big purge happened.Another couple days later & they would've been lost......

 

I suggest you contact Rhino Handmade. They just announced the release of Chicago's first album in quad. The folks at Rhino love Forever Changes, so if there's an unreleased quad mix, it would be a logical to put it out on Rhino Handmade.

 

Some people have claimed there's a quad CHEAP THRILLS,all mixed & sitting in a vault,waiting to be released.Also Hard & Heavy(With Marshmellow)(Paul Revere & the Raiders)-why they'd pick that one baffles me...The Beach Boys Good Vibrations,the '75 compilation on Reprise was announced,but never happened...And supposedly,the first Boston,which by the time it was set to come out in early '77-quad was dead....

 

Nope.Only Doors quad was 'Best Of The Doors',which was only available in quad until '81.For some reason,the quad version was reissued not long after the stereo,as I bought mine in '84,and it has the red & black label,with the round logo & silver lettering.--So,store copies of the STEREO Best Of weren't available for very long.-The stereo was available via the Columbia Record Club in the 70s.

 

Ringo's Goodnight Vienna and JL's Walls & Bridges would be good.

The mix of Whatever Gets You Thru' The Night is significantly different.

On Imagine the opening strings & chatter section to How Do You Sleep is missing

 

I didn't know that!
how come multitracks from a top 3 album in 1972 are missed?!

 

I think quad was many years before its time. Two main factors contributed to its demise, in my opinion.
#1 The market was trying to tell producers and engineers that in addition to the stereo mix, they had to create a 4 channel mix. Not all smiles there. They had just gotten rid of mono in the last decade and were happy to create one master. And
#1a Some of the so-called "quad" mixes were fake, not discreet. After buying a few of those bad LP's, some of us were left with a bad taste in our mouths.
#2 Competing quad formats that were not compatible.
Now, 35+ years later, we're chomping at the bit because most of us have multi-channel amps/receivers. Some of the SACD releases of old quad masters sound really good. I say bring it on!

 

technical limitations kept it back, all of those different decoders/etc... Now that it can all be discreet without any decoders (well, some still LOVE to use dts/dolby) and there is already an install base for the necessary speakers (the AV market) it is viable. It would be great to market them at a time with bluray exploding.... but rather than selling 1 album at a time, sell a bunch all in one. Eg: [BLURAY] Pink Floyd: The complete quadraphonic mixes . Put some nice visuals on it and sell it for 60 bucks, it would be fantastic demo material.

 

The problems were primarily:

1) Competing, incompatible formats: SQ, QS, CD-4. Most titles available in only one format, so to play every title, you needed all three decoders.

2) The decoders available during the heyday of quad were mostly poor. The QS and SQ decoders, in particular, were mostly bad. Even with good source material (vinyl pressing), the quad decode was far from discreet and suffered pumpling and distortion. Very good quality SQ (Tate/Fosgate) and QS (QSD-1000) decoders didn't appear until quad was for all purposes dead and when they did appear, they were very expensive. Initial CD-4 decoders were lousy, as well, but better ones (e.g. Marantz) came along before quad was dead. However in the case of CD-4 the need for a special purpose stylus and issues with a useable carrier frequency on the pressed LPs were weak links.

3) Cost. To play quad you needed an expensive 4 channel receiver, expensive decoders, and four speakers.

4) Space considerations. Rooms were not arranged for surround sound. So you needed to rearrange the furniture and drop wires to support 4 channels.

5) Quad requires dedicated listening. To get something out of quad, you need to sit near the sweet spot, within the region bounded by the four speakers. This moves listening from a passive enterprise to something that requires a greater devotion.

Quad reels obviated the problems with decoders, but were expensive and limited in availability. Also, quad reel decks were expensive and cumbersome to use (just like any reel deck). Quad 8-tracks also avoided the decoder, but suffered from the issues with 8-track playback (wow/flutter, tapes getting eaten, and generally a non-audiophile experience).

Quad 8-tracks in cars were possibly the best place for quad to take hold, since you have the listener fixed in the sweet spot for listening. But somehow that didn't happen--just as it didn't happen with surround SACD and cars in the modern era.

 

There is supposedly a quad mix of the first Boston album that made it to the test pressing/internal use stage. Same thing with Springsteen's Born to Run.

 

Yeah that's what I said. Lack of mixes and incompatible formats. Space and money and where to put a chair were not everyone's problems. In reality, only a very small percentage of albums of the day were available in quad, in any flavor of the quad formats.

 

actually...........

The "Best of" the Doors was released as a QuadraDisc only, single inventory, from it's first release in the mid-'70s until the middle '80s. The first copies had a brown sticker on the front proclaiming that it was ONLY available as a Quadradisc. You can find 5 USA label variations. The original "Black Butterfly", the later "Green Butterfly", the "All Red" label, then the "Black/Red" label, and finally, and quite astonishingly, the mid-'80s Elektra Circle Logo label.

The ONLY was to get this LP in a non CD-4 Quadradisc version was through the record club. In fact, if you have that version, you can see that they did a real crappy job on the jacket graphics, merely blocking out the QuadraDisc Logo and words CD-4 Discrete from the cover.

For more information and pictures, check out my QQ WEA page at:

http://www.quadraphonicquad.com/WB.htm

For those who just want to see the labels, I include them below.

 

Dennis Wilson's "Quad Symphony".

I think this was one of the first quad recordings ever made and was used as a demo in a seminar for the Audio Engineering Society in Hollywod by Steve Desper. A quad mix of Barbara was also presented. I have Steve's presentation on CD, not in quad though.

 

I have heard the Big Brother and Raiders tapes, and they are indeed real quad. The interesting thing about the Cheap Thrills quad is that the allegedly live material is all studio recording, missing the crowd noise and Bill Graham in the quad mix.
The Beach Boys probably would have been fake quad, as most of the stuff on it was fake stereo.

 

Wernt ELO and ELO II (AKA No Answer) also released in Quad.

 

The Mothers - Over-nite Sensation
Frank Zappa - Apostrophe(')

 

ELO (No Answer) was...not sure about II.

 

It seems they only mixed two or three songs on ELO II for quad and quit.

 

Aw man, what I wouldn't do to hear that first album in quad. I had no idea that was released.

 

I heard a quad 8-track for Imagine back in the 70s.

Evan