Vinyl - Quad Mix Pressing vs Original 2-Channel Pressing

Anybody have any experience or thoughts comparing an original pressing on vinyl versus a quad mix/pressing of the same title?

I just picked up a near mint copy of "Killing Me Softly" by Roberta Flack in good old CD-4 channel discrete which sounds mighty fine.

Are there any "generalities" regarding lp's mixed and pressed in quad versus the orginal 2-channel versions? Played, obviously, on a stereo rig.

I don't have any recent experience with LP's of this format. I was 8 years old when this was released (1973). I do remember the 4 BIG boxes in the den, however, but I have no aural memories.

I need to go find a regular original pressing of this title to do an A-B.

I'd love to hear from the jungle on this issue....

 

I've always found quad lps to sound like crap in general, there have been a few exceptions, but generally they're noisier than their stereo counterparts (tho with orig. 70's pressings, it's hard to find anything that isn't noisy that was made in USA).
Even the euro pressings by and large had more noise, tho I'd imagine the quad lps from Japan would do much better in that area.
Check out DVD-A if you want to hear multi-channel that blows away all competition (except SACD, but so far their limited releases I see as no threat to the DVD-A format)....trying to fit 4 channels of info into a 2 sided groove is not really the best idea, tho there is an A for effort and a D for format wars that killed the quad lp completely....sigh...

 

I only have Slay & The Family Stone's Greatest Hits on a quad LP. I like it better than the CD! I know the mixes aren't accurate played back in two channel sound but they are a big improvement over many of their stereo counterparts.

I have been eyeing a quad LP of the Four Tops "Keeper Of The Castle".

 

The one exception I feel where the Quad version played back in stereo is better is Janis Joplin's Pearl. The Quad version is more clean sounding with better detail.

 

I just picked up a quad copy of "Souther, Hillman, Furay Band-Trouble In Paradise". Haven't played it yet.

 

Can you say "can of worms"?

Basically, you have two different quad "camps". There is the matrix camp and the discrete camp. The only game in the discrete camp (vinyl-wise) was CD-4 (and if you want to get picky, the rarely used UD-4 format, which wasn't wholly discrete anyway). For the matrix camp, you had SQ, QS, RM and EV-4.

For all intents and purposes, for stereo playback, you can lump the various formats for the two camps together. So, let's just boil 'em down to CD-4 vs. Matrix.

Right off the bat you want to simply forget CD-4 for stereo playback. I won't go into detail, but by design, these discs were compressed even more so than standard LP's. The best frequency response you can expect from these LP's is 20 Hz to 15 kHz. No better than FM broadcast quality. For quad playback, these disks rule, since they are the only truly discrete vinyl quad format. But for stereo playback, forget it. These disks also go by the name "Quadradisc".

Okay, then there are the matrix LP's. These guys can sound great in stereo! The quality and frequency response is no different than stereo LP's. In most cases (assuming they are well cared for) the quality is going to be better since the pressing runs were very limited compared to their stereo counterparts.

All matrix formats rely on the principle of phase relationships between the front and rear channels. All rear channel information is purposefully recorded out of phase. In stereo, obviously, nothing is directed to the rear channels, so this out-of-phase information is played through the front channels.

This can add a certain amount of "space" to stereo playback. Actually, almost all regular stereo recordings have a naturally occurring amount of out-of-phase information already. Sometimes out-of-phase information was purposefully added to stereo recordings (pre-quad era) to give them more spaciousness. Some artists employing these studio tricks (circa 1967-1969) include Pink Floyd, Frank Zappa and Jimi Hendrix. There are numerous examples but these stand out as some of the most obvious.

In any event, when you play back matrix quad recordings in stereo, you will probably notice two things:

1. The mix is different (for better or worse) than the stereo version.
2. The amount of out-of-phase information is going to make it sound more spacious (for better or worse).

 

The SQ Quad mixes (those on Columbia) should give an interesting listening experience on 2 channel stereo systems. The quality of the vinyl is usually excellent (much better than 1970's era stereo LP's).

The mixes are sometimes done by the original engineer that did the 2 channel mixes. For example, I have Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline on a Columbia SQ LP, mixed by the same guy who mixed the stereo album, and it is really nice (if not accurate) in the quad mix.

 

Did I tell you guys "vex" knows his quad?

Anyway, aside from the debate on quality of sound when a QLP is played in stereo, there are many quad albums that have totally different mixes than their stereo counterparts. The most publicized is the SLY & THE FAMILY STONE GREATEST HITS, but there are plenty of others.

James Taylor's ONE MAN DOG, although it is not one of his better albums, has a few songs with completely different vocal tracks, and one tune with about 20 seconds of extra music. There are more, and I'm sure others will chime in.

:-jon

 

The QR of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" has a more playful, wild mix of "Cecilia". the British Q8 of "Money" (Pink Floyd) sounds slightly different, "Wish You Were Here", on "Have A Cigar" has 20 more seconds of guitar solo by Gilmore after the initial "WOOSH".

On The Moody Blues "On The Threshold Of A Dream" QR, the melotron noise fills the '1st side' after the last song, while on the original LP, the last song just fades out. Man, I could just go on and on.

Hey, Tab RULES!

 

OOOHHH Steve: very interesting. No pressure, I'm sure you will reveal all when you can.....

Sometimes I wonder though - are ALL of the elements actually ON the multi-tracks. The old Quad Allman Brothers at Fillmore East lp had different edits and solos - much closer to the Fillmore concerts CD. Alice Cooper Billion Dollar Babies Quad disc had different solo's and vocal tracks as well.... they resemble the versions found on the DVD-A disc - and they are NOT the same mixes.

I think that many of the elements we are familiar with may have been added during mixdown, and not a part of the "working" multi-tracks.

 

I remember The Best Of The Doors Elektra LP was available only in the quad format back around '74 or so. I was disgusted there was no stereo LP counterpart, so I bought it and it was crappy sounding.

Also John Lennon's Walls and Bridges was in Quad only on 8-track tape and there were lots of mix differences probably because Lennon himself did the stereo mix and the quad mix was left up to an engineer who name I can't remember (Lennon said in a radio interview he got a request from Capitol for a Quad mix and had just finished mixing the stereo version and just couldn't bear to mix it all over again "for the twenty people who buy quad".) In addition the song Steel and Glass goes on for nearly a minute longer on the quad version.

 

Bumping this thread to ask for an update from Steve.

 

A couple of issues I don't think were mentioned: The CD-4 disks had to be cut at a relatively low level, plus the ultrasonic carriers used tends to make them play back a bit noisier than normal disks. There's also the theoretical issue, for those with wideband systems, of squirting nasty ultrasonic stuff through your system. (Does your cat flee the room?) CD-4 never worked all that well. It was a highly complex system, and most records broke up badly at some point or other. Reportedly RCA shot for getting 10 clean plays out of them, on the theory that a record is no longer "new" after you've played it 10 times, and tends to sit on the shelf. (Remember, this was the time when they brought out "Dynaflex", or as the rest of us called it, Dynawarp, those extra thin disks which RCA claimed were less scratch-prone and (believe it or not, they said) less warp-prone than standard disks. After returning one such quadradisk (Jose Feliciano) three times because they were warped so badly they literally threw the tonearm into the air, I was told that RCA records were made to be tracked at 3-5 grams, and I should get a heavier tracking system (!) But I digress...

SQ and QS (etc.) disks had their audio content pushed through an encoder, and some folks don't think there were any transparent SQ encoders, so even leaving off strange phasing effects the SQ disks may not sound as good as the stereo versions. (I think the early Columbia LPs, with the gold band around the cover, generally don't sound so hot because of this.) To get around this some of the EMI engineers who did classical recordings, I have read, only put the rear channels through the encoder, since with SQ the front is essentially the same as normal stereo.

All that said, I have a Court and Spark CD-4 LP, which was mixed rather oddly -- there's only reverb on one side! Apparently they only had a stereo reverb and they used it front/back on one side. Truly and odd thing to do. However in some senses this LP sounds very good. There's a lot of bass, and there seems to be a lot less EQ overall so things sound more natural, until you hit the high freq. problems. It's noisy.

The follow up album, Hissing of Summer Lawns, was released in Quad around the same time as in Stereo, I think, and probably mixed at the same time. The stereo vs. quad mixes are much more similar.

I was usually disappointed with the quad versions. I recall that the majority of the quad issues were after-the-fact remixes that were not particularly faithful to the stereo disks, and sometimes were radically different.

I liked, and still do, the Beach Boys' "Surfs Up", which was mixed using the EV (dynaquad) system. We had fun connecting our speakers in quad and having things fly and/or float around the room, and the voices come from nowhere -- but it's not what I'd call a high-fidelity album, especially with regard to the stereo image, it sounds downright weird. Still fun to listen to, if you like that sort of thing.

 

Whoops, sorry, didn't realize this was such an old thread.
unbump...

 

The ultrasonic stuff should never make it past your demodulator, unless your futzing with a setup disk or are playing a CD-4 disk in stereo.

I've had very good luck with CD-4, so I don't agree with your contention that it never worked very well. It is relatively complex to other systems, but when done right, was by far the best vinyl quad system. But yeah, I guess it never worked very well for Joe Sixpack, but it is not true that it "never worked very well".

As for the CD-4 records, they required a much higher degree of perfection and quality than stereo or matrix quad LPs. JVC, who invented the CD-4 system, also invented a new vinyl formulation specifically for the CD-4 records. This vinyl, dubbed super vinyl, caught the attention of quad enthusiast and Mobile Fidelity founder Brad Miller. All MoFi records, including the UHQR series, that were pressed in Japan and prior to the Anadisc 200 series, were all pressed on JVC's super vinyl. Even if you don't care for quad, you can thank quad for giving us this exceptional vinyl.

In any event, as specified by JVC, all CD-4 records were to be pressed on this super vinyl. All the Japanese CD-4 pressings followed the specification and perform brilliantly. For a variety of reasons, none of the US CD-4 pressings used super vinyl. Instead, they just used what they were already using for stereo records. That fact, coupled with atrocious quality control, led to a hugely inconsistent and often inferior product being hoist upon the US quad marketplace.

To exacerbate the situation, we have RCA, who at the time, were releasing some pretty abysmal product overall. However, I'm highly skeptical that they shot for ten good plays. It is an absolute myth that CD-4 records wear more quickly than conventional LP's. If well cared for, they will last just as long as conventional LP's. However, because of their design, if a CD-4 record does become damaged, it is going to be much more apparent than with conventional LP's, but they aren't extra susceptible to damage.

A good quad pressing is going to sound good fresh out of the shrink-wrap and last for years to come, even if played heavily. A bad quad pressing (of which there were many, especially from RCA in the USA) is going to sound bad fresh out of the shrink-wrap and sound just as bad (but not worse) for many years to come. This may be where the "ten plays" myth came from.

Also, I don't buy the 3-5 grams tracking weight story. CD-4 records do tend to perform better at higher tracking weights but anything marginally over 2 grams is insane. Obviously, it depends largely on the cartridge, but I've never had to go above 2 grams. 3-5 grams is insane, and if you follow this route, then the "ten play" myth becomes less of a myth and more of a reality with ALL your vinyl!

 

Yes, I meant if you are playing it back in stereo. I doubt many people have CD-4 demodulators out there. It's a small point. It was certainly a bit of a problem for some radio stations, when the CD-4 carrier interfered with the stereo subcarrier.

I don't mean to rain on anyone's parade. Perhaps I should have said, I never heard it work right, and I've heard it on a good number of systems, and futzed with it myself with several demodulators and cartridges. (I worked at one of the early "high end" stereo shops when it was still current technology.) Certainly there was a much better degree of separation between channels than with matrixed quad, and none of the horrible SQ-logic stuff, but there were always artifacts, and usually some degree of mistracking which sounded really bad. Certainly the japanese pressings were *vastly* superior to the U.S. ones.

(The best quad demonstration I ever heard in the 1970s was from a Sansui vario-matrix system, but I did not hear it under ideal conditions. The variomatrix idea seemed much more sensible to me than the SQ steering logic, since it did not play such havoc with the dynamics. I'd bet those disks could be decoded quite nicely if some modern company wanted to build a decoder -- not that it'll ever happen.)

Certainly. Too bad the WEA CD-4 disks didn't take advantage of it.

I'm not lying, and I'm not making it up. That is what they wrote to me.

There is a certain internal consistency there, isn't there.