Dear All,

As you know there are many old Quad titles which were released in
both Discrete and Matrix formats. My question is: which is the
"definitive" version - the one that the artist and producer intended
the audience to hear?

I posted a couple of inquiries to Sursound a couple of years ago on
this topic. It seems that, in countries like the US where Q8 etc was
widely available, the discrete mix was considered the definitive
version, as this posting from Ty Chamberlain states:

>Everyone involved with the production of matrix releases knew that a matrix
>could only approximate the discrete original, and thus, the discrete original
>was always the "golden standard" of comparison. Thus, the discrete master IS
>the way the orignals were meant to be heard...in addition, in almost every
>case, SQ and QS releases had corresponding Q8 or open reel discrete quad
>releases. The matrix was NEVER considered the "definitive" version. CBS's SQ
>encoders even had discrete 4-channel outputs so that a discrete version of the
>mix could be recorded at the same time.

However in countries such as the UK where Matrix was the norm, it
appears that the decoded matrix signal was often considered
"definitive" - the artist & producer monitored the mix via the 4-2-4
matrix, and in fact sometimes mastered directly to matrixed 2-channel
without even creating an intermediate 4-track tape. As Mark Anderson
said:

>Not uncommon to master into matrix only, considering that most folks in the
>U.K. area did not have easy access to quad reel and q8 hardware and software,
>the matrixed version was considered the standard.

Note incidentally that the matrix system vendors of the day all
claimed that their systems were highly transparent!

Your thoughts?

BC.