--- In quadraphonicquad@yahoogroups.com, Dan Olson <dano@...> wrote:
> it might be worth checking out quadraphonicquad.com, I
> haven't been there in a while, but the forums are usually the best
place
> for quad discussion.

Thank you, I took a quick look but didn't make it past the
description, as I don't embrace digital media as they do. In fact I
believe it was the end of sonic reality for all time. I got dragged
kicking and screaming into CD's much later than anyone else got them,
and while unfamiliar music sounds striking when digitized, the music
I listened to over and over in my youth is clearly missing something
when reduced to digital media. This was a shock for me, because I was
used to reading articles debating whether or not the difference
between digital and analogue is actually detectable as though they
were very close or something. I don't understand this, the difference
seems very noticeable to me. Ruling out the tube era I feel solid
state audio peaked immediately prior to the adoption of integrated
circuits, probably the year that AM radio sections ONLY were being
replaced by dedicated IC's but the rest of the rig was still discreet
semiconductors. I'm not crazy about logic circuits either, because
the steering does not exist in the source material, it is added. When
I got nostalgic for Quad I had to determine what I wanted to buy. The
highly respected Pioneer rigs are said to have crappy decoders and
for some reason they are the poster child for 'repair' websites. On
the other hand the highly respected Sansui's are said to have
dreadful SQ sound. The complaints on these two don't pertain to
'seperation' but to sound quality with the competitor's format,
that's what caught my attention. So I wanted a different brand.
Superscope by Marantz was extremely high quality at the end, but no
QS, and the revised non-logic SQ that had the blend resistor to
increase front-to back separation was very ineffective in actual use.
And anybody with a joystick balance knows it's completely stupid when
diagonally opposite channels both need a boost. So when I spotted the
Toshiba with SQ, QS, no logic, no joystick, I spent more than I
really wanted to because good luck finding an alternative with my
spectrum of biases lol. I used to feel cheated that I never got my
hands on an EV decoder since Len Feldman's book made a very good case
for it vs SQ and QS, but last week while googling I became aware that
Realistic(Radio Shack)"Stereo-4" was actually the EV matrix, and I
never used it because it had that hollow crappy L-R sound! I'd still
like to hear their revised "Universal Matrix Decoder", but I'm not
clear on how a regular matrix like EV was closer to the SQ Phase
Matrix than QS regular matrix??? Irrational pairing. I suspect I'm
not missing much since there's almost nothing on the web.

But today all the phase manipulation that places sounds outside the
physical speaker placement probably makes everything from movies to
commercials fair game for a 70's era decoder - you guys would know
more about that than me. All I know is I want pre-IC audio, I want to
hear LP's through a Shure cartridge again, and if it also gives an
interesting effect with movies and DVD's that will be fun.