Quadraphonic...please check me on this thought

I'd think there would be problems with phase cancellation between near and far speakers.

NoKey


Hi dear forum people,

Since I recall decades ago there was quadraphonic on LP records, and then in tape-cartridge players (before the popular audio cassette).

Anyway, they were meant for 4 speakers, one on each corner of the room, and the listener in the center.

Then came computers and 4.1 speakers, etc.

But still, the concept is with the listener in the center.

I have this old thought of why not the rear speakers behind the front speakers, and the listener in front of the front speakers, instead? ...That would be in location order: Listener, FrontSpeakers, RearSpeakers.

This setup mainly for use with Sonar, which can, with the proper card or interface, channel to each speaker independently. So what would this do?

According to the thought, it'd be more similar to the way one hears a band or an orchestra playing: One is not in the center of the musicians, but rather, in front of them..So this would give, what I believe, true DEPTH, at least two speakers deep, and let the actual room do the room acoustics, to start with.

So, like I'd have the piano on th front-left, guitar on the front-right, drums in the back center, trumpets in the rear-left, violins in the rear-right, bass maybe in the rear center, and vocals in the front center, or even in the bass 5.1 channel (which does not need to be bass-speaker, nor pass low frequencies only. It'd be just a straight audio channel, just as the others).

Anyway, audio wise, Sonar-wise, it's easy to do. Can be done pretty much with any old Sonar project I have, rather fast too, with a multichannel output card, of course.

What's a little more is to move the speakers (and other things in the room), to place the rear speakers against the wall, the front speakers maybe 4 feet apart, and the listener (me) and my keyboards and setup maybe 4 feet from the front speaker.

I am posting this to see if any one has done this, or seen or heard of this being done, and also to ask if not so, why this is not common now-days....

I can understand the 4 speakers in the corners of the room and the listener in the center as the case vinyl records being based on effects reflections, rather than on true channels. But with Sonar and a multi-output interface or card, the option I mention is very viable.

Am also posting this because I have yet to do it, and I think it's good to hear any comments or suggestions  before doing it, which I do value.

Doing it is a reversible thing, of course, but it's not something that does take a certain amount of time and effort, and even risk (like drop or break something), or myself.  I think the rear speakers I'd try to put up a littl higher than the front ones.

Thanks.

I think that's why quad didn't survive as a music format. Concerts don't have the audience in the center of the band.  It was just a really bad idea.  Now for movies and TV it did gain some traction but I'm not sure most folks really wanted it. Out of all the folks I know only one has a surround setup in their home, most folks still watch TV and movies with the speakers built into the TV. 

People also talk during a movie or TV show at home so it's pretty clear they have not committed their attention to just the one event.  Having sound coming at you from all angles would only be desirable when you can devote attention to the entertainment and for most people that means being alone. Like driving in the car by yourself or listening with headphones.

To me multi channel sound is still a solution looking for a problem. You can't wait for folks to want it because they won't. You have to force them to take it.

Thanks for the comments OhHey and JHughs.

I did own specially the early quad systems, including the 8 track tapes I could find (not many), and a quad player.

This I am considering is one of those life-time curiosities I want to check into. Specially here it has no cost, and it can be temporary (unless I really like it).

I still find many old black and white movies have great photography, and watching them, I don't miss the color, even though the latest craze is 3-D movies.

I agree. The content matters the most.

That whole quad thing never seemed to catch on for music recordings.....

But the Who had a pretty good album called Quadrophenia..... if that helps any.

can you see the real me...can ya?

I like the surround sound thing... but even when it comes to my TV sound set up..... it's stereo with subs.... in a small room , that's more than enough.

FWIW, what you're talking about is sort of what the Grateful Dead's infamous "Wall of Sound" PA system was. Obviously a huge PA system is different than a more intimate setting, but it seems like an interesting idea.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/w...Sound_(Grateful_Dead):

The Wall of Sound fulfilled the band's desire for a distortion-free sound system that could also serve as its own monitoring system. After Stanley got out of prison in late 1972, he, Dan Healy and Mark Raizene of the Grateful Dead's sound crew, in collaboration with Ron Wickersham, Rick Turner, and John Curl of Alembic combined eleven separate sound systems in an effort to deliver high-quality sound to audiences. Vocals, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, and piano each had their own channel and set of speakers. Phil Lesh's bass sent signals from each of the four strings to a separate channel and set of speakers for each string. Another channel amplified the bass drum, and two more channels carried the snares, tom-toms, and cymbals. Because each speaker carried just one instrument or vocalist, the sound was exceptionally clear and free of intermodulation distortion.

My experience has always been "more speakers sound better", but I'm talking strictly in terms of sounding "more pleasing" which is very different than saying "accurate". If it's about creating a new listening experience, I would think it might work brilliantly. OTOH, for reproducing a recorded environment, you may add as many new problems as you solve...

Of course the problem w/ quad or surround is trying to mimic a real situation - like a concert.  I remember reading one guy mixing a live show in surround simply added the audience noise to the rear speakers - down but still audible.  Seems like a waste.  I'd like to have sound flying around in space.  And when the Who did the quadraphenia tour they did have sound flying around in 3D, or the drugs were better than I thought.

So ditch the audience/performer idea for surround and take advantage of the space.  One mixer put you in w/ the band.  Movies do this OK, with sounds coming from behind you to the screen or bullets whizzing by left to right.  I wouldn't do an acoustic set in 3D, but more electronic styled music could take advantage of it.

@

I'm into surround. Been that way for years, at least for movie and TV watching (all the way back to the first Sony Beta-HIFI release and 'Mad Max - Road Warrior' on Beta tape). Right now my 'entertainment' system supports 7.1. A few years back a friend introduced me to the DVD-Audio surround mixes for music (e.g, Eagles Hotel California, Donald Fagan, Blue Man Group). I wish everything was mixed this way. When done well, it is great. It can support 96 kHz/24-bit recordings in 5.1 surround mode. To me, everything just sounds a lot better. Some DVD-A, like for a live concert, may just use the surround to enhance the live concert imaging (Jackson Brown comes to mind). This puts you into the audience where the surround speakers have the audience noises and reverb from the band audio. Studio recorded DVD-A plays more with spatiality of sound. Like with Hotel California. For example, a guitar part may come from the side instead of from the front. Vocals may come from all-around. So I don't think the intent is necessarily to always put you into the band, although that is possible. I just like the sounds of instruments coming from a lot of different source locations. Someday I would like to setup the little studio to support surround mixing. Right now, I am just trying to master stereo mixes.
 
Like Quad, even the more recent DVD-A/SACD hasn't taken off either. Not everyone is into concentrated audio listening. Most is still done in stereo because of the popularity of iPods devices and earbuds. A surround system requires additional expense (more speakers, maybe a new audio receiver, etc). Just like 3-D TV. How many are going to take the plunge.  
 
In regards to the OP idea, I hope he replies back as to any success. The concept sounds interesting.
   

KenB123


I'm into surround. Been that way for years, at least for movie and TV watching (all the way back to the first Sony Beta-HIFI release and 'Mad Max - Road Warrior' on Beta tape). Right now my 'entertainment' system supports 7.1. A few years back a friend introduced me to the DVD-Audio surround mixes for music (e.g, Eagles Hotel California, Donald Fagan, Blue Man Group). I wish everything was mixed this way. When done well, it is great. It can support 96 kHz/24-bit recordings in 5.1 surround mode. To me, everything just sounds a lot better. Some DVD-A, like for a live concert, may just use the surround to enhance the live concert imaging (Jackson Brown comes to mind). This puts you into the audience where the surround speakers have the audience noises and reverb from the band audio. Studio recorded DVD-A plays more with spatiality of sound. Like with Hotel California. For example, a guitar part may come from the side instead of from the front. Vocals may come from all-around. So I don't think the intent is necessarily to always put you into the band, although that is possible. I just like the sounds of instruments coming from a lot of different source locations. Someday I would like to setup the little studio to support surround mixing. Right now, I am just trying to master stereo mixes.
 
Like Quad, even the more recent DVD-A/SACD hasn't taken off either. Not everyone is into concentrated audio listening. Most is still done in stereo because of the popularity of iPods devices and earbuds. A surround system requires additional expense (more speakers, maybe a new audio receiver, etc). Just like 3-D TV. How many are going to take the plunge.  
 
In regards to the OP idea, I hope he replies back as to any success. The concept sounds interesting.
   

Have you seen what the DVD-A of Hotel California goes for on e-bay ?

KenB123

ohhey

Have you seen what the DVD-A of Hotel California goes for on e-bay ?

Egads! I will have to lock-up my collection. That's unbelievable.

I say cash out now... wait for the fad to fade and buy them back for cheap.

Hi dear people,

I want to report on the outcome on this idea, as follows.

Due to my large monitor and laptop being on a specially built shelf, against the wall, I did not find it practical to move the front speakers lengthwise in my place, as originally thought.

So I just rather moved the rear speakers to the front.

Originally I had my setup pretty much as recommended for a quad system:  rear speakers pointing to my back, and front speakers pointing to my front.

But here are some things to mention, and some tips, for those that may be interested in this new (for me) setup.
    
I use an Audigh 2 ZS notebook card.
This card comes with a special cable harness that clips onto the PCMCIA notebook slot.

This hardness provides true separate 6 outputs. Front-L, Front-R, Rear-L, R-R, and Front-Center (But this Front-Center is actually stereo. Two center outputs are recognized by the audio softwares, including Sonar), even though they are typically called 5.1 systems.

An important concept is that "Front", "Rear", and "Center" terminologies do not oblige the location of the speakers, nor their use. Those conventional speaker placing schemes are basically for LISTENING to multimedia. But for playing virtual instruments, and for recording purposes, they are independent channels, which are now used to musicians advantage.
    
The card has actually also one more pair of outputs called the HeadPhones out. It is also really independent, and it is the What-You-Hear audio channel pair. To the What-You-Hear or Wave-Pair of channels, is where the card's hardware supported effects apply, such as advanced equalization effect, Graphic Equalizer, Ambient, and Surround effects apply.

This means that if one uses Front-Line, Rear-Line, or Front-Center physical outputs of the harness, none of those effects apply. As said, the hardware effects apply only to the Wave Out pair, which is also shown as a separate channel to audio softwares.
    
I am not actually using hardware effects for this setup, which I describe as follows.
    
1. I have given the Drums XG-soft synth to the "rear" left-right pair. I route the physical little harness outputs to an old Altec Lansing 2.1 speaker set model ACS-48 rated 100 watts. It has a rather powerful subwoofer (It is really hevey in weight) and comes with two satellite speakers. My trick here is to replace the satellite small speakers with two much larger and efficient Infinity brand speakers. These are very old, and there's no longer a model number on them that I could see. They have only a serial number each. They are 1" high, by 9" wide, and about 7" deep. Under the cloth snap-on each has a 7" mylar? speaker, and a tweeter/midrange Infinity Brand POLYCELL element about 4" diameter, but in its center is what looks like a tweeter, about 2" in diameter, and that's I believe the polycell unit.  THE IMPORTANT thing here is to substitute the satellite speakers of the 2.1 speakers for this type of bookshelf speakers, because the ones that come with the 2.1's are meant like for listening to mp3's music, and typical multimedia. But for musician playing of instruments, they are not that good. So BIGGER speakers/cones do much better for PLAYING synths. This Altec Lansing ACS-48 is no longer made but I found in the web various people which praise them as venerables. The drums exclusively on this set with the Infinity and that subwoofer sound amazingly real, and efficient.
    
2. I gave the "rear" stereo outputs to another (newer but also discontinued) inexpensive Altec Lansing model BX-1021. This set is only rated 20 watts RMS (40 watts peak). But, again, on this set, I replaced its little satellite speakers by two large old self-made speakers that I already had here. These have each 3 speakers one 10" for lows, 1-8" for mid range, and a tweeter 3" or so in diameter. They have some sort of self-made passive crossover, I don't recall what it is any more. Again, the important thing here is that even the 20 watt 2.1 speaker system does a good job when its smallish satellite speakers are substituted by these much larger ones. Of course the power is still limited, but the bigger speakers produce more sound and better quality than the little ones. Remember, it also has is own little subwoofer, which does count too. I gave this set to the Native Instruments B4, and I am also sending the Bass, from the Proteus VX to it. These now "satellite" speakers are in a 3/4" plywood box that measures 26" high, by 18" wide, and 18" deep. I put them on the floor, with the tweeters pointing outwards for better directionality.
    
3. I gave the "front" stereo output pair to  a 200 watt amplifier-mixer which drives two Klipsch K9-4FB speakers. Their cabinet is 27" high, 18" wide, and 10.5" deep. Each is rated 100 watts RMS. Inside they have one speaker 12" diameter, a smaller speaker, and a cone wide tweeter. I placed these each on top of the self-made speaker cabinets on my left and my right respectively. The distance, center to center, of these speakers is about 8 feet. My keyboards (2)  are right in between them. To these Klipsch speakers, I assign the rest of the instruments form the Proteus VX. Typically a Piano, guitars, pads, violins, whatever the Yamaha Styles I use for rythms include (or I assign at will), plus any additional voices I wish to solo with the keyboards. Now, upon auditioning tests, from the klipsch speakers I still couldn't hear some higher frequencies that I could hear with the AKG-240 headhpones. So I hooked up, in parallel to each, from another old pair I happened to have, of KLH plastic enclosed 3 way speakers. These are only 8"high 6" wide 5" deep, very ruggedly built, with a metal grill upfront. They are 3way ones. The larger one is 4" diameter, the mid is like 2.5" diameter, and there's a little tweeter about 1" or so in diameter. I have never opened these, they likely have a little crossover inside too. These are 8 Ohms 50 watts according to the sticker. Now since the Klipsch are 4" speakers and I have this 8" ones in parallel with the 4ohm Klipschs, the overall impedance is close to 3 ohms, so it's kind of OK, for the Amp-Mixer wants 4 ohm speakers...Now, the output to this amp-speakers set, rather than being Left-1 and Left-2, I have chosen to be instead Wave-1 and Wave-2.  That's because W-1 and W-2 are the audio channels used by regular played music, and so when I use the WMplayer, the sound goes there. Also, because to the Wave-1 and Wave-2, I can add hardware card effects without affecting the other channels, if I want to, although I am not actually using those effects.
    
The Creative volume controls, setups, and so forth coordinated correctly with the Windows XP so that I can choose to have independent volume cotrols for each of those channels, or have one single slider move them at unison..This, by the way also allows me to raise/lower the overall volume from the wireless Microsoft 1000 Keyboard. It is quite convenient.

Of course, additionally, I can and do have to balance the volumes of each set of speakers physically and leave them as such.
    
On the Klipsch ones, which are driven by an amplified mixer, there's also the built in equalizer, and knobs for low/high/frequ, and also ambient effects...But I keep those controls at neutral (not used).

So, in total, there are a total of 10 sound (elements)...Four speakers on each side, and 2 subwoofers under my keyboards.

I want to say that I am very pleased with the results...I mentioned from my initial tests that playing the soft-synths with dedicated audio channels feels a little closer to playing real separate instruments...For instance, playing the B4 as such does feel as if one were playing a separate synth or electronic organ, since one can feel the sound coming on its own.

The rythms also sound much better and more as if a band was here.
    
Another tip that I want to share is concerning the speaker wires to use: The mixer/amp requires neutrik connectors. So I bought at walmart one large 50 foot 3 wire extention chord, it's like 16 gauge or so. It's like those typical orange extension chords one uses for electric grass trimmers, except they had one that was white in color, rather than orange, which matched more my taste for the application...Now, for the other speakers, I used also extension chords but those are 2 wire only, typical brown color, for use interior with lamps or so... Good thing both of those extension chords are well identified as for polarities, and they are very reasonably priced, and rugged.
    
Now, all of the above is pretty much OUTSIDE of Sonar. ...

When I want to record, all I have to do is change the Speakers setup to 2 speakers.

If I want to do it the way I had it before, basically just stereo,

I can leave it in that mode day after day if wanted, so I can pretty much just run Sonar and start recording without having to do any physical disconnections or adjustments.
    


Now-days, though, speakers, I believe are more efficient and cheaper than in the old days, not in a total way, of course.

Be reminded, though, that I consider the substituting of the smallish satelite speakers by larger, booksehelf 3 or 2 way speakers in their own cabinets (or build your own). The trick is we are combining "old technology" conventional speakers here with new 2.1 tecnology, where the subwoofers make a good difference.

Excuse me for going into so much detail (yet omitting other things). But I thought some people might be interested in some of this. I know I definitely am, and in fact regret not having had enough dare or insight to do it years before, specially since I already had all of this equipment laying around.

If there were any questions I'd be happy to address them, based on what I have now here, and as such limited.

Comments to correct or improve, of course are also most welcome.

GH, I did get to thinking, after doing these things, that current-day live shows that use lots of amps and speakers actually do some sort of discrete channeling too.

It doesn't really make sense to mix everything through two channels. Maybe it'd be even more work, and less adjustments controls or even corrections during the live shows.