[Mag]

   When I was a teenager we had a Quadraphonic receiver and headphones. I had like 3 quad albums but only remember the Black Sabbath-Paranoid album.
  I thought the sound was really good until my friend across the street got a new stereo from Radio Shack. So I remember going over to listen and he played the album form Deep Purple- Who Do You Think We Are? Which sounded awesome, especially Rat Bat Blue. So that put an end to my notion Quad was superior to stereo. Mind you in the right room with a very good surround set up it might be able to hold its own.

[FullRangeMan]

Yes I remember it. I goes to a big store studio to listen some times, as the salesman always was very enthusiastic, at that early age I though it was a evolution of some kind, but failed to listen any sound improvement over regular Stereo LPs.

I was more impressed by the beautifull full featured knobs Akai and Sansui amps, than the sound quality.

[Nick B]

Yes, I remember it as well. A very well off friend had a Quad receiver. Don’t remember the sound as he was just playing FM on it. Whatever unit he had, it was quite pricey.

[dflee]

Money in quad was awesome. I will never forget hearing it in the audio store through a quad setup.
Would I pay the dinero, no way.

Don

[aldcoll]

I was in the sweet spot for Emerson Lake and Palmer recording for a live concert.

I had 1 friend that finally bought the whole setup.  Last piece was the turntable w fancy cartridge.  He had 3 or 4 albums and then split with his girl friend over the loss of some rent money.
 
Only got 1 good 2 hour shake down and we all had to be sober.

Alan

[HAL]

The only quad setups that actually worked correctly was Ambisonics.  It was derived from the stereo work Alan Blumline did and expanded to 4 channels.  The Calrec Soundfield microphone was developed for the Ambisonic surround sound recordings.  The Nimbus CD catalog recordings were UHJ encoded for four channel reproduction and still can be found.  Just needed a UHJ decoder that was around $100 and two stereo setups.  Did not have to be expensive to work, the audio companies spotted a cash cow and went nuts with CD4, SQ, QS and a few other surround formats for recording and reproduction that ultimately died.  Ambisonics is still used for surround sound movie recordings and live events when folks want it. 

You can now purchase a Zoom H3-VR 24bit/96KHz recorder with an Ambisonics microphone array that gives Surround Sound and Binaural file output for reproduction.

[Rocket]

Hi Guys,

I remember my sisters friend had an all quadrophonic system including a large reel to reel tape deck back in the early 1970s. It sounded fantastic and that experience lead me to my search for top notch music playback.

Cheers Rod

[Letitroll98]

I bought a quadraphonic system from a department store for my first apartment.  I couldn't understand why it sounded so terrible because the label said quadraphonic, so it must be good, right?  But my girlfriend and I spent all our time in the place having sex so it was only background music anyway.

[speedypenguin]

Quadraphonics was one of the first concepts that piqued my interest in audio.

Yet I never heard at the time or since such a setup

HOWEVER in the mid 80’s when I was a student reading Engineering, my then-girlfriend and I were invited to one of her friend’s house for a few drinks and to listen to some music.

Well, the sight and sounds that greeted us when we arrived were nothing short of incredible ..

The guy had in his bedroom a pair of Quad ESL63’s up front, driven by a 405.2 amp (I seem to recall … but this was nearly 40 years ago), plus a pair of Kef 104 A/B,s at the rear (with 303) and Quad 44 preamp. And in-between the pre and the power amps was this little electronic box called an Ambisonic Decoder - made by a company called Minim. I believe it was an AD10

CD had not long been launched long either and we all enjoyed a most pleasant evening  … we listened to this multi channel system with various discs recorded Ambisonically as well as via conventional stereo through the Super-Stereo mode on the decoder I was entranced / hooked - particularly with the latter mode, because it meant that conventional stereo recordings were not excluded and could be listened to with such a setup.

Anyway, cutting a long story short and moving to the present - and my apologies for interjecting into a Quadrophonics thread here - but I’ve been an Ambisonic/Trifield/Superstereo listener and advocate ever since - thanks in a very large part to Meridian Audio (via their processors which to this very day feature this technology) … btw I’m in no way affiliated with Meridian

So, Quadraphonics may have come and gone, yet Ambisonics /Trifield and Superstereo still lives on and is still very relevant in todays world - particularly also in current recording technology as HAL has pointed out too …. and I would urge anyone who is interested in the technology to listen to it if they get the opportunity….

What I also like about it, is that the technology is essentially democratic in its approach in that it still allows one to simultaneously mix and match various audiophile preferences (whether it be vinyl,cd, streaming  tubes, solid state amplification,planar or conventional speakers  etc ) in a non-partisan manner and for the benefit of the music that we individually or collectively enjoy.

[audio.bill]

Yes, I recall SQ and QS versions of quadrophonic sound which were synthesized from suitably encoded recordings. Then there was CD-4 which was a discrete 4-channel playback system, with CD-4 LPs having the standard stereo signal from 20-20kHz and the surround channels recorded from 20k-40kHz. This of course required a CD-4 compatible cartridge which could track up to 40kHz as well as the required hardware to then shift the surround channel info back down to the 20-20kHz range for playback.

[Digi-G]

A friend of mine had a quad receiver in the early 80's - the receiver was about 10 years old.  It was either a Marantz or Pioneer, but I believe the latter.

When I tell you the setup it sounds like it should have been abysmal, but the sound was really very good.  First, he was playing 8 tracks.  I know, I know!  He had 4 identical speakers, which I'm sure were Pioneer, placed on the floor.  I know one of the speakers was under the kitchen style chair I was sitting in.  I told you the setup would sound terrible.  I remember he had taken the speakers apart and "stuffed rags" in them - he claimed it made them sound better (they did have pretty good bass for what was really a bookshelf speaker).

I think he only had a handful of quad tapes, but the only one I remember is Wings Venus and Mars.  I had heard the album quite a bit as I had bought it when it was released, so the songs weren't new to me.  Another friend of mine was sitting in another chair, again over a speaker.  I'm sure the setup could have actually sounded better, but it was a small room, with a lot of furniture.  I remember hearing Spirits of Ancient Egypt bouncing around the room and me and my friend looking at each other, as if to say daaaaaaaamn. 

That experience stayed with me forever and when surround sound was making it's way to home theater in the early 2000's, I was all in.  When DTS released surround disks around that same time I bought a handful of them before I even had the equipment to play them on.  One of my first titles was Venus and Mars.  And it's still a favorite.

I really enjoy my home theater and still play surround disks from time to time.

[Avoosl]

Around 50 years ago my friend invited me and others to his new Quad setup. It had 4 Bose 901 speakers approximately in each corner of a good-sized living room, powered by a Bose 1801 amplifier. He played a few tracks of Holst's Planets from a record player. It was like nothing I've ever heard up to now, even after hearing quite sophisticated surround demos at audio shows. It was overwhelming - sounding like everything was everywhere, waves of music bounding and rebounding. There was, as you might guess, no sense of individual instruments - just a confluence of everything, everywhere, all at once. To be polite I could only say, "that sure was impressive!"

[speedypenguin]

Avoosl - the experience that you describe sounds like sound field obliteration, not recreation…

 Any sound reproduction setup (2ch or more ) whereby there is a perceived connection between the number of channels transmitting the musical signal and the number of speakers used (regardless of how many) is not doing its job properly. Furthermore, if the listener cannot even make out individual instruments, their separation, natural acoustic projection and decay or even their placements in the sound field - well that is really poor indeed!

All I can say is that you were indeed being far too polite ..

[Jazzman53]

I recall hearing a few quadraphonic cuts in a stereo store sound room back in the day.  It sounded nice but did not  convince me to dive in. 

And then at the CarverFest retreat in NC last year, I really heard 4-channel in all it's glory.  My friend Mark brought his latest homebuilt rig--an all open-baffle four-channel setup driven by four Carver Cherry 180 tube amps bridged mono. 

The source was an SACD disc player with high quality recordings of Dark Side of the Moon and a bunch of others.  I couldn't believe what I was hearing!  It was all-encompassing and really amazing. 

Dark Side of the Moon was great but what really captivated me in quadraphonic was an album by The Carpenters! 
Karen Carpenter's voice was dubbed and overlaid on the rear channels and the harmonies were magnificent. 

When I returned to my cabin later that evening I played the same Karen Carpenter album on my 2-channel hybrid ESL setup and it was a let-down compared to the 4-channel recording. 

I will never forget that sound!

[FullRangeMan]

So you would like Yes in QS, in some albums Chris Squire used a Stereo Rickenbaker.

[kd4ylq]

Yes, I remember Quad. I was working in Manhattan part-time around 1970 and there was a "permanent" audio show going on on Lexington Ave. I would stop in every chance I could to wander through the displays and check things out. Quad was the thing being promoted at the time and they had numerous display setups. I remember several Quad headphones and a quad egg-shell shaped listening chair especially. I got so excited that I went through several iterations of Quad electronics, the last being a Harmon Kardon +900 receiver with 4 Dynaco A-35 speakers. I purchased a bunch of quad LPs and lusted after a 4 channel open reel tape deck. I probably still have all the Quad LPs (various formats, QS, SQ, etc). Ultimately the lack of well recorded Quad music was the let-down that turned me off on it and I moved back to 2 channel for the music more than anything else. I learned that being a "early adopter" can be an expensive detour from tried and true technology.

[kd4ylq]

Thinking back on it, I recall going to number of large venue concerts around the NYC area that were done in Quad. The most memorable were the Moody Blues, ELP and Yes, all of which were spectacular, but home Quad reproduction was never nearly as good as the live concerts (in my experience). Some of the Quad LPs were little more than demo disks to show off the separation of the channels, but a few had good music well produced into the Quad format. I can only recall the Fifth Dimension though, oddly enough.

[HAL]

Pink Floyd toured with Quad sound system for Dark Side of the Moon as well.  There is a version of the recording as well in quad.  It was released on DVD-A in 4 channel discrete surround from the Quad recording.