That Beatles disc is, without a doubt, one of the best surround discs I've ever heard. And not just a surround disc but a complete reworking of the songs into new sequences and transitions. An absolutely mesmerizing piece of work.

I know this video was posted years ago, but I just can't get over how awesome that Panasonic receiver is. I would love to have one of those!

When I was 13 in Detroit and just starting listening to FM radio there was a dj that started a thing about the prospect of Paul McCartney being dead. There were a lot of cryptic recordings being put out by the Beatles but I got to listen to one he had from Revolution 9. He had a special recording of that tune that had a lot of the ' covering ' noise removed. You could hear John and George reciting a story of sorts describing someone getting in a car accident , getting all their hair burned, going to a hospital. I only heard it that one time, never heard it again. I often wondered where he got the recording of Revolution 9 without most of the cover- up noise. The best I could figure is it came from a special edition of 4 - channel tape of the White album. Never found any more on it from the internet.

I was introduced very early in my life to 5.1 because of my dad. Since I have a memory he had a 5.1 DVD system. When I was a kid I didn´t really care (I´m 21 years old just about to hit 22). Then, as I grow and enter teenage, my interest begin to set for the music and little on audio. After a few years, we moved to another house and my dad just didn´t hook up the system like I think "giving up" or not caring anymore, so I was like "I want to plug in that system in my room" he said "alright". Today, I have a PS3 that is plugged by toslink onto the 5.1 as a CD, DVD and Blu Ray player, (I collect music and movies). For the CD as you said I use Dolby Pro Logic II that comes with the DVD and hear the music on "fake 5.1", also when possible (and if I really like the artist or band) I get the 5.1 mix on DVD or Blu Ray audio. In addition, most of the games released on the PS3 comes with Dolby or DTS 5.1, so I´m getting all the juice that the system can give! I love and enjoy 5.1 sooooo much, but as I said, I only get the 5.1 mixes of the music I really love. In fact, I only buy (CD, DVD or Blu Rays) the music, series, movies and games I really love. Great video man!

Thumbs up for the ELO, Alan Parsons & Floyd mentions as well.

This channel is all about history, and i love it!!!

My dad had one of those Panasonics, as a youngster I was enamoured by the radio tuning tumblers. He had some Railroad steam quad soundtracks, and the steam engine would drive around the room! The receiver would be in my 'hifi' collection if not for it getting whacked by lightning in the mid 80s.

Big fan of descreat quad!

Great job, love your vids!

I got a Quad system in the 80's. At first it was for my bedroom, but it soon ended up in the living room. It was SQ and CD4 70wpch. When I got an 8 track recorder I put Q8 in the car. I lost quite a lot of 8 tracks in a move. I still have my record collection but I was banned from having Quad anymore when I moved to a smaller place in 2000's surrounded by neighbours. (They are the ones who banned it. LOL.)

Riders on the Storm, Frankenstein, Tres Hombres, Birds of Fire, and Abraxas got heavy play in my van and on the home stereo! 🎶😎👏

I really like your videos, very well made! Keep going man!

Great doco, superb overview! For myself, I have gone with the 70's open reel Quad tapes and player, the best format of Quad from that era, albeit also the most expensive. Luckily I have immersed a large collection of tapes over the years because, as you say, the price people are now asking for various tape formats have become outrageous indeed.

i think 8 tracks sounds really great when you record a new one. most used tapes have been played to death, they have a muddy sound. a brand new home recording restores the high end and can sound surprisingly good.

I remember someone who told me they came back from a Michael Jackson concert, put the CD album in their Playstation 1, applied the reverb and said "It wounded just like the concert." Some people really don't care about audio quality. Also, hard panning to the left or right is not 'creative,' it's just he obvious thing to do and if anything shows a lack of creativity... wow a new know, let's turn it all the way to the right... amazing!

Quickly becoming a new fave channel

I really enjoyed your video. I had a very similar experience to yours. One of my very first albums was DSOTM in vinyl in quadraphonic. For years I only played it in stereo as the quad era was well and truly over. Thirty years later I got a modern quadraphonic decoder and heard it for the first time in true (matrix) quad! It was mind blowing, truly. I also have several versions of the "immersion" Pink Floyd quad releases and an SACD of DSOTM. I'm a Pink Floyd tragic, so watching your video was a lot of fun, and informative. Thanks.

Love this channel and the direction it's going :). As a part of newer generations, I always fascinated by tech that was considered the "modern tech" back then!

I really like the High quality production of your videos. Good Job.

Great synopsis of the surround wars (debacle?) of the 1970s. My home is still littered with artifacts from that tech skirmish. I found it interesting to notice that in the original Red Book Compact Disc standard, there was a "Quadriphonic Mode" spec - that was never implemented (same bitrate/depth but half the playing time). Apparently even during the gestation of the CD the powers that be hadn't COMPLETELY given up on 4-Channel sound.... even though they never delivered a product. Perhaps it's all for the best since DVD-A/SACD & even Dolby/DTS lossy surround was a more pragmatic approach to deliver surround sound.

Great job. Great presentation, good editing. Great information.

Great exploration into surround sound music! It very much a standard in movies because we might go to the theater to have that special full experience of video/sound. We're very much used to listening to music casually, or a live show is the equivalent of going to a theater, yet it's in stereo. I've grown up a set of 5.1 gear and media just over the last 3 years or so and still enjoy the hell out of it, hope you continue to as well!

Outstanding video. Good luck on your new venture.

You keep giving me new aspects of tech to nerd over! Great job on all your videos man, they just get better. Do you have any more sound/music related video ideas in mind? Music is my main passion besides computers so this is now one of my favourite channels :)

You were not there at the time so I don't expect you to know this. The Quad wars were very confusing, but in the end discreet quadraphonic tape quickly became recognized by audiophiles as the ONLY true Quadraphonic Music Source. 8-Track could be phenomenal BUT you had to have the right equipment, just like today! I don't care what your source is; if you don't have good speakers or you are listening on ear buds, your experience will suck! I had good amps, good speakers and a set of REAL QUADRAPHONIC HEADPHONES all of which I can tell you blows away today's 5.1 for a couple of reasons. First, the speakers were all full range; meaning that all four could reproduce the full spectrum of sound. Today you get a bunch of limited range speakers and a sub-woofer. Not exactly the same thing! Full range speakers were important for the second reason, which was that each of the four discreet channels had full spectrum sounds directed toward them! This meant that the person mixing the album could throw any instrument at any speaker, any time that they wanted to! Which brings me to another VERY important point with regard to Quadraphonic Sound. Some studios released "Quad" tapes and records that had only stereo tracks on them with the front and the back being the same or reversed to mimic a Quad experience! Those recordings SUCK! 8-Track Quad sounded pretty damn good! It had double the speed, double the tracks and twice the tape width of cassettes. Later, when cassettes had gone through many improvements, they finally surpassed 8-tracks in sound quality, but at this time 8-Track, especially Quad 8-Tack was far superior! Now on to the difference between Quad 8-Track and Quad Reel to Reel. As you can imagine Quadraphonic Reel to Reel tapes were far superior to Quad 8-Tracks. There was MUCH less hiss and cross-talk, and doubling the speed greatly improved the frequency response. You have NOT heard the true capability of Quadraphonic Sound until you have heard a properly recorded Quadraphonic Program played through a system set up to reproduce that Quadraphonic Sound the way it was meant to be heard! And that CAN NOT BE DONE listening to a 5.1 or even a 7.2 Home Theater System that has compromised every speaker in the system for the sake of cost! Like you pointed out, the rear system speakers are put there for ambience and NOT for the purpose of listening to High Quality Sound! And the mixes are planned with that purpose in mind! When you listen to a properly set up Quadraphonic Sound System, there is nothing like it! Then WHY did Quadraphonic Sound FAIL? The BIGGEST part of the PROBLEM with the 1970's Quad Wars was the confusion over the formats! No one knew which system to buy and none of the systems could play any other format but its own! Then there was the used car aspect of the show-rooms. They had these FANTASTIC sounding systems in them and then people would go home with a cheap piece of crap system with speakers like what you got with your player and they would be mightily disappointed! They would then come to the conclusion that Stereo was much better because they got more for their money with two better speakers and a stereo amp. The confusion with all the forms of "Quadraphonic" Sound turned out to be insurmountable! A side note here. I used to get a real kick out of putting my Quadraphonic Headphones on a friends head and then having them look around the room for the sound! It happened EVERY time! I still laugh when I think of it! Boy! The good old days! May those stereo salesmen rot in hell with only Apple earbuds to alleviate their suffering! LoL

Excellent. Thanks for this.

I've been slowly building a collection of surround sound music, and I'm a fan. I think it opens up a lot of opportunities for the band and/or mixer to create the effect on the audience they want that aren't possible in stereo recordings. My most recent surround album was Steven Wilson's remix of Yes's Fragile, and it's a great example of how surround can be used. In some parts the surround channels are primarily used for effects, and in others they're used to widen the soundstage dramatically, sort of treating the front and surround channel on each side as a stereo pair. The latter helps envelop you in the music, while the former can be used to emphasize an impact. Of all the formats that exist, Blu-ray (High Fidelity Pure Audio or otherwise) is the one I would like to see win. Unlike DVD-A and SACD, it doesn't require a special player at all, since it fits entirely within the standard Blu-ray *video* standard, and it's the easiest for me to transfer into files for server storage. I'll definitely be looking at picking up more surround sound albums in the future, and at upgrading my surround sound setup. Surround music doesn't let you skimp on the surround speakers like home theater does.

I appreciate your appreciation of Rush :)

I recently bought a quad reel deck and start looking for the quad version of Dark Side Of The Moon. I found an .ISO file to make a DVD-Audio disc and it was well worth the work

I believe that 8-track would've been better if they kept the 'pop-up' pinch roller (which radio stations kept using though the 90's) instead of the cartridge containing its own pinch roller.

coming in late, but my first 5.1 was flaming lips dvd inclusion in the 'yoshimi battles the pink robots' deluxe I got from tower records as a teen; opened me up to really appreciating sound engineering

Great video. I work in hifi retail and would really like more people to appreciate surround sound audio. To my ears it’s still the best way to enjoy proper high fidelity music and more exciting than the vinyl revival. Thankfully there’s still surround albums getting remixed and released and the guys over at quadraphonicquad are an excellent resource too.

1st Gen (Fat) Playstation 3's will play SACD. It was a feature that often got overlooked, but if you see a ps3 at the pawn shop or garage sale, its a darn good SACD player.

Very cool, just got a old 70s D Technics SA-8000XC CD - 4 channel unit with 4 Yamaha B-40s. Same here on Dark side of the moon one of the first 4 LPs i got...

I, too, love the DSOTM immersion set; and the Parsons quad mix makes my pants tight. My favorite surround album, however, is Sting's "Ten Summoner's Tales". Every time I upgrade my sound system, that's my benchmark. Love the dynamic experience for an album I so loved in the early nineties. Truly beautiful. I hear his "Brand New Day" surround album is also amazing, though I have not yet purchased it in either of the surround formats on which it was released.

I did not see anybody mention it but SACD is still alive. Classical and audiophile titles are still being released on SACD. The popular Oppo Blu-Ray players will play SACD and most other formats. SACD's that are surround usually, if not always, have a stereo mix on the same disc. Some SACDs are hybrid with a CD layer as well.

HDCD and SACD sounded phenomenal, even on a quality 2-channel system!

Awesome video

Having grown up in the Valley (home of Marantz and HK) during stereo wars, Quad was it. And Thanks so much for this info on that 4 CD set Dark side of the Moon, having heard prior the Alan Parsons format, did not know you could get it on CD\ROM and not have to pay a bloody fortune.

Man, imagine if you made this video today. You would have to add on another section talking about Dolby Atmos and 360 Reality Audio.

There was always DTSCD which any system could decode easily, the problem is, very few people care about surround.

This video is awesome!

Sony UBP-X800M2 & UBP-X1100ES. Both of these affordable units can playback SACD, Bluray audio & also DVD-Audio discs.

Wow, great vid. Subbed 😎

I love those 8 TRACKS

Have you heard any of the Beatles Dolby Atmos mixes? A lot of them sound incredible

The Steven Wilson remixes in 5.1 are killer, really something to behold (or listen to), i also like the ones from Peter Gabriel's concerts

These videos are super aesthetically pleasing i would like to see your collection

I love 60s hard panning stereo, even with headphones so going to surround with that is just awesome. Do you know if modern high-end cartridges can handle CD4???

How did you set up 4 channel speakers for the Blu-ray Audio. Can you just connect 4 speakers??

I really wish I could listen to your Pink Floyd album under quadraphonic. It is my favorite album alongside echoes from meddle. I love the sound effects I love the noise the richness of the album. Ah crap, I love floyd period. I'm very jealous of you oh, you bastard LOL

I just bought a Marantz UD5007, and can play SACD, DVD-A, Blu-ray, etc... great for multichannel music, can also decode almost any high res audio you throw at it. You can get it for about 200 USD and it’s worth every penny. It plays SACD and DVD-A backups as well, burned to DVD-R and DVD+R DL. So you don’t have to spend that much on actual discs.

8:08 - you may want to adjust the head azimuth. This can greatly affect the highs!

Both of my OPPOs and my new Sony x800 play SACD just fine. Multichannel SACD is not dead. Audio Fidelity put out dozens over the last several years and now Dutton-Vocalion have taken up the mantle, having released several dozen in the last couple of years, with no sign of slowing down.

I've developed a processor that does that with stereo to be used at your car.

I have the Dark Side Immersion set, but I'd love to hear Dark Side in Quad on vinyl

I listen to Sansui Quad. I stack 2 speakers on each side. 4 corners, like regular quad, is counterintuitive. 2 speakers stacked or side by side on the left and right. THAT is the real sweet spot. It's not what DIRECTION the music is coming from. The real holy grail to quad sound is that different frequencies, instruments, come out of different speakers. Each instrument can be heard independently if you concentrate on it. You will hear parts in familiar music you never knew were there. Try it.

6:57 is the Amiga Demoscene 4-Channel Protracker MOD file mixing strategy.

Watching this many years down the road from when you released it, I can't help but wonder how you feel about the new Schiit Syn that takes 2 channel music and distributes it across 4-5 channels...

Lots of Blu-Ray Audio discs ship with LPCM 5.1 tracks in addition to Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio tracks.

Wasn't the original 60gb Playstation 3 an SACD Player?

At one time back in the 1970s Columbia Magnetics(Columbia Records)Made Blank Recording Tapes in Convertaquad(Quadraphonic Sound)8-track, Cassette and Reel To Reel

I'm honestly kinda disappointed you didn't talk about the vinyl and reel-to-reel quad variants. Vinyl quad is its own beast, especially with how people have managed to eliminate about 95% of the crosstalk in SQ and QS/matrixed surround by either using a Dolby Surround encoder from the 1980s (which operated on the same principle) or by making plug-ins for Adobe Audition that allow for the decoding of high-res tracks.

Steven Wilson's 2017 5.1 mix A Farewell to Kings, by Rush, puts Richard Chycki's earlier HFPA mix to shame. It's on Blu-ray in the 40th anniversary box. It's a must if you're a Rush fan and love surround.

I still stuck on either Cassette or low end mp3, 16bit 16kHz 40kbps stereo sound.

4:47 - Listens to 80's Hair-Metal while working on 70's technology.😊

If I recall right PS3 have a SACD player built in, but only the first models 60GB

what about the pioneer vintage and some others they have a,b,c speakers would that be super surround.i wonder?

pink floyd also explored with stereo immersion like the beatles did, they actually worked in the same studio lol

I think surround sound would take off better if you could buy the surround discs separately instead of, as is far too often the case, only in the deluxe box sets.

One of the reasons surround sound music hasn't taken off may be that it requires an entire second mix/mastering, effectively doubling the time/money invested in post-production, for a format the artists themselves probably don't understand or appreciate. Maybe if they start putting it into car stereos it will go mainstream...

Quadraphonic classical analogue recordings from the ‘70s are available on SACD from Pentatone. They sound absolutely superb - really 3 dimensional.

I just bought the Beatles white album in blu ray 5.1 remixed by Giles Martin and it sounds incredible. I owned a quad 8 track in the 1980s with the dark side of the moon quad 8track and it sounded sweet for the time. Anyway a few bands have reissued their albums remastered and mixed in blu ray 5.1 surround like the Beatles, Yes, and the Velvet Underground and I recommend these to everyone who loves music.

I know a guy who had several copies of the UK Q8s of DSOTM aswell as other choice titles like ELO 2 and Band On The Run but wanted at least £500 a pop for each of them and I could never justify paying that amount of money for any single audio artefact, no matter how desirable.

Great video, but just one question... You say you cleaned and demagnetised the head, but did you check its alignment? It sounds way off here and I'm sure can sound at least as good as the FM radio if the alignment was adjusted. Not that it's easy... it's fraught with trial and error on 8-track machines, especially Quad ones, but it can be done, and it makes a big difference. Also it's worth checking and often replacing the sponge pads in the cartridges to make sure the tape presses against the head firmly.

nice

I bought that same immersion box set from eBay New Old Stock love it also might want to try Steven Wilson's releases Porcupine Tree also his band and remixes of gentle giant produce remixed by Steven Wilson a really great buy for me makes my 5.1 system really sing Great video,

you still got that same screwdriver? mine got the batteries gone bad nobody wanted to do soldering in my country so in the end I had to buy a spot welder in Amazon, a set of batteries and put everything together that screwdriver is AWESOME! small but packs a punch

The Doors Quad recording is another that works just like the Pink Floyd Dark side of the moon.

I liked this 5.2 setup at 16:35 does anybody knows the brand of the speakers?

Thumbs up for Tomita!!!

I used to have Jethro Tull's Warchild on Quad 8

Love the video. Just curious why you didn't mention reel to reel Quadraphonic. Better than the 8 track quad due to the play speed was double (7 1/2ips). I am big into quad and have numerous formats. SQ, QS, CD4, and Q4 reels. Never got into 8 track. Love all the formats in their own way.

I am a long-time listener ti the quadraphonic format, and I own a 1975 Technics SA-8000x quad receiver amp that sounds as the first day I bought it, and I bought it new in 1975(!) At one point I had the system set up to play CD-4 quadraphonic vinyl records, and have several in my collection. The amp is perfectly matched (my opinion) to four DCM speakers. It sounds better than the Yamaha 5-1 system I also own, by a long shot. What I would like to find out is if the digital audio equipment using the disc formats you covered in your video have either RCA type monitor outputs that could connect directly to my quadraphonic amp 4 monitor or Aux inputs (doubtful), or if there might be a method for the digital audio from the DVD player to used with a converter of some type to convert to four analog RCA outputs. I have been wanting to get discrete-quad format classic audio recordings that could be played through the old system. I have had the thought for some time that remastering the original four-channel recordings done by rock, jazz and classical musicians in the 70s using a Compact Disc format would be a perfect use for old CD technology - a dedicated four-channel discreet product for the vintage quad amps that, like mine, still sounds spectacular!

4:50 Was that Round and Round playing in the background as the the pulley went round and round?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on surround sound vs binaural audio. :)

Btw I own around 600 records.... I have a quadraphonic stereo system it plays stereo as well. I need to clean it up better but the sound is amazing like you said.

Multichannel music playback has never been very popular; but now with the popularity of multichannel home theater systems for movies, there are a lot of consumers equipped for at least reasonable playback of multichannel music. Most home theater systems do not employ rear/surround speakers of equal quality or capability as front and center speakers, so that's a drawback, but at least many can play a multichannel audio DVD or Blu-Ray at home and get some sense of what is going on in the audio production; the rear channel playback gear can always be upgraded to match the front channels if the listener finds multichannel audio playback compelling enough. I think that because there is this base of surround-capable home theater setups out there that there is some kind of market for multichannel audio releases and we may well see them continue, albeit not in huge numbers. But if you are a fan of multichannel audio, things are as good today as they've ever been.

With quad and surround sound music, a big problem has always been that the "sweet spot" and proper positioning becomes even more criticial than with stereo; unless you're sitting in the middle of all the speakers and facing forward, you could end up with the "front" and "rear" to your left and right, or with front and rear completely reversed. This isn't a problem with movies because you're always facing the screen, but with music, especially nowadays most people just have it playing in the background while they walk around and do other things, in which case the additional channels are of little or no benefit. But nonetheless you should try listening to some CDs that were recorded with QSound, B.A.S.E. (Bedini Audio Spacial Environment), or RSS (Roland Sound Space). These were all matrixed surround sound formats in the '80s and '90s that downplayed the multichannel aspect and instead touted a "3D stereo" listening experience. but all three provide good results when played through a Dolby Pro Logic II system. You might especially like Roger Waters' "Amused To Death" album in QSound.

Grab Beck's "Sea Change" album on BluRay Pure Audio disc. It's a great album in stereo, and its the only surround mix I've heard that I liked.

The reason I think it hasn't caught on is that it is too confusing for most people. This is true even for movies. The industry should have stopped at 5.1. Now we are to Dolby Atmos, which goes beyond 7.1, 9.1, and 11.1. Few people need this and almost none know what it means. This has also made the operation of equipment too complex for most. By the way, you can gat SACD audio on a $150-200 Blu-ray player from Sony or Samsung. Just check the particular models. It might not last long.

you should make videos with Techmoan

hi, some bluray players do play sacd in surround, and some music like SANTANA initial quadraphonic albums are being re-released recently in SACD, you can try that is amazing... and a little off topic, are you interested on selling just the DVD that comes with the immersion box set of Dark Side Of the Moon? that box set is really expensive and I'm only interested in the DVD, cause my car can only play DVD for surround music :(

Analog is still 👍👍👍👍👍👍

Personally I would have liked more discussion of the pro logic and pre-lossless 5.1 formats, but overall quite good.

The only 5.1 albums I have are the Bjork 5.1 DVDs (has the music videos as well). If you have any interest in Bjork, they're worth checking out. I, now, will have to check out some more 5.1 mixes like that Pink Floyd set. Unfortunately my large Klipsch setup is in storage, and my bedroom is only wired for my vintage stereo setup (Technics SA-700 and a pair of Kenwood LS-660s). Thanks for the vid. :)

Great video! Would you happen to know the name of the song at 8:03? Is it part of Alice Cooper' Muscle of Love or is it radio?

Very interesting and informative. As a professional musician, I've envisioned the ideal listening environment to be a spheroid arrangement of equally-spaced speakers, with the listener at the center; this would provide basically 360 degrees of audio points. Of course, the source material would have to be recorded with a similar number of mics, so it would be cumbersome and costly... but I've thought about it for a while. Quad sound is very stimulating though; a technology that, like stereo cameras, provides added depth to a common medium.

I love that Dark Side se. I bought it when it was new and was so excited to see all the goodies it came with. Great video. It's encouraged me to start saving to upgrade my aging receiver to something with 5.1 or better. Dolby Pro-Logic doesn't cost it anymore!

The Alan Parsons Quad mix of DSOTM is to me the best version ever of this album. 16:15 "people don't care about audio quality" me: WTF is wrong with them??