Audio, Etc. (Jan. 1975)

HINDSIGHT: Nothing is quite so dramatic as hindsight-when it suddenly reaches a moment of maturity. To my way of thinking, our most recent hi-fi revolution, quadraphonics, has now reached that moment. And do we need hindsight! We aren't doing too well.

Hindsight, of course, requires time.

We've had more than five years of it now, and things are getting hinder and hinder. Everybody's now talking hindsight and so, me too. It's the quadraphonic news for 1975 and we'd better read all about it if we want to survive.

Well, we can't do one little thing for the past that is passed. But we can talk future; since I'm traditionally the kibitzer on the sidelines, here I go.

Granted, I didn't do any of the heavy work that got quadraphonics out of the mind into the lab and from there, painfully, onto the bumpy road to market. So I bow to those who did and trust that they won't get all het up at what follows. Fantasy! As of the past, anyhow, totally impractical and you don't have to tell me so. Nevertheless, I sense a usefulness at this point, in terms of the still wide-open future. Suppose we could do it again with all the insight (hindsight) of 1975 and none of the restraints, practicalities, and what-not that held us to what we actually did. Here's what I think we "should" have done or not done.

Brace yourself.

1. No basic disc quadraphonic sys tem should ever have been launched until the circuitry involved had been reduced to chip form, the chips them selves were developed, in production and ready to roll straight into equipment.

(Utterly impossible! Well, of course. That's what I mean. Still, if it only had been possible....)

2. No matrix disc system, whatever type, should have been launched without a completely developed logic circuitry AS A PART OF THE SYSTEM, both the basic matrix and the logic reduced to IC chips. The plain non-logic-assisted matrix should never have been considered acceptable for hi-fi equipment. The unadorned matrix, indeed, should have been re served strictly for minimum-cost use Edward Tatnall Canby where severe compromise was a necessity.

(Sorry, fellas! It had to be said. It ought to be said, it's now totally clear that logic assistance, in one form or another as presently developed, is essential to the 4-2-4 matrix concept if the product is to keep its competitive position. With logic, in all its 1975-plus maturity, matrix remains a formid able system for the home.)

3. Turning to an ancillary but crucial area, no quadraphonic home equipment should have been introduced before a new Single four-channel cable and connector system had been agreed upon as an industry standard for this country. ONE cable, ONE connector at each end, for each quadraphonic signal.

Problems? Of course. But the pre sent super-spaghetti cable system, born too hastily out of mono and then stereo, is an abomination. For each quadraphonic signal we now use FOUR cables and EIGHT connectors! Multiplied to the Nth as between whole groups of componentry, you have a snarl-up that shouldn't have happened to a hi-fi dog.

Unbelievable. And enough to put an enormous dent into customer good will. It put dents into mine, I tell you. I positively dread making major reconnections.

4. In a further vein of simplification (and here subject to engineering opinion in detail), I reel that no quadraphonic equipment should have been launched until a maximum range of really subminiature, totally updated amplifier/pre-amp elements had been developed especially for quadraphonic--maybe chip-type and/or op-type--and these made ready for mass production, so that from the very beginning, four channels of operative circuitry could replace the two of stereo with, if anything, a saving of space and of cost.

Now we get to a real nub. You see, from the start we should have been ready to counter those pat arguments that we knew would surface immediately--four channels are twice two, and twice too much, too big, too expensive, too clumsy, too complicated etc. etc. The whole point of "four-channel" should be that, with up-to date technology, multiple circuits are now smaller, cheaper, simpler, etc. etc., than single circuits once were.

Space technology. Computer technology. What else? We should have been onto this right at the beginning, both as a goal for development and as a point for crucial public relations.

We still today seem to think that quadraphonic equipment should look big, look impressive and complex.

Maybe it has to, in order to enclose all those snarls (pardon me!) of parts inside. Maybe it has to look that way so we can charge the big prices that we must charge. (There's a vicious circle for you.) Couldn't we have managed better? Think of the mini-calculator. Now there's a splendid example of the new electronics in a proper package. And the public is wild about it. So tiny! So much inside! And, of course, so easy to use. There's the clincher. Now our own field admittedly isn't that simple in the functioning. No aesthetics for them, no compatibilities, and so on. Yet there in miniature is the sort of image we should have worked for, right from the earliest stages of quadraphonic development. We didn't. Our product, still, is monstrously huge for its essential content, and the public knows this and doesn't much like it.

So far, we have missed our chance to promote the small image.

Foresight So we edge into foresight, born out of hindsight. Though I know my suggestions are after the fact, I am serious in that it isn't too late to turn past into present/future. Yes, I am aware that, for instance, the idea of logic assistance to a matrix wasn't even conceivable for most of us back five years ago--so how could we have developed a logic chip? And if we had, then the facilities for chip production would have been notable for their absence. I expect, too, that under the intense pressure to get along with yet another major over haul in our "system," most engineers and designers just had to make do with whatever ingenuity they could muster up, and to heck with the ideal.

The pressure hasn't let up for an instant, so I expect we are still doing the same. Believe me, I am profoundly in sympathy with those on top who are at the bottom of this pile.

(It's that mixed up, after all.) But-on ward and upward we go. Hindsight, then, into foresight and about time.

Look further into that past. A lot of heavy thinking has gone into quadraphonics in these last five years.

This thing has been a monster, riding its very creators onward with a rush into constant new perceptions, new vistas. We can remember the steps, as basic matrix after basic matrix appeared, all fuzzy, then ever more clear and precise; and then we moved onward into the modifiers, the logic circuits, at first crude (and nobody thought they would amount to much), then astonishingly more sophisticated. And meanwhile, over in CD-4, those monstrously big incidental problems and the same sort of enforced hurry and pressure-let's get things on the road (and fix them up en route)-that plagued the matrix rivals. And the equipment makers, never knowing which way to jump or whether to jump-it was really awful and a wonder we all survived.

Meanwhile down in the lab the possibilities opened up astonishingly.

Here, the pressure was good. The people who were working well ahead of the market, into basic primary concepts, had enough corporate insulation around them to protect them from hysteria. The speed at which every aspect of disc quadraphony opened up in those years is to me one of the miracles of human accomplishment. Good people, working with adequate means and at top brain efficiency. But, can you have hind sight ahead of time? Today, we have reached the point of consolidation. True, the more advanced logic circuits and wider-cap ability CD-4 demodulations are still "breadboard" and may not reach practicality and into saleable equipment for quite some time. Yet, we are reaching into the area of diminishing returns. The basic approaches are pretty much set. Modifications will be increasingly a matter of refinement and simplification. That's why we can now turn hindsight, impracticality, into foresight and practicality. We are ready.

Our logic thinking is now mature enough, in the several approaches, to consign to those essential chips. The matrices themselves are already in the "frozen" state and into chip format.

The CD-4 demodulator circuits are at the same stage, already into their first chips, again "frozen" into a hope fully workable mass-production form at really low cost-once things get going. We are now safely beyond the stage where extremely flexibility is essential. We had to go through it. All in all, we did it in a remarkably short time. A triumph, no less, in spite of the rival systems and corporate battles. Let's be positive.

The whole key to the rescue (I use the terms advisedly) of quadraphonic sound on the market, then, is in this update simplification, from stem to stern, via every known twist and trick of the new technologies for manufacture. Now, we can freeze our varying circuits. Now, we really are in a position to convert quadraphonic equipment into what it ought to be, and must be, a line of products that is in every way simpler, less clumsy, even (relatively) less expensive, than former stereo equipment. We are ready for an avalanche of IC chips, which will be the main-stay in a remarkable conversion, if all goes well.

And, surrounding the chips, every thing else that I wouldn't even know about which would contribute to, shall I say, circuit coagulation--making the inherently complex four-way signal message act more and more like the one signal that it really is, and yet, of course, still a :ing like four.

We've been talk of matrix techniques as the 4 approach. Four channels of sound into two (on disc) then back to four. Let's modify that thought and say that what we want now, in the entire system and especially in the home equipment, is 4 1-4. Yes, we start with four channels.

Then, in terms of the equipment itself, in terms of its home use by our listeners, we treat those four channels as though they were one-and as simple and as cheap as one. We can always dicker with them separately when we want to, if we want to. Let us relegate as much as possible of the four-way adjustments to the "automatic" or standardized situation--so the listener doesn't have to think and diddle with knobs and connectors.

Four into one! That's for practicality.

And then, of course, back into four in the listening, with all the power of four that we have been rightfully trying to promote. 4-1-4.

Our present equipment, you see, is absolutely right-for one special segment of our market, the confirmed gadgeteer. Ideal! He is a very real part of the hi-fi business, and no com plaints. People who like hi-fi gadgetry have lively minds and vivid bank accounts. The more sophisticated is our production for them, the happier they are. Why else $1,000 FM tuners and cassette players? Why else our present immensely impressive control panels for quadraphonics with those rows and rows of switches and but tons? We are courting the super-gadgeteer, the brainiest, wealthiest, most knowledgeable gadgeteer, and we are getting him, too. But are these people all we need? Please, what about that very large percentage of stereo users-you know the percentage-who now stick obstinately to stereo because, thank you, it is entirely adequate for them.

They are the bigger market. As we all know, they are not convinced. They have those feelings, that quadraphonics is twice too much, too complicated, and so on We ask for it.

Our present equipment mostly looks it, and is priced for it. Our stereo equipment is just fine as a counter productive argument! Get stereo-it's reliable and right.

But note that we were able to convert these very people from mono to stereo, back a dozen years. Not merely to stereo equipment but, more important, to a real faith in the stereo system. That was something. Now we have the same problem again, in remarkably similar terms. Quadra phonics must be like stereo only better. Which does NOT mean more complicated. Thus-we must make some quick changes, now when the time is ripe.

Send the big stuff, the fancy stuff, back to the gadget people where it belongs. (And think, with the new ICs inside, how many more switches you can put in.) Concentrate on a radically different and new sort of quadraphonics, quadraphonics simplified-bend every effort and every last IC towards the maximum advantage, use every conceivable technology, space, computer, what have you, to make four channels work like one, so that quadraphonics will seem to the large public as easy, as simple, as in expensive (we hope) as stereo, or even more so. And therefore a better, newer bargain. It can be done, I think.

So let me rephrase my four points of hindsight into points of foresight.

1. In the upcoming future there must be a new kind of qudraphonic equipment, radically simplified, smaller, inexpensive and, first of all, making use of advanced-model IC chips for the major disc systems. (And, when & if) for the tuner elements, as possible.)

2. All matrix decode systems must include AS A PART OF THE SYSTEM the appropriate advanced logic, also in IC form, the matrix and its logic to be considered as one. No more plain matrices! The sooner they depart, the better. With chips, we can afford the "works," with logic.

3. All manufacturers should convert to an agreed SINGLE cable connector system for the quadraphonic signal. ONE cable, ONE connector at each end, for the four-way path.

Conversion cables should be available for hooking into older equipment, perhaps at cost to bolster consumer confidence.

4. Simultaneously with the above, the main amp/preamp circuitry should be overhauled for radical miniaturization and/or IC con figuring, so that four channels can go into even less space, and hopefully at less cost, than ONE channel in former days. Not to mention two. Again, the intent is to outdate stereo-to make stereo look big, clumsy, expensive. A tough goal, but a shiny one! Keep the mini-calculator in mind. The mini-quadraphonic amplifier? And mind you, no more of those "composer" circuits. Educate the public to understand that both SQ and QS with their logics can do magnificent things for stereo discs, and differently enough to satisfy 99 percent of the listening clientele.

Now surely is the time to get going on all these things, if & where we haven't already. All the elements are coming into place, primed and ready to go, technically speaking. It is now or never, if quadraphonic sound is to evolve as a major part of the whole of our business. So easy for me to look ahead, of course! I'm like the cheerleaders-team, team, team! But just take the proverbial gander at all the lovely stuff I see in my mind's eye.

Neat, handsome little boxes (I see them decorously black, for some inner reason), maybe two thirds the size of corresponding stereo components. Modest controls, consciously simple in aspect, deliberately so. On the rear, very few sprouting cables, fewer than in most stereo-more like the old mono (see point 3). That will inspire confidence! On the function switch, a full and equal choice of major disc systems, all on a maximum of three switch points (leaving out the up-comers for the moment). QS, SQ, with their built-in logics. CD-4. All three in chips. Or maybe only two switch positions-so simple! CD-4 switches in automatically when the recorded "pilot tone" begins.

These whole systems, on display (and in the home) would intentionally look simpler and less cluttered then stereo and I can think of nothing more vital than that to promote the glories of quadraphonics to the larger audience. It's just a matter of getting it done-which (bless me), is your problem, not mine. Be hopeful.

Loudspeakers for these new systems? A separate subject. The aesthetics of quadraphonic re cording via matrix and via CD-4? But definitely, another subject and a big one. See future issues.

(Source: Audio magazine, Jan. 1975, Edward Tatnall Canby)

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