Audio Etc. (Dec. 1975)

by Edward Tatnall Canby

With that SQ Newsletter there was enclosed a Columbia ad offprint showing a model who is buying up dual-inventory SQ discs, conspicuously marked quadraphonic. Was this sent along just to contradict EMI? I wouldn't know.

Compatibility

In all the quadraphonic camps since the beginning of four-channel disc the loudest tune has been COMPATIBILITY. Every quadraphonic disc always plays on any sort of equipment. True, true. But oversimplified.

Trouble is, the sales people have found themselves somewhat limited as to what they can say on this subject.

Limited to superlatives. The fact is that total compatibility is a very rare bird, unless, let's say, you mean one stereo disc and its twin, hot from the press.

"Compatible," as everyone knows who plays discs and tapes, means a technical marriage de convenance, a convenient marriage (with divorce more or less taken for granted)--we can get along together as long as we have to. A working arrangement, for the time being, and don't tell me otherwise. So we have assorted compatible quadraphonic discs, but there's nothing permanent about the relationship. Indeed, compatibility has an important silver lining-it is dynamic, it changes as the scene changes. The emphasis is shiftable, right across from one side to the other as necessity requires. That applies to stereo/quadraphonic compatibility.

It is true, then, that EMI's new combined stereo and quadraphonic disc involves a give and take, call it a compromise, between the ideal stereo sound and the ideal quadraphonic.

They aren't the same, and it is here that Columbia, I think, gets very hot under the collar at the thought of a single inventory. Columbia has developed an experienced and dedicated SQ team over the years; it keeps its quadraphonic operations remarkably apart from stereo, right down the line from master tapes through separate mixdown and pressing (and often in the recording, where it all begins). This is a valid idea and can be applied to any quadraphonic production, as opposed to stereo. So we have, logically enough, the separate stereo record which, at least in theory, sounds better as stereo than the quadraphonic disc, even though both will produce stereo on stereo equipment--compatibility. That's the argument. And it can get to seem very important to the engineers and producers involved.

Yet, as EMI understands, time is on the side of the quadraphonic engineer. If quadraphony remains viable, then the emphasis is bound to shift. A stereo disc with quadraphonic encoding becomes, slowly but surely, a quadraphonic disc that will play as stereo. Stereo mixdown becomes the secondary factor, as mono once did when stereo took over. Moreover, "compromise" recording techniques, for both types at once, most certainly will develop-EMI has already satisfied itself on this score. So the quadraphonic boys will come back into their own. Seems to me, this is a worthwhile compromise to make, if it will keep the quadraphonic art alive.

"If" is the word! Can the four-channel disc, any type, survive at all as things now stand? I am beginning to doubt it. So does EMI. We have worked ourselves into such an unyielding impasse over quadraphonic that the corporate batteries are running dangerously low. If the big fellows pull out, we are in deathly trouble. There is an explosively exact limit to big-corporation patience in such impasses, as we know all too well. The major record producers are but the slaves of bigger entities whose bosses are not interested in aesthetics that do not pay.

The danger limit has now been reached. It is an emergency. No question about it. Something has to be done very soon, or else. EMI has done it already.

The proposition is, can we swallow a mild loss of technical flexibility, can we endure a major upheaval in production and distribution, in order to avoid a tragically greater loss-the whole shebang? It has come to that.

Not for SQ alone but for all quadraphonic disc production-the whole bit. The EMI single inventory is the way out. It can be applied to any system, to all present systems that are "compatible." It could rescue all of them from collective extinction. It seems to be that the question of single versus dual inventory is now far more vital than the whole time honored argument as to which system is best. All systems are threatened! This we have got to understand.

So if quadraphonic's time has come, it must either die or cease being a hepped-up special-order extra at extra cost. At all costs, in order to live, it must somehow blend itself into the great existing body of the art of recording, just as every other technical innovation in records always has.

There, it seems to me, is the EMI message. Back to normalcy.

And so we are shaken. One of the Big Companies has moved. If the other world record companies (including our own) will now please get right on this bandwagon, in whatever fashion they may choose (and via their own chosen euphemisms and slogans), if all will universally adopt the basic idea of one classical inventory and no duplication-then, I think, we will have reason to hope that quadraphony on disc will survive and grow. Without disc, you understand, there will be no quadraphonic.

I know--the pop field is bigger. But pop is also more flexible, as well as more demanding, and requires more leeway. If the classical disc is firmly established in the single inventory pattern, one disc per release, whatever type it may be, then pop music and all the rest will find an easy relationship within the same framework. After all, EMI isn't exactly an all-classic company. EMI recorded the Beatles, don't you remember. They still own a few little properties of that sort. They have pop plans too. But first-get classical on the rails. Done.

The beauty of the single classical release is that it takes you off the hook, gives you flexibility. Cheaper, and so much easier to merchandize! Once again you sell records, period. You promote the most important thing you have to sell, the artistic product.

Throw in as much or as little quadraphonic as you want, or none at all, without shaking any foundations. And are your dealers happy! Not to mention the customers. The whole systems is fluid again, things move, sales tracks are re-greased, there's confidence (no more of that painful confusion of choice), the aisles are clear (more room), the cash registers noisier. So much simpler, the whole deal.

And the pay-off: merely a workable compromise in the sound, and not a bad one at all. I'm for it.

(Audio magazine, Dec. 1975)

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