'Q' Sound ? (1 Viewer)

[PhilBoy]

The only title I know of with this enhancement is "The Immaculate Collection"...

It seems to add a new dimension to the music.

I wonder why 'Q' didn't take off ?

 

[EricSchulz]

For some reason I think that there is a CD by Sting that came out in QSound originally ("Blue Turtles"?). Not sure what ever happened to the concept...

 

[MikeH1]

Well I think part of the reason is you have to be in the sweet spot to hear Q Sound properly and many people just don't sit in dead center at home while listening to music. Also, with the popularity of surround sound in the early 1990's gaining foothold Q Sound might have seemed more of a gimmick and that surround sound was the way to go. Not that you can't listen to Q sound in surround but it was looked at I think as not needed. Also, the lack of titles released in Q sound didn't help.

And then there's speaker companies like Nuance using Q Sound encoded discs and misinforming the consumer that it's the speakers that are able to give this effect. There's never any mention in their demo's that its a Q Sound disc, they use Q Sound and take credit that their speakers are giving this effect and they have this amazing new "spatial" sound. So instead of informing the consumer about Q Sound, there's no mention of it and thus people just are not made aware. It really is a crime that these snakes are using Q Sound like this to their advantage. And the real kicker is the price of these "amazing speakers" are grossly over inflated, costing you thousands for a full set up and people thinking that their something they are not.

 

[Tim H]

'The Soul Cages' was in Q Sound. Not sure if any of Sting's other releases were.

 

[Rob Gillespie]

I think some of Roger Waters' albums were in Q - pretty sure Amused To Death is.

 

[Phil A]

If you like what Q sound does just buy yourself a used Carver C-9 Sonic Halographer. Been around a long time. Perhaps around $90 on E-Bay or Audiogon give or take a little. I owned one many moons ago and bought a couple of used ones, one for the main system (connected to the analog outs of the LD player and then the output of the C-9 going to the preamp) and one for the basement system which should be operational within a couple of mos. You go even put it in between a tape deck or home CD recorder and make copies of recorded stuff for you car or compare it to the orig. recording in your home.

 

[Ron Reda]

The other night I listened to "Soul Cages" for the first time in a long time and was really surprised with how well this disc sounds spatially. It seems like the guitars on "All This Time" just hover over the left front speaker. Too bad this type of CD processing didn't take off.

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

I have used QSound a fair amount in the studio, but have usually reverted to different methods to achieve the spatiality I was after. One big issue with QSound is the phase changes it introduces, which changes the sonic character of the instrument or material substantially. I found it unuseable in many of the applications I tried it on, and when used in excess it can be very fatiguing to listen to. I never bothered to upgrade to the latest version, and now their website seems to have disappeared.

 

[PhilBoy]

Jeff,

So the enhancement is applied to one instument track at a time do 'alter' it's space ?

Not applied to the final mix ?


I gotta find a copy of "The Swimmer".

 

[Jeff Ulmer]

In my experience, the only way to really utilize QSound is on a per instrument basis, or on a submix, to broaden say a group of guitars. With a full mix, there would be too many things that would get washy.

On my own album, I have a segment in which I'm building a thunderstorm, and had originally been applying QSound to that, to move it outside the music. I eventually did something else, and it worked much better, preserving the low end I wanted, while still giving me a wider than stereo image. On the Roger Waters CD, it would have been applied to things like the dog barking, to move it beyond the speakers. With the plugin, there are some nasty (to my ear at least) phase effects that can occur in the low mids, which while making the image wider, also add a hollowness to it. Processing ambience also works, but again, isn't necessarily better than using other techniques, such as delays, or phase tricks.

I won't claim to be an expert on QSound, but I couldn't justify the upgrade to keep it current with the rest of my system, which is a shame as I liked the idea of supporting a Canadian company.

As for locating a copy of The Swimmer, just look down.