What do you think of Q-sound recordings?

Got a question for you: How is it possible to see this as anything other than just a gimmicky process?

@millercarbon  I agree, but I want to see if others feel the same way. I have recordings that were very well recorded with very wide and deep sound stages that don’t use this technology. There was a very good engineer at the board. I personally liked it on Amused to Death, but on the others it sounded over used. Do you think this technology could be used as a crutch in place of a good engineer and we will see more recordings in the future using it? 

I think the Qsound thing petered out (at least for music recordings) in the 90’s, so it doesn’t seem likely that it will be used much in the future. Amused to Death is a great sounding recording, and the imaging is pretty cool. I heard it on a really nice system and the barking dog in The Ballad of Bill Hubbard sounded like it was coming from behind me. Gimmick or not, that was pretty cool! To me it would be "gimmicky" if it detracted from the sound quality, which at least on Amused to Death, I don’t think it does.

@millercarbon I agree, but I want to see if others feel the same way. I have recordings that were very well recorded with very wide and deep sound stages that don’t use this technology. There was a very good engineer at the board. I personally liked it on Amused to Death, but on the others it sounded over used. Do you think this technology could be used as a crutch in place of a good engineer and we will see more recordings in the future using it?

I don’t see it so much as a crutch for engineers as a marketing gimmick.

There’s definitely a subset of audiophools who question the need or even the reality of imaging. Which is dumbfounding because everyone who ever heard my system, imaging was always the part that thrilled them the most. That’s not now either, but over like 30 years.

Any audiophile worth his salt knows and has mastered the simple techniques needed to get good imaging. So, "worth his salt", basically just eliminated half the audiophiles. Which even knowing the word "audiophile" had already narrowed it down to some small percent of people. Long story short everyone likes it but hardly anyone knows how to get it.

Enter the gimmick. Which would be everywhere now, like the equally gimmicky 5.1 HT gimmick, except bad luck, nobody standing in line to see music like they are movies, and no trademark anywhere near as good as THX to suck in the masses, so you can forget about this one ever getting any traction.

The one tiny little bit of traction it will get is from the tiny sliver of guys who hear the one or two good ones and buy another hoping to catch lightening in a bottle twice. Good luck with that.

Reality is when good recordings are made they are gonna sound good whether or not there is some clever trademark involved. You want to be amazed get a copy of Jennifer Warnes The Well or Janis Ian Breaking Silence or any of a zillion other brilliant recordings. Heck you should hear my run of the mill copy of The Wall on my system!

If you follow my story it started with HT and processors and led to this https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 because for me sound quality uber alles. So what are the odds I would ever go back to processor based sound? Slim to none. Nobody would. Really wish more could hear my system. Oh well. Soon, with any luck, the story can be told.


All beside the point, at least as far as the original question goes: Will we be seeing more? Been a while since I even heard the word Qsound so did a search and first thing I see it goes back to at least 1990. Not trying to start an argument with the usual nit pickers, just making the point its been around long enough to no longer be a question of "will we" see more. We haven’t. We won’t.

Phase manipulation is still around and will continue to be around and will continue to be used and will continue to forge ahead.

It’s current incarnation is in the realm of in-ear headphones, and the use of manipulation files, or pinaa typing files. To find a norm for the given user of the given VR headset. To have 20 or so different manipulation files available, so the user of the given VR headset can find a phase data manipulation pattern that mimics their ear, when used with the given headset or in-ear cans of their choice.

in that incarnation, it will find and is finding it’s biggest normalization and adoption audience so far. Which will only increase in size, and correctness and subtlety of technique and thus a slow evolving near mastery of it....as time goes by.

Already there are established ways of placing microphones in an ear canal, and then testing that, against a sound location testing set up, which brings about a master file of ’in time’ phase manipulations, that can ’mimic’ to a decent degree, the localization cues of digitally generated sound - in a given VR application. For that given individual.

Which is the only way it truly works, compared to the coarser simple effects that are a thing like q-sound. your own individual physical subtleties of outer ear shaping in all ways, is what brings you to aurally understand localization cues, in gross and fine ways. Thus a custom system for the individual is the only way to make this work.

Before that high level stuff becomes a norm, the extant norm is the averaging’ of ear types, vs a set of distinctly different phase manipulations, eg, 20 of them, each based on some minimal attempts at ’ear typing’, or trying to find ear types in the same way we group body features. It works to some degree. Well enough of a fit for some, in some scenarios of playback.. a bad fit for others.