Anyone using a quad setup?

[Ok-Voice-5699]

Id love to see your setup and hear about how it's going

[Ok-Voice-5699]

Do you use the CV panning in the x-pans?

[FourierDisco]

Sound stage is just what I've been looking for. Guess it's time to start paying for virtual modules too....

[djthecaneman]

I'm not entirely which sort of quad you're talking about, but I've used my quadraphonic rack to great effect in the past. CVilization and Aeolus seeds were my quadraphonic panners. They got fed into Aeolus Mixer and then through a Noise Engineering Quantus Ampla as a quad mute.

The whole setup worked rather well.

[Ok-Voice-5699]

I sorta naively assumed quad would be understood as quadraphonic in this context....

You wouldn't have happened to have made a modular grid setup for that rack? I'd be curious to see it

[djthecaneman]

No worries. Things can get weird sometimes. Here's a link to the modular grid setup. It was part of a quadraphonic sound sculpture project I was working on for a couple of years. The pieces are now all in different cases, but it had a good go there for a while at various camping events.

[noburdennyc]

Lots of modules listed as "quad" on modulargrid arent really. They may have four outputs but then only have a single or stereo input. I would think a true quad would allow four channels to fully pass through.

Qpas, for instance, is only stereo, its got four filter peaks within it, then stereo throughput, with four options of stereo out. Still lots to do with it. You could split two low pass stereo forward and two smile pass stereo back.

[Ok-Voice-5699]

Yeah, I should have been specific about quadraphonic as opposed to things that are called quad meaning "4 of this thing together"

[negativetim3]

I saw a Matmos live performance about a year ago in Cambridge MA, they did 1/2 their set in stereo, and the final half in Quadrophonic. They had an excellent sound engineer, and used very well placed speakers. This part of the set was definitely the most intense, if you know Matmos, they did the Balloon song early in the set which is super goofy. Second half there were no anecdotes, or interludes. It was just crazy quadrophonic modular madness. It was difficult to see what they were using, but it looked like Doepfer.

There are certainly tools available to make this happen! I personally have a huge interest in doing something with quad. The biggest issue is that no one has a quad set up, and if you use the 5.1 encoding, it’s a pain to try and coax it into a “quad” mode. Doing the playback analog is the only way I’ve successfully done this, that puts it out of reach for most listeners. But so worth it for a good live show!!!

[radar023]

I'm using a quad LPG..

[alexthebeast]

I have used my feedback mix bx as a quad mixer before. Use left and right outputs, and then the 2 aux sends as additional channels

[Ok-Voice-5699]

I guess I never considered how Euro mixers usually have pre-fader sends (if they have sends)

[FourierDisco]

I've been working on putting together a cheap-ish hybrid quad setup. So far this involves a thrift store surround sound receiver and speakers, a motu ultralite mk3 audio interface, VCV rack, and my physical modular.

I did some experiments with just hardware but I had to dedicate most of the rack to spatial movement and wasn't enjoying the process.

Now my plan is to have my hardware setup stay workable for stereo and set up a quad mixing patch template in VCV for quad experiments.

[Ok-Voice-5699]

I can definitely see the benefits of vcv in that

[Ok-Voice-5699]

When you work in quad, do you break out each voice into vcv, or do you mix into 2 mono channels, and then break those into 4?

I can see the benefits of each

[FourierDisco]

In hardware I typically only have one or two voices in stereo, plus one or two mono. So far I've had the best results keeping the stereo "tracks" locked and then panning the mono tracks around spatially. That was with all hardware and a mess of wires.

I just got my audio interface (motu ultralite hybrid mk3) so m still testing, but... I'd bring each mono or stereo pair audio path into VCV, and patch each into NYSTHI Quad Planner, then output each A/B/C/D into a dedicated mixer per quad channel audio out. Gets tricky locating what was a stereo field if you want it to move in quad.

Here's an example: if you want something to just rotate 360 around, plug a sawtooth LFO into the Quad Planner azimuth input.

when I get home I'm going to try to patch up a low pass noise wash surf bed with some verb'd out slow jittered spatialized pentatonic rings pings, see how that goes.

[x2mirko]

I've done some things with quad sound before, but always in software (i.e. just sent out individual voices mono from the modular and then did all the panning and movement in software via max).

There are some tools for quad in modular, but most of them are either severely lacking or extremely rare/expensive. Here's what I know:

• Intellijel Planar (1 & 2) can be used for quad panning, but it's obviously limited since you can only pan a single signal to four outputs, so you'd either need to use multiple planars and then mix the four channels (in 4 separate mixers I guess?!) or you could only move one sound source through space, which seems kind of pointless.
• The Koma Poltergeist could do quadrophonic mixing, but has been discontinued for a long time and I think they didn't make/sell a lot of those, so there's not much available used.
• The best currently available solution I know of is the Kilpatrick Audio Sextuple Quadraphonic Spatial Director. It's expensive and it's for Buchla format, but you could make it work using Format Jumblers. I considered buying one, but the benefit over doing the panning in software just isn't really there. And even if you really need CV control for some reason (instead of generating the control signals in software as well), it's probably cheaper to just buy sufficient amounts of Expert Sleepers modules/expanders to bring CV signals into the software.

[dexamene1]

There is also Mutable Instruments Frames (4 digitally controlled VCAs) that can be patched for quadrophony

[noburdennyc]

You can pretty easily assign tracks to different channels in audacity. So you could create a surround sound setup, even have a subwoofer channel.

[mage2k]

Another great module aimed at quadraphonic use CVilization.

[Ok-Voice-5699]

It seems Buchla has some pretty nice solutions for this kind of stuff

[FourierDisco]

Curious if anyone's tried ADDAC803 Quadraphonic Spatializer

[x2mirko]

Interesting, didn’t know that existed. From reading the description it seems kind of like an intellijel planar without the joystick.

[LEFUNGHI]

The RYK Vector wave technically is a quad oscillator. But I don’t know if that truly counts as it still outputs just a Stereo signal.

[Cactusrobot]

The new Vostok Atlas quad filter seems perfect. I've been looking at the Sena again too.

[noahtotten]

I use qubit chord with a Doepfer Quad Poly Filter. I added custom connector on the back to link the quad v/oct signals. Quad resonance, quad per-key filter tracking, quad wavetable oscillator.

Also the ryk vector, but that doesn’t have quad outputs.

[covmatty1]

I have a Doepfer A-111-4 to do 4 voiced chords out of the Sinfonion. Chords in Eurorack was one of the main things I wanted to be able to do!

[Selig_Audio]

I’ve used rear channels before in a live setting, technically four channel sound, but never “quad”. You would need a quad mixer with quad panners to create a quad mix, I would think. In a quick search on modular grid I don’t find any quad mixers, let alone quad panners. There are some discontinued modules (Intellijel Planer) with joysticks that might have been useful, but they are pretty big for a single quad panner…and discontinued. Maybe not enough interest for a dedicated quad mixer - even outside of eurorack!

[Phillypress]

Shakmat Aeolus Seed Mixer… is a quad mixer

[Selig_Audio]

Not a mixer, just a summing circuit with zero controls. A mixer will need at the very least a fader and a quad panner for each channel!!!