Hear, Hear

Those wonderful folks who gave you stereo are at it again. Now they want to put four speakers and new amplifying equipment in your living room and introduce a new term into the vocabulary of the sound buff--quadraphonics, or four-channel sound.

Quadraphonics have been available on tape since 1969. But for home hi-fi sets, the mass consumer market has continued to prefer stereo disks to tape by sales ratios of more than 5 to 1. Mindful of that fact, Columbia last November came out with the first four-channel record, calling it SQ (for Stereo-Quadraphonic). The new SQs cost a dollar more than regular stereo LP records. SQ is also designed to be played on conventional stereo rigs, but when that is done, SQ shows a slight but perceptible loss in sharpness of sound. Columbia has not announced any plans to replace the company's regular stereo line with SQ. Even when heard under optimum conditions--at Columbia's laboratories in Stamford, Conn.--SQ is not so much a true four-channel sound as an electronic compromise. For some listeners, at least, the result is an uneasy feeling of aural vagueness.

In the Groove. By contrast, Columbia's record rival RCA made an early decision to hold out for a disk that was completely "discrete"--the industry's word for precise separation of all four channels. Like Columbia, RCA aimed for a compatible new disk that would be playable on existing stereo equipment without loss of fidelity. Last week RCA was busy spreading the word to the industry and press alike that it had perfected just such a disk. The company will begin issuing the new LPs in May, at the same price ($5.98) as stereo, and soon hopes to release all new records in the compatible four-channel format.

How does RCA get four electronic signals from two walls in a groove only 21 thousandths of an inch wide? Essentially by electronically scrambling the sounds picked up from four separate microphones, imprinting them on the groove walls, then separating them precisely into four signals that are fed into four speakers. Heard at RCA'S Manhattan studios, the new disk plays only 20 minutes (the company hopes to have it up to the standard 30 before long), but its output is vibrant, clear, well-defined, surprisingly flexible.

More than a dozen hardware companies (notably Sherwood, Kenwood and Sony) have already signed on to manufacture equipment for the Columbia SQ system. Panasonic has chosen RCA. Everyone else is taking a long, hard look. Or listen. As for the poor, beleaguered consumer, he may think twice before inviting two more after-dinner speakers into his home.

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