Quad-Spectrum Sound

The Quad-Spectrum Sound series of records were Quadraphonic records that began with "The Soul of Spain by 101 Strings, Astor QS 1. That particular release and the following two, "Exciting Sounds" by 101 Strings & Les Baxter on Astor QS 2 and "Multiple Guitars by Les Thatcher on Astor QS 3 had EV STEREO-4 on the back cover, top right-hand corner under QUAD-SPECTRUM SOUND. This was to indicate that the records were encoded with the Electrovoice Stereo-4 System and with an Electrovoice Stereo-4 decoder, 4 channel quadraphonic sound could be achieved. The system was invented in 1970 by Leonard Feldman and Jon Fixler. In Early January, 1972, Peter Scheiber of Peekskill, N. Y., a bassonist and bachelor of arts in music from Oberlin College, was granted Patent for what he described as the matrixing approach to quadrisonics. He had given an exclusive license to Electro‐Voice, which was a subsidiary of Gulton Industries, Inc. Sheiber was the first to produce a decoder that could decode four channels of sound from two. The Electrovoice Stereo-4 format (commonly referred to as EV-4) with all its merit didn't last long and that's probably why the following releases on the Quad-Spectrum Sound series dropped the EV Stereo-4 tag. on the back. However, the "Today's Hits" album by Jack Dorsey and 101 Strings on Astor QS 4 still had the EV-4 info on the album's internal liner notes. At some stage the albums had QS Four Channel Stereo printed on the same area where EV-Stereo-4 tag was. This would suggest that the records were now encoded with the Sansui QS system which was fairly close to EV-4 in its decoding method. The Sansui QS or RM system had its encoding on many more releases.