Qlab and quad

I'm curious, as Captain Nomenclature...

Is there actually a reason to differentiate between

"A multitrack (audio) cue"

and

"An audio cue which targets a multitrack file"?
 
because the it's the target audio file that IS multitrack. the audio cue just presents however many channels of audio there are in the target file (up to 24.) if the target file has one channel, the cue has one channel. if the target file has two channels, the cue has two channels.

put another way, the audio cue doesn't change its identity based on its target audio file. it's always just an audio cue.
 
We read that differently, I guess.

From the perspective of the cue writer, that cue has the channel-ness of whatever audio file is loaded into it, and unless you load a different file, it will never change -- it will always be whatever number of channels the audio file is.

So, from my standpoint, that will *always* be a 6-channel audio cue.

And, really, from my standpoint, if I load a different audio file, *it will be a different cue, now*.

How am I seeing that incorrectly?
 
it's a very fiddly little semantic difference, so i don't think it's a big deal. but...

if you create an audio cue in qlab and assign audio file X to it, then assign audio file Y to it, i understand that you view it as a different cue.

but in a literal sense, it is not a different cue. it's the same cue with new audio.

if you delete the cue and create a new one, that's a new cue.

i'm not saying you need to shift your thinking, i'm only trying to promote specificity and being as exact as possible, and also sharing how i think about it and talk about it as the person who's writing the manual.
 
Ok, well I get that. But unless there's some user-visible thing in which those two workflows differ, I don't see that it matters.

And if there's some user-invisible way in which they differ, then I would submit that's a bug and you should fix it. :)
 
After 40 years designing software, I always piss people off when the converation tacks this way. Just business, not personal.
 
Hiiiiieee ! For what it may be worth, and probably nothing at that -

I recently inherited a vintage quadraphonic receiver, a Sansui QR 6500. This in turn, was a ticket to an internet rabbit hole full of men far, far older than myself - literally brimming with *all* the quad information.

Based on my limited knowledge I would think a true quadrophonic result in Qlab might be affected by the source of the quad signals? Full disclosure, I've used i
Qlab but once. Anywho - I learned there are like, 3 different quad formats (at least in vinyl) 1 of which requires a criminally expensive stylus that only jives with records pressed in that format which has the fancy carrier singal embedded in the track.

Of course - if your source is from tape like reel-to-reel or 8 track, that also may be a success, but you will still need to pump it through a system that has the whosiwhatsit (either QS or QS) matrix decoder.

All of this is probably only relevant if you want to be a purist about it.

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/

...has reasonable links and discussions. I'm almost certain I've seen a discussion on translating an analog quad signal to a digital source with pleasing results.

Alllllsoooo: https://www.wendycarlos.com/surround/surround.html

The lady who brought us a good deal of the score to A CLOCKWORK ORANGE has a fantastic trove of knowledge on the subject.

But also I just stopped serving lurks and actually engaged in this forum for the first time ever. All the word vomits. You're so lucky.
 
There were 3 or 4 different formats for recording actual quadraphonic audio for distribution, yeah, including 2 different vinyl formats, 2-'channel' 8-track, and at least one way to broadcast it...

but it's likely (I won't know for a couple weeks) that my real issue here is going to be just positioning effects in a blackbox theatre so they come from where the director wants them to, rather than having to properly reproduce Dark Side Of The Moon. :)

 
Ok, well I get that. But unless there's some user-visible thing in which those two workflows differ, I don't see that it matters.

And if there's some user-invisible way in which they differ, then I would submit that's a bug and you should fix it. :)

I feel like the disconnect between you two is that Sam is looking at things from the perspective of the different basic cue types that exist in the software: audio, fade, network, MIDI, etc. The user reason why this distinction matters is just to make it clear that you don't have to go looking for how to insert something different from a regular old audio cue. There is only one type of audio cue and it adapts to however many tracks are in the assigned file. So, the answer to "How do I insert a multi-track audio cue?" is "You don't. You just insert a standard audio cue and assign your multitrack file to it."

Of course, you're free to call it, "that one quadraphonic cue" just as you could call something "that intermission cue" or "the chicken cue", but Sam's nomenclature more accurately describes both the actual workflow and how QLab internally identifies the cue.
 

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