Lotus (Santana album)
Lotus is a 1974 live album recording of the San Franciscan latino rock band Santana at the Osaka Koseinenkin Hall, Osaka, Japan on 3-4 July 1973. It was originally released in 1974 as a triple vinyl LP in Japan only. The first U.S. release was in 1991 as a 2-CD set.
Lotus has been re-issued on vinyl in the Netherlands and on CD in Japan in 2006 as a 3-CD set. It was also re-issued as a 3-LP set in the U.S. in 2013.
Quadrophonic recording
The original live recordings were mixed in 4-channel quadraphonic sound and released in the CBS SQ matrix system. The SQ encoding permits all 4 channels to be contained in a 2 channel stereo version, which is compatible with conventional stereo playback equipment.
Some releases of this album have been marked as "Quad" or "SQ" and some are not. However, all known releases of this album use the same SQ encoded 2 channel recordings. Therefore the 4 independent channels can still be heard on modern equipment provided that the listener has a proper SQ decoder and 4 channel playback system.
