The Wall of Sound is a very large public address system designed specifically for the Grateful Dead live show in 1974. It was the brainchild of Owsley's audio engineer "Bear" Stanley. The Wall of Sound fulfills Owsley's wish for a distortion-free sound system that can also serve as his own monitoring system. The Wall of Sound is the largest concert sound system built at that time.
Video Wall of Sound (Grateful Dead)
Histori
After Stanley came out of prison in late 1972, he, Dan Healy and Mark Raizene of the Grateful Dead voice crew, teamed up with Ron Wickersham, Rick Turner and John Curl of Alembic, combining six independent sound systems using eleven separate channels, in an attempt to delivering high-quality sound to viewers. Vocals, guitars, rhythm guitars, and pianos each have their own channels and speaker sets. Phil Lesh's bass is channeled through a quadraphonic encoder that sends signals from each of the four strings to separate channels and sets of speakers for each string. Other channels strengthen the bass drum, and two more channels carrying snares, toms, and cymbals. Since each speaker only carries one instrument or vocalist, his voice is very clear and free of intermodulation distortion.
Several settings have been reported for The Wall of Sound:
- 89 300-watt solid-state and three 350 watt vacuum tube amplifiers produce a total of 26,400 watts of audio power. 604 total speakers.
- 586 JBL speakers and 54 Electrovoice tweeters powered by 48 McIntosh MC-2300 Amps (48 X 600 = 28,800 Watts continuous (RMS) power).
The system projects high-quality playback at six hundred feet with an acceptable sound projected for a quarter of a mile, in which wind disturbances are degraded. The Wall of Sound is the first large-scale line of lines used in modern sound reinforcement systems, although it is not called a row of lines at the time. The Wall of Sound is probably the second largest non-permanent sound system ever built. The Wall of Sound can be viewed at The Grateful Dead Movie , documentation of a series of performances played October 16-20, 1974 in Winterland Ballroom.
There are several sets of staging and scaffolding that tour the Grateful Dead. To accommodate the time it takes to organize and break down the system, the band will come up with a set while others will "jump" to the next show. According to band historian Dennis McNally, there are two sets of scaffolding. According to Stanley, there are three sets. Four semi trailers and 21 crew members were asked to transport and erect a 75 ton Wall.
Although the initial framework and basic form of the system was inaugurated at the Stanford University Roscoe Maples Pavilion on February 9, 1973 (each tweeter blowing when the band started their first number), the Grateful Dead did not start the full-system tour until a year later. The Wall of Sound has finished its debut touring on March 23, 1974, at Cow Palace in Daly City, California. The recording of the show was released in 2002 as Dick's Picks Volume 24 .
As Stanley describes it,
"The Wall of Sound is the name given to some very powerful and highly accurate PA systems that I designed and supervised the building in 1973 for the Grateful Dead.It is a large wall of speaker composition placed behind the musicians, who they themselves they are controlled without the front of the house mixer.There is no need to delay towers to reach a half-mile distance from the stage without degradation. "
Maps Wall of Sound (Grateful Dead)
Technical challenge
The Wall of Sound acts as its own monitor system, and is therefore assembled behind the band so members can hear what their audiences hear. Therefore, Stanley and Alembic designed a special microphone system to prevent feedback. The pair are placed tide condenser microphones 60 mm apart and run out of phase. The vocalist sings over the microphone, and the lower mic takes whatever sounds there are on the stage environment. These signals are added together using a differential summing amp so that the common sounds for both mic (sound from Wall) are canceled, and only the vowel is amplified.
The Wall is very efficient for its day, but suffers more harm than its size. The frequent guest keyboardist, Ned Lagin (best known for experimental interlude with various permutations of Lesh, Jerry Garcia, and drummer Bill Kreutzmann throughout the resting set of 1974) prefers playing through strong vocal subsystems (considered "the best part of the whole... PA "); however, group voice crews often forget to switch between their quadrophonic inputs and vocal inputs during long sequences, so some of their contributions are recorded. In addition, as many as two channels of input will still be lost in the mix when the system is working properly. The quadraphonic format of The Wall did not translate well to the soundboard tapes made during that period, as the sounds were compressed into an unnatural stereo format and suffered from tinniness.
Retirement
The rising cost of fuel and personnel, as well as friction among many of the newer crew members and hook-on-hangers, contributed to the band's October 1974 "retirement." The Wall of Sound was dismantled, and when the Dead began another tour in 1976, it was replaced by a more logical and practical sound system.
See also
- Portal Grateful Dead
References
External links
- Insider's View of the Dead Sound Wall
- Photos from the JBL Professional Wall of Sound speakers
- Grateful Dead Listening Guide
- The Grateful Dead & amp; Wall of Sound Video
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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