The Grateful Dead's "Wall of Sound".*

Aren't they using the wall of sound on the Closing Of Winterland show/DVD?

The breathy, boxy sound from those mikes is a real drawback. I understand they had to lean right into them to get any proper response. You couldn't be more than a couple of inches away.

 

That's correct. You back off those mics and the vocal becomes part of the sound that's canceled out.

In later years they went to pressure pads that activated vocal mics when a singer stepped up to them. This was until the time they went to in ear monitors (something else they were WAY ahead of the curve on). At that point, the stage became the quietest spot in the arena.

 

Saw them in Atlanta same period. Amazing sound. If they turned it up... could be heard in Gwinnet County. They were moderate in the volume category.

 

The 350 watt amps were their McIntosh MC3500 tube amps.

 

I'm gonna assume that the handles were not simply cosmetic. My back aches just looking at these amps! But I bet they sounded great.

 

Yeah, those in the picture aren't mine. I just liked the picture.

But McIntosh just came out with their MC2301, which is a tube mono block @300 watts. (Unfortunately, I think they're about $11,000 ... each.)

 

Don't have the exact quote close at hand, but I know Pete Townshend blamed most of his tinnitus on studio headphones turned up way loud. It would seem that playing in front of Hi-Watt amps turned up to ten would do that - but more hearing damage comes from headphone volume than ambient noise - it's IN your ear.

 

That link's not working for me Greg.

 

I took my little brother to hear the wall of sound for his first concert!

We hitched 100+ miles to the show and found ourselves about 8 folks back, center stage. What a party! They played for hours and it was absolute magic.

After the show, we were picked up by the third car to pass us and driven through extereme fog right to my folk's front door... Those were certainly the days.

 

I just finished up a ton of new research into whether time alignment delay lines were used in the WOS so I figured I would put it here should anyone be interested. I am not talking delay towers for like used at RFK, Watkins Glen and Kezar in the not-quite-yet WOS ’73, nor am I talking about guitar effects, although Bobby used a very early digital delay for effect. The final answer is I sure don’t think so; but the real reason for posting this was to provide an article Wickersham wrote about the WOS published in ’76 that has a level of detail I have never seen, and it was buried enough that I am not sure many people have seen it. During my research over the years I wished for a good book solely on the WOS, and after this article http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-DB-Magazine/70s/DB-1976-04.pdf, starts page 24, I am not sure what else there is to say. On some level there is nothing earth shattering, but if you are an electronics guy it gets into about 10x more detail than the ’74 newsletter we have all read. Of particular note to me was the description in the guitar system that Jerry’s cabinets had opened-back baffles different than the sealed boxes for the other guitars, I tended to figure the guitar arrays were using the same speakers. Should you be interested, I will lay down some other findings from this process.

This is not my first time doing in-depth research into the history of the Dead’s PA, it is kind of a pet hobby. What precipitated this latest round was Myers latest Constellation systems that rely heavily on real-time analysis and digital time delay adjustments to shape sounds whether music halls or restaurants http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/wizards-sound. What led me to research if time alignment was in the WOS or when it started was this Wickersham comment in the ’74 Deadhead “When work on the system resumes, many interesting directions are under consideration. The availability of low cost delay electronics makes it possible to design a phased array where the energy form [sic] the source can be aimed by adjusting controls.” So did they ever get there in ‘74? Wickersham designed a Time-Alignment Generator that was used to design and build multi-way time aligned speakers BagEnd and UREI being some of the first. Also I found a John Curl comment “I worked for years with John Meyer using FFT analysis on loudspeakers as early as 1974. We built a 3 way, time aligned, horn loaded system with transient perfect derived electronic crossovers, and a 14" 'bucket brigade' delay line.” Well despite those coincidences Wickersham never discusses any of it in the ’76 article so I have to say not ready for WOS.

Certainly time alignment became a big part of the PA in later years through the ‘80s and it seems when computing power increased pretty big time in the 90’s. Ultrasound notes they started using it for beam steering to reduce bass energy 15db off the stage which was bothering Phil http://forums.prosoundweb.com/index.php?topic=73992.65;wap2 and they were expecting to do more beam steering experiments when we lost Jerry. http://www.meyersound.com/news/press/prosnd3.htm

As far as I can tell at this point ’78 is the first known large-scale use of time alignment per the Blair Jackson Gear Book. : “Pearson and Healy put together the first time-aligned PA system; ‘We built a very elaborate custom crossover that allowed us to have individual control of each of the sound system’s sections: the woofers, the low bass, the mid-range, the mid-high-end and the tweeters,’ Pearson said in the same interview. A friend of mine Dennis Fink, who worked at UREI, ‘customized a delay unit so we could individually correct the arrival time of each of the system’s components. That made it so the arrival time of sound at the user’s ear was one, rather than being a smear.”

Phil talks a bit in his book about regaining an edge in their live sound after the loss of the WOS when Ultrasound, Meyer, Pearson Healy and others of course “provide us with our finest PA since the Wall. The ket to the system emerged in the person of John Meyer, a physicist and speaker designer whom Bear had discovered. John’s new speaker amp design—based on a method of time alignment that bordered on the inexplicable—provided us first with massive ‘earthquake’ subwoofers so beloved those Deadheads who found their spiritual home in the ‘Phil Zone (that space in front of my position on the stage where the bass was most prominently heard), and then with a full-range system delivering sound that approached the transparency of the Wall.”

Here are some good interviews mentioning the use of time alignment through ought the years in the Deads’ PA.
http://www.pearlhifi.com/06_Lit_Archive/14_Books_Tech_Papers/LS_Impulse_Alignment.pdf
http://www.frankdoris.com/writing/tas/gratefuldead.htm http://www.mixonline.com/news/tours/necessity-mothers-invention/367798
http://gopherproxy.meulie.net/nemesis.cs.berkeley.edu/00/interviews/Don-Pearson-interview
http://www.thedeadbiz.com/outtakes/a-conversation-with-dan-healy/
General Reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudspeaker_time_alignment
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/mar06/articles/live_linearrays.htm
http://sound.westhost.com/ptd.htm#s5

 

“Another useless nut cracked” said the blind squirrel, as I finally pinned down what I think was referenced by Pearson in the GD Gear Book as “A friend of mine Dennis Fink, who worked at UREI, 'customized a delay unit so we could individually correct the arrival time of each of the system’s components'.

The UREI Model 927 four-channel delay unit http://www.jblproservice.com/pdf/Vintage JBL-UREI Electronics/UREI-927.pdf

I cracked the nut of finding this unit by reading a very fascinating article on the beginning use of time alignment in speakers that has a very in-depth explanation of its use in the first live PA starting for, you know who, on page 52 of the magazine. http://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Recording-Engineer/80s/Recording-1980-12.pdf [you may have to copy and paste those links]

I think this is pretty must read for any Deadhead gearheads out there in radio and tv land. This is my new favorite magazine even if it is 35 years old!

 

It was an Owsley Stanley conception. I saw the Grateful Dead with the "wall of sound" system a few times. I personally did not think it sounded all that great. It was loud, but I had heard them sound better with other systems. It took several semi trailers to haul it all around. Interesting idea but not all that practical for a band that traveled that much.

 

Actually, it didn't sound that good. Having each instrument come out of it's own vertical stack may seem like a good idea, but they had a tendency to beam... you'd get a lap full of Weir in one spot and not much in others. Also, for me the '74 performances sound distracted... like the band was caught up in admiring how good it sounded to them. I was at three of the shows: Hollywood Bowl, UCSB and UCLA. UCLA was released as a Dick's Picks. The vocals are just ass in places, most notably UJB. Out doors (Hollywood Bowl, UCSB), the system sounded way underpowered.

 

I don’t have any references handy but I seem to remember even some of those involved in building it felt it had plenty of problems beyond the obvious ones and it was not always that great sounding at times.

Certainly the tapes don’t regularly show its potential, or at least there are some wonky mixes, and lots of technical problems that year more than most. I do notice a ton of clarity on the stage between songs that year. I think the band on average was closer to the edge of the stage due to the WOS design; that, and the differential mics adding to the clarity, seem to pick up on tape really specific audience comments, which you seemed to only hear as much in the really early small room years. The vocals were probably the biggest weakness no doubt. According to Bear in the Dicks Picks 24 liner notes they were aware of the loss of low frequencies in the vocals due to the differential mic design but they needed more development to remedy.

My interest in the WOS is not that it was any high-water mark for PAs, but in just how much of laboratory it was; and a lot of what the WOS introduced became refined over time into what gets done today if it is getting done right—that and the WOS “scientists” were really the pioneers, and many of them continued onward to deliver the best working versions of what the WOS experiments began by pulling textbook theory into the real world.

I wonder if Bear really said to the Band in ’74, what he says in the DiP 24 liner notes, “I told them before we began I was sure it could be done, the technology was available, but I was also sure they would not like it once they were locked into using it.”

 

The UCLA show was actually a Dave's Picks not a Dick's Picks.

 

Remember the true WOS debuted on 3/23/74; earlier versons of the system were each lacking at least one key element.

One thing the system did not do was "beam". Except for the vocals and some of the drums, the instruments all had speakers in a quasi-line source configuration, ensuring a cylindrical wavefront with better blending of the different sources as well as much less volume loss with distance. for the individual listener, the best sound was usually about 100-150 ft back; closer in it did often sounded "fragmented". Truly, except for the screwy vocal setup, the Dead didn't have better concert sound until the last half of the '80's, and I think it's safe to say that other bands didn't match it until the 2000's. It's interesting reading in Blair's book about the equipment demands the Dead made on Clair Brothers; they were orders of magnitude pickier about the components and the eventual sound quality than any other band.

 

Interesting new story about the infamous Wall

"...This singular work of engineering would come to weigh over 70 tons, comprise dozens and then hundreds of amps, speakers, subwoofers, and tweeters, stand over three-stories tall and stretch nearly 100 feet wide. Its name could only be the Wall of Sound...."

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-wall-of-sound

 

Thanks - always interested in learning more about this...

 

Wow, good read, thanks.

 

Thanks I am a big fan of researching the WOS. Would you do me a favor and please post that over here to keep it all together. http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...-the-grateful-deads-wall-of-sound-wow.145294/

 

Attending one of those shows must have been an unforgettable experience.

 

I've always liked the pics of SOOO MANY DRIVERS. Impressive. This is the one I wish I could have heard, though:

http://www.frankdoris.com/writing/tas/gratefuldead.htm

 

Also here is what they were using for these 5 shows if anyone is interested.

http://www.meyersound.com/news/2015/grateful_dead_fare_thee_well/

 

Also here is what they were using for these 5 shows if anyone is interested.

http://www.meyersound.com/news/2015/grateful_dead_fare_thee_well/