

The Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound - tintinnabula
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/the-wall-of-sound

======
bjelkeman-again
> "That’s because the Wall was a PA of PAs—six independent PAs, one for each
> instrument. Lead guitar, rhythm guitar, vocals, bass, drums, and piano each
> had a dedicated PA, according to the official Deadheads Newsletter No. 19,
> published in December 1974. This did away with having to mix everything
> through a single set of speakers. The “single biggest thing besides the true
> line array aspect” of the Wall, as Wiz told me, was how there was no need
> for panning, or adjusting various sound levels on a mixing console."

Much of live sound today sounds pretty poor and a great sound tech and
producer, Lennart Östlund from the ABBA Polar Studio, told us (small workshop
on mixing) that the cure was exactly what the Dead did. A PA per instrument.
If you can't do that at least split the vocals to a separate system. Which he
had actually tried with great success several times.

~~~
huuu
In my experience it's not the PA that makes it sound poor but the 'sound guy'.

I also have a hard time believing that a separate system will make it sound
better. You still need to adjust the level of each PA to create a good mix.

~~~
deckiedan
The separate PA thing means that you lose all phase related issues (providing
the vocal PA is a mono single effective source, rather than a pair of
speakers...).

You hardly ever pan main vocals anyway, so you're normally using your stereo
pair to produce a mono sound. In other words, both speakers are producing the
same sound at the same time. Since hardly anyone in the audience is an equal
distance from both speakers, they'll hear a messy comb-filtered version of the
main vocals, rather than them cleanly.

You can make a very good argument for not bothering with stereo at all for
live sound (except for effect stuff, but then we're back into separate-pa-for-
each-instrument grounds...). The trouble with that is how much harder that is
to rig. If you're stacking stuff on the ground at all, then you can't really
stack center stage, you need to stack to the sides. (Or behind the stage, with
all the feedback issues that involves). If you do fly your PA, then you still
need legs, usually. And a big PA is _stinking_ heavy, and flying it near the
legs is a lot easier than near the middle, due to lengths of truss, loading
points, etc.

I've never tried it personally, but people who's ears I trust all say that
besides all of that, just using a secondary sound system for vocals still
makes them come through a lot clearer and everything sound better.

One possible reason for that is that a speaker is essentially just a paper
cone with an electromagnet on it. There are physical limits on what that one
bit of paper can do in terms of vibrations. We like to pretend the world is a
lot more digital and measurable than it really is. By separating out the
vocals from the other instruments, you allow the speakers to _only_ move when
the vocalist is singing. I can see why it could be cleaner. I believe the
Chilli Peppers may be doing 2 PAs at the moment splitting off the vocals to
their own mix...

You'll still always need a good sound guy, and you'll still need somehow to
control the (vocals:instruments) ratio in the audience.

Ideally, bands would think of the sound guy as a member of the band. Kind of
like the conductor of an orchestra is a vital member of the orchestra. A good
sound guy is very similar. A bad sound guy has all of the same control, but
none of the feeling.

~~~
brusch64
For me one of the most impressive parts of this article where how they managed
to eliminate feedback on the vocal microphones.

They did this by using two microphones, using one of the microphones for the
singer, the other for the background noise. By inverting the phase on one of
the microphones and then summing these two signals they filtered out the
background noise. At least this was my understanding.

Sometimes it's really great how far we have come with technology and what
tricks they've used in the past.

@good sound guy: you're absolutely right - but most of the good and / or big
bands have their sound guy anyways.

~~~
deckiedan
Yes, absolutely impressive.

I always wondered if it still sounded natural, or if there was some kind of
comb-filtering to the vocals that just didn't matter due to the style and
volume of the music.

I've played with multiple out of phase mics myself (to try and reduce drum
bleed from the main vocalist mics) but never found it as effective as I'd
hoped.

I think the problem was just how stinking loud the ambient drums just in
general were to the room. Maybe outdoors with a bigger rig it would have
worked.

Still pretty fun to play with though.

There's so much mad stuff you can do when you start playing with out of phase
mics, delay, etc. As a party trick I occasionally pull a mic up to the point
of feedback, whistle until I have a stable loop, and then can whistle in
harmony with myself.

You can tell what kind of parties I go to...

~~~
brusch64
I think one of the guys in the article says that the sound was not too good. I
think I've read the term "comically". Another problem was that it didn't work
well if the singer was not singing close to the mic, so the ambient mic direct
vocals on it too.

But I think it was a big improvement to what they had before.

~~~
danieldk
IIRC they had the double microphone configuration in The Grateful Dead Movie
(it's been a while since I have seen it). If I remember correctly, it sounds a
bit different indeed.

It's probably on Youtube, so you can listen and judge yourself ;).

------
marssaxman
A group of my friends throw a 150-person mini dance festival every 4th of July
weekend. In the past they've used Mackie SRM450s with a couple of subs, but
this year we brought a pair of SR1530s, plus the same subs. Both are active
systems with 100-watt HF drivers and 300-watt LF, but the SR1530 has an
additional 100-watt midrange element.

The difference is astonishing - much more significant than you'd expect if
you're used to thinking of volume as a function of power. It was an awesome
wall of clear, clear sound, and we had to keep it turned down a fair bit in
order to keep from driving people out of the dance area. 100 more watts
doesn't seem like much, but separating sound-reproduction responsibilities
among three different amps clearly makes a really big difference.

I did notice some of the problems the article describes with stereo, though.
There were definitely parts of the field where you could hear one side but not
the other, and it was distracting. We clearly have more to learn about this
whole business.

------
dualogy
Ah, Owsley "The Bear" Stanley. He also lived on a fatty-meat-only zero-carb
diet for some 50 years in decent health until he died in a car accident aged
75 in 2011. Quite the character:
[http://www.thebear.org](http://www.thebear.org)

~~~
mturmon
"Kid Charlemagne" by Steely Dan is a nice memorial for the man and the early
LSD era:

    
    
      Just by chance you crossed the diamond with the pearl,
      You turned it on the world,
      That's when you turned the world around.

------
dzhiurgis
Few years ago I've experienced dub sound system (Jah Shaka) for the first
time. I've fallen in love with the concept immediately. It was entirely
different from your regular rave, the culture and the musical vibrations that
just move your body. Did not like the tinnitus for next few days, but that's
why you need ear plugs.

If you never been in one, I highly recommend. Very different experience. They
are usually somewhat underground so takes some research into what dub and
reggae is.

------
scrumper
This article is not entirely unlike a Dead show: it's quite rambling and
unfocused, but there's stuff to get your teeth into if you invest the time in
the right frame of mind.

------
mashmac2
If you liked this, check out Dave Rat's blog -
[http://daverat.blogspot.com/](http://daverat.blogspot.com/)

He's the sound guy for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, among others, and it
currently testing out a double line array system - with separate systems for
vocals and instruments.

------
dekhn
In sort: sound is a complex vectorial field, and line arrays make that sound
the field smooth, so that each frequency is properly represented within the
audience volume.

------
blhack
One of the coolest conversations I got into recently was with the person who
designed the audio system on something called Kalliope (a GIANT, 75,000 watt
sound system/art car).

Audio is _cool_ , and the rabbit hole on it goes really, really deep.

For instance, I learned that Kalliope uses something called a cardioid array
for its subwoofers, meaning that some of the speakers are pointed forwards
(towards the crowd), and some are pointed backwards (away from the crowd).

The result is that the pressure created by the subs pointed backwards is
collapsed by the pressure wave created by the subs pointed forward.

(Alex, the audio engineer calls this a warp drive).

The amount of thought that goes into designing some of these things is
astounding to me. Building PA systems is NOT a matter of plugging speakers
into amps and pointing them where you want them, and making loud sound systems
is NOT a matter of getting more speakers.

------
kazinator
> _They re-coned speakers that had blown or torn. They replaced tweeter
> diaphragms as needed._

Explains why Garcia had no time to learn fingerings outside of the pentatonic
box. :)

