Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound

[Daudio]

I'm talking about what the "sound folks" *do* to the performances.

 

And to the audiences and performers.

 

I live in a small town, embedded in a big metro area, and we have frequent small performances and festivals with multiple stages. Small portable stages usually placed at the end of a closed off street. Each stage has a small sound booth with mixing board and other PA stuff, coupled with a couple of awful speakers flanking the stage.

 

These booths are staffed by young men (always men), who look like they they took the day off from a motorcycle gang. To be blunt, they are thugs. They care nothing for the wishes of the performers, or the audience. They dial in a half dozen compressors, and crank the amps up to 11. Any audience member asking to have the volume tuned down is faced down by the goon.

 

During one of these festivals, I talked to a classical brass group about not using the PA for their set, since it was totally unnecessary for their instruments and the small crowd. They wouldn't even bring it up with the sound guy, from past experience (and maybe a bit of fear too). Of course the sound of the groups performance was horrid - and for no good reason.

 

Yes, there may exceptions to lousy, arrogant, poorly trained, sound guys, but it looks to be the rule, to me.

[Markhh2]

Just got back from the shows in Chicago and the sound quality in the venue was truly amazing. Here is some background from Meyer web site, another partner from the Wall of Sound era.

 

The Grateful Dead Bids "Fare Thee Well" at Levi's Stadium with Meyer Sound LEO | Meyer Sound News

[bluesman]

Jud--Great story!

Righteous!!

 

There's a recording of one of his dates at the Main Point (a tiny club in Bryn Mawr, PA) that's well worth finding - there's a said-to-be-good vinyl issue out there somewhere. It's called (duh!) "Live at the Main Point). Suki Lahav was on the gig, as were Clarence on sax and Danny Federici (on organ and accordion). And we were in the audience...

 

 

Here's the YouTube version:

 

[firedog]

deleted

[bottlerocket]

[mayhem13]

Other than the few vertical arrays that appear, that system is clearly a comb filter creating machine and while it may have been low or distortion free, it would have been it's only redeeming quality.

[Jabs1542]

Other than the few vertical arrays that appear, that system is clearly a comb filter creating machine and while it may have been low or distortion free, it would have been it's only redeeming quality.

 

I think LOUD was the other redeeming quality, a goal I'm certain they achieved

[firedog]

Clearly it had additional redeeming qualities over the low distortion. Otherwise there wouldn't have been the reaction to the sound of it that there was.

But if you never heard it, it's easy to be an "armchair engineer" and decide it must not have been very good.

[bluesman]

I think LOUD was the other redeeming quality, a goal I'm certain they achieved

That's for sure - but it was a lot more than that. Much (most?) of the great tone from "electric" instruments (i.e. guitars, basses, keyboards etc designed to drive amplification and lacking any meaningful acoustic output) results from the right combination of signal and processing. We could debate whether intentional distortion is even distortion, given its fundamental role in creating the desired sound. But whatever you want to call the phenomenon, many of the great "tones" we know and love in rock / jazz / funk / pop / fusion etc result from controlled manipulation of the largely sinusoidal signals generated by vibrating strings / reeds / tone bars / etc.

 

Clapton's "woman tone", Santana's singing sustain, Booker T's B3 growl, and Ray Charles' Wurlitzer electric piano riff on What'd I Say are all perfect examples of wonderful tone resulting from distortion. Each one is the result of a different kind of distortion at a different stage in the chain. For example, Clapton's classic sustain & compression come from overdriven output tubes into low wattage speakers, with some element of voltage sag on transients from tube rectifiers. And Santana's tone comes from overdriving cascaded gain stages before the output stage (the classic Mesa Boogie Mark series sound).

 

Until we had sound reinforcement up to the task, we each relied on our own amplifier(s) for both sound quality and sufficient volume to be heard throughout the venue. Unfortunately, the "perfect tone" (of which there is only one, and every musician has it...) is strongly dependent on volume and tone pot settings. Given the simple facts that most of us only had one amp (two was a major luxury), and we played venues of all sizes, maintaining the desired tone was impossible for us in rooms that were too small or too large for the settings required. My band when I was in high school was the opening act at record hops run by Atlantic City's radio station WMID - we played places a large as the Ocean City Convention Hall and as small as the Beach Haven fire hall and the Tuckaway Inn.

 

I had an Ampeg Jet for the first hop, and with all knobs max'ed it was barely audible 20 feet from the stage. The speaker cone let go of the voice coil in the last tune after distorting every note I played (and not in a pleasing way). So I got a Magnatone 100 watter with 4 6L6s and 4 12" speakers. The next gig was in a room so small that I couldn't turn the volume up past 2. So my tone was as clean and pure as fresh snow, when what I needed for great leads was some grit.

 

Live sound reinforcement brought us the ability to create the sounds we and the audience wanted and to deliver the goods at any volume in any venue to any size crowd. It made possible the use of great sounding small amps like the Fender Champ and Deluxe anywhere. And it opened up the possibility of combining mic'ed acoustic and amplified electric signals from the same instruments to create a whole new sonic palette.

 

So it made good sound loud, or soft, or in between - it let musicians sound like they wanted to sound at the SPLs they wanted to deliver.

[Otherworld74]

I was able to see the Dead five times in 1974. The Wall of Sound was fantastic! Loud and clear, but not painful. It sounded good in the back and the front. I have seen many rock concerts over the years and experienced loud and painful sound systems that made my ears ring for days. Not so with the Wall. For it's time, it was the best (IMHO) as was the music being played ;^)

 

The Technical specs: The Wall of SOUND

 

A thread on WoS speakers and line arrays by Rick Turner:

 

Grateful Dead Music Forum • View topic - Original Wall of Sound speaker formula...

 

My favorite Wall of Sound photo (by Jim Anderson):

 

The Wall of Sound | Grateful Dead Springfield Civic Center June 30, 1974 | James R Anderson Photography

[wgscott]

He had other interesting ideas too:

 

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f8-general-forum/some-tips-better-sound-owsley-stanly-23127/

[mayhem13]

P

Clearly it had additional redeeming qualities over the low distortion. Otherwise there wouldn't have been the reaction to the sound of it that there was.

But if you never heard it, it's easy to be an "armchair engineer" and decide it must not have been very good.

 

Can think of LOTS of things at a dead concert that would....em....alter?....the perceptions of those in attendance.

 

As for armchairs.....don't really need one......forty years of advances in the understanding of acoustics and other applied sciences does nicely. I'd explain it to you but I doubt you'd both grasp or listen to the concepts.

[AnotherSpin]

P

Can think of LOTS of things at a dead concert that would....em....alter?....the perceptions of those in attendance.

Perception is always altered by one thing or another. Which is not necessarily the case with the Dead, by the way. Their music in the best moment is a pure bliss on the level which other dance bands didn't know existed. You can not feel it without measurements? Next life, I hope.

[wgscott]

I still feel it. My ankle still hurts from June 28th. But I think I extended the range of motion.

[AnotherSpin]

I still feel it. My ankle still hurts from June 28th. But I think I extended the range of motion.

I was crying with tears most of the last night video. No, it didn't hurt at all.

[wgscott]

When they did "He's Gone" at the one I went to, it was quite poignant. The moment of silence at the end was a tear-jerker too.