Wall of Sound (Grateful Dead)
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The Wall of Sound was an enormous
sound reinforcement system A sound reinforcement system is the combination of microphones, signal processors, amplifiers, and loudspeakers in enclosures all controlled by a mixing console that makes live or pre-recorded sounds louder and may also distribute those sounds ...
designed in 1973 specifically for the
Grateful Dead The Grateful Dead was an American rock music, rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California. The band is known for its eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, Folk music, folk, country music, country, jazz, bluegrass music, bluegrass, ...
's live performances. The largest concert sound system built at that time, The Wall of Sound fulfilled lead designer Owsley "Bear" Stanley's desire for a distortion-free sound system that could also serve as its own monitoring system.


History

Stanley and Dan Healy and Mark Raizene of the Grateful Dead's sound crew, in collaboration with Ron Wickersham, Rick Turner, and John Curl of
Alembic An alembic (from ar, الإنبيق, al-inbīq, originating from grc, ἄμβιξ, ambix, 'cup, beaker') is an alchemical still consisting of two vessels connected by a tube, used for distillation of liquids. Description The complete disti ...
designed the
sound reinforcement system A sound reinforcement system is the combination of microphones, signal processors, amplifiers, and loudspeakers in enclosures all controlled by a mixing console that makes live or pre-recorded sounds louder and may also distribute those sounds ...
in an effort to deliver high-quality sound to attendees of Grateful Dead concerts, which were drawing crowds of 100,000 or more at the time. The Wall of Sound combined six independent sound systems using eleven separate channels. Vocals, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, and piano each had their own channel and set of speakers.
Phil Lesh Philip Chapman Lesh (born March 15, 1940) is an American musician and a founding member of the Grateful Dead, with whom he played bass guitar throughout their 30-year career. After the band's disbanding in 1995, Lesh continued the tradition of ...
's bass was piped through a
quadraphonic Quadraphonic (or quadrophonic and sometimes quadrasonic) sound – equivalent to what is now called 4.0 surround sound – uses four audio channels in which speakers are positioned at the four corners of a listening space. The system allows for th ...
encoder that sent signals from each of the four strings to a separate channel and set of speakers for each string. Another channel amplified the bass drum, and two more channels carried the snares, tom-toms, and cymbals. Because each speaker carried just one instrument or vocalist, the sound was exceptionally clear and free of intermodulation distortion. Several setups have been reported for The Wall of Sound: # 604 total speakers, powered by 89 300-watt
solid-state Solid state, or solid matter, is one of the four fundamental states of matter. Solid state may also refer to: Electronics * Solid-state electronics, circuits built of solid materials * Solid state ionics, study of ionic conductors and their use ...
and three 350-watt
vacuum tube A vacuum tube, electron tube, valve (British usage), or tube (North America), is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric voltage, potential difference has been applied. The type kn ...
amplifiers generating a total of 26,400 watts of power. # 586
JBL JBL is an American audio equipment manufacturer headquartered in Los Angeles, California, United States. JBL serves the customer home and professional market. The professional market includes studios, installed/tour/portable sound, cars, music ...
speakers and 54
Electro-Voice Electro-Voice (EV) is an American manufacturer of audio equipment, including microphones, amplifiers, and loudspeakers, focused on pro audio applications such as sound reinforcement. As a subdivision of Bosch Communications Systems Inc. since 200 ...
tweeters, powered by 48 600-watt McIntosh MC-2300 amplifiers generating a total of 28,800 watts of continuous (RMS) power). This system projected high-quality playback at with an acceptable sound projected for , at which point wind interference degraded it. Although it was not called a line array at the time, the Wall of Sound was the first large-scale
line array A line array is a loudspeaker system that is made up of a number of usually identical loudspeaker elements mounted in a line and fed in phase, to create a near-line source of sound. The distance between adjacent drivers is close enough that they ...
used in modern sound reinforcement systems. The Wall of Sound was perhaps the second-largest non-permanent sound system ever built. It can be seen in ''
The Grateful Dead Movie ''The Grateful Dead Movie'', released in 1977 and directed by Jerry Garcia, is a film that captures live performances from rock band the Grateful Dead during an October 1974 five-night run at Winterland Ballroom, Winterland in San Francisco, Cali ...
'', a documentation of the series of shows played October 16–20, 1974 at the Winterland Ballroom. There were multiple sets of staging and scaffolding that toured with the Grateful Dead. In order to accommodate the time needed to set up and tear down the system, the band would perform with one set while another would "leapfrog" to the next show. According to band historian Dennis McNally, there were two sets of scaffolding. According to Stanley, there were three sets. Four semi-trailers and 21 crew members were required to haul and set up the 75-ton Wall. Though the initial framework and a rudimentary form of the system was unveiled at
Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
's
Maples Pavilion Maples Pavilion is a 7,392-seat multi-purpose arena on the campus of Stanford University in Stanford, California. Opened in 1969, Maples underwent a $30 million renovation in March 2004 and reopened ahead of schedule, in time for conference pla ...
on February 9, 1973 (every tweeter blew as the band began their first number), the Grateful Dead did not begin to tour with the full system until a year later. The completed Wall of Sound made its touring debut on March 23, 1974, at the Cow Palace in
Daly City, California Daly City () is the second most populous city in San Mateo County, California, United States, with population of 104,901 according to the 2020 census. Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, and immediately south of San Francisco (sharing its ...
. A recording of the performance was released in 2002 as ''
Dick's Picks Volume 24 ''Dick's Picks Volume 24'' is the 24th installment of the popular Grateful Dead archival series. It contains selections from the March 23, 1974 concert at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California. The two-disc, vault release is mastered in HDCD ...
''. As Stanley described it,
The Wall of Sound is the name some people gave to a super powerful, extremely accurate PA system that I designed and supervised the building of in 1973 for the Grateful Dead. It was a massive wall of speaker arrays set behind the musicians, which they themselves controlled without a front of house mixer. It did not need any delay towers to reach a distance of half a mile [] from the stage without degradation.


Technical challenges

The Wall of Sound acted as its own monitoring system, and it was therefore assembled behind the band so the members could hear exactly what their audience was hearing. Because of this, Stanley and Alembic designed a special microphone system to prevent
feedback Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to ''feed back'' into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handled ...
. This placed matched pairs of condenser microphones spaced 60 mm apart and wired in reverse polarity from each other. The vocalist sang into the top microphone, and the lower mic picked up whatever other sound was present in the stage environment. The signals were added together using a differential summing amp so that the sound common to both mics (the sound from the Wall) was canceled, and only the vocals were amplified. The Wall was very efficient for its day, but suffered from more drawbacks than its sheer size. Frequent guest keyboardist
Ned Lagin Ned Lagin (born March 17, 1948) is an American artist, photographer, scientist, composer, and keyboardist.Ned Lagin interview with David Gans, August 2001 in: Gans, David. Conversations with the Dead, The Grateful Dead Interview Book, Da Capo Pre ...
(best known for performing experimental interludes with various permutations of Lesh,
Jerry Garcia Jerome John Garcia (August 1, 1942 – August 9, 1995) was an American musician best known for being the principal songwriter, lead guitarist, and a vocalist with the rock band Grateful Dead, which he co-founded and which came to prominence ...
and drummer Bill Kreutzmann throughout 1974 set breaks) preferred to play through the powerful vocal subsystem (considered to be "the best part of the entire... PA"); however, the group's sound crew often neglected to switch between his quadrophonic input and the vocal input during long sequences, resulting in few of his contributions being recorded.http://nedbase.blogspot.com/ Additionally, as many as two channels of his input would still be lost in the mix when the system was working properly. The Wall's quadraphonic format did not translate well to
soundboard tapes A soundboard recording is a sound recording of a concert taken from a direct connection to the soundboard at the venue. Soundboard recordings are considered to be among the highest quality bootleg recordings of live performances though some soundb ...
made during the period, as the sound was compressed into an unnatural
stereo Stereophonic sound, or more commonly stereo, is a method of sound reproduction that recreates a multi-directional, 3-dimensional audible perspective. This is usually achieved by using two independent audio channels through a configuration ...
format and suffered from a pronounced tinniness.


Retirement

The rising cost of fuel and personnel, as well as friction among many of the newer crew members and associated hangers-on, contributed to the band's October 1974 "retirement". The Wall of Sound was disassembled, and when the Dead began touring again in 1976, it was replaced with a more logistically practical sound system.


Legacy

On 14 October 2021 during a Sothebys auction called "From the Vault: Property from the Grateful Dead and Friends" several portions of the Wall sold including a portion of the center vocal cluster and a handmade
Alembic An alembic (from ar, الإنبيق, al-inbīq, originating from grc, ἄμβιξ, ambix, 'cup, beaker') is an alchemical still consisting of two vessels connected by a tube, used for distillation of liquids. Description The complete disti ...
speaker cabinet for 17,640 USD. Also sold were multiple
McIntosh MC-2300 The McIntosh MC-2300 is a solid-state power amplifier which was built by the American high-end audio company McIntosh, and sold between the years 1971 and 1980. In terms of McIntosh "family lineage" or production order, the MC-2300 was immediately ...
amplifiers, one sold for 94,500 USD.


References


External links


An Insider's Look at the Grateful Dead's Wall of SoundGrateful Dead Listening GuideThe Grateful Dead & The Wall of Sound
video {{GratefulDead Grateful Dead Sound production technology 1974 in music