Grateful Dead wall of sound

[the kid]

A quite interesting piece on the Grateful Dead's wall of sound, its creation, and some of the science behind it. http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-wall-of-sound

[GC1971]

That's ace. Ta.

[laseranger]

Was first reviewed in detail in Studio Sound magazine in about 1975 as far as I can remember! Caused a real stir with the doomsayers predicting physical injury to internal organs!!http://www.blue-room.org.uk/public/style_emoticons/default/rolleyes.gif

[Robin D]

Unfortunately the doomsayers were right.

 

Many of these early adopters are now very deaf. The ear is an internal organ albeit with a window to the outside world!

 

There are also other strong indicators that other damage may occur starting with the work by Glasser. You can read this to understand the issues. Sadly, Tom Reid, a 19 year-old died in London as a result of heart problems brought on by loud music Link. He cannot have been the first.

[madorangepanda]

Sadly, Tom Reid, a 19 year-old died in London as a result of heart problems brought on by loud music Link. He cannot have been the first.

 

That article takes things seriously out of context. The loud music wasn't a causal factor, Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome was.

 

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0912/09120901

[Robin D]

That appears to be still under conjecture within the medical profession. This and this research papers, while not categorical do indicate that heart rate and rhythm is affected by loud music. If bass did trigger the SADS then it it would have been a causal factor. Definition: Causal Factors are any behaviour, omission, or deficiency that if corrected, eliminated, or avoided probably would have prevented the fatality.

[Judge]

Thats a great article, I have not seen that one before and I have done a bit of research into that system. I went to see the Dead when they brought that rig over to Europe in '74. It was at Ally Pally which has notoriously bad acoustics. I remember that it was not loud as such, not in an overwhelming way, but just BIG.

In every way.

The rig had incredible clarity and range. Nothing was muddy or in the way of anything else. This was due to a couple of factors- each instrument had its own stack of speakers and amps. At one stage Phil Lesh had each string of his bass amped through a different set, which seems to be stretching the point a bit but thats Phil for you. Also the system had tremendous headroom. The amps were running at around 25% - nothing was maxed out. It was essentially a massive hi fi system, which is how it started. Bear had a huge hi fi at home and he started bringing that out to gigs for the band to play through. Then he though, what if...... and thats what they ended up with.

 

It was an awesome and pioneering sound system and completely impractical on every level. Shortly after all that Bear left the picture and they got a new sound engineer, Dan Healy who got together with a local audio boffin in Berkely called John Meyer. And that worked out rather better in the long run.