The Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound (2019)

Historical concert sound & the Wall of Sound

• Early rock shows often had amps behind players, blasting them with extreme SPL; front-of-house amplification emerged later.
• The Wall of Sound gave each instrument its own dedicated speaker stack and amplification path, aiming for clarity and long‑range coherence rather than brute loudness.
• Some posters recall hearing it in the 1970s and describe unusually clear, separated sound at moderate levels, even far from the stage.

Microphone techniques & feedback control

• A key innovation was the dual (sometimes described as triple) vocal mic setup with one mic phase‑inverted.
• Because the singer is close to only one capsule, the PA spill common to both mics largely cancels, reducing feedback.
• Posters compare this to balanced lines and modern noise‑cancelling (e.g., phones), and share similar cancellation hacks in venues.

Line arrays, beam steering, and modern PA practice

• The Wall’s vertical stacks anticipate modern line arrays, now standard at big shows and even in home “tower” speakers.
• Advantages discussed: reduced horizontal comb filtering, better coverage, and possibilities like beam steering and planar arrays.
• Meyer Sound and others are cited as commercializing many of these concepts; modern systems can auto‑tune via measurement bursts.

Recording, taping culture, and codecs

• The Dead encouraged audience taping, with dedicated taper sections near the soundboard.
• This sharing culture helped shape attitudes toward decentralized distribution, early online communities, and even lossless codecs (FLAC, Shorten) originating from taping circles.
• Posters reminisce about tape and DAT “trees” and describe Relisten and archive.org as today’s primary hubs for these recordings.

Counterculture, LSD, and finance

• The engineer who drove the Wall’s development was also a major LSD producer; illicit funds reportedly subsidized the massive PA.
• LSD and Bay Area counterculture are linked in the thread to early personal computing, The WELL, and digital‑rights activism.

Critiques and practical limitations

• Several note that touring the Wall was logistically and financially unsustainable, requiring multiple full systems and huge crews.
• Some argue vocals never sounded great due to the mic arrangement and performance issues.
• Others counter that, despite flaws, it was a pioneering experiment that laid groundwork for modern PA design.

Meta: article, UX, and side threads

• Commenters complain about the article’s verbosity, commas, and light‑gray text.
• Side discussions touch on alternative “walls of sound,” other engineers, extreme‑volume bands, and modern anti‑feedback products.