Recreating the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound as it was in 1974. Please follow and spread the word. The goal is to complete the current 1:2 scale wall and start the full scale wall in 2023.
You guys are having a better experience than they did because you’re inside. Everything probably works. There’s no wind the climate stable. There’s no way that they had that same experience. You got a way better experience than they had. That’s amazing. Totally cool. Plus, with the half scale drivers I bet it sounds better physically on your body than having the real size speakers I mean anyway, you look at it that’s a better rig than what they had because you can relate to the sound of a human body to the size of those speakers, especially in a controlled environment like inside and that’s just absolutely amazing Way better than what they had
There's some truth to that. The original Wall was used both indoors and out. Each with it's own unique problems. At half scale, even with smaller drivers, the closer proximity of the players to the wall kind of cancels out any real difference in stage volume. At the end of the day the SPL is the only true gauge and theoretically the stage volume would have been similar. Perhaps the biggest issue for me was the fact that we were in way to small a space for a meaningful test. Even though the sound is excellent, you are essentially at the back of the room right at the point where you are even taking in the full field of sound. This would be the equivalent of setting up the original WOS in a high school gymnasium. I look forward to when we can set up in a room that is 75' x 150' + which is what it was designed for.
I use Optogate optical noise gates instead. I believe they are set to a 17db cut when you aren't directly in front of the mic's. I set them to about a 4" distance.
Class D is anything but dirty. Even Meyer Sounds new systems are class D. Now, the class A MC’s in the wall were part of the tone of the instruments. For the most part that can be emulated and fool 99% of the people listening. In reality, the MC’s were not the real benefit of the wall. It was the setup and how it was operated that really differentiated it from other systems.
You are doing excellent work! I would love to hear your creation. My wife and I heard the Grateful Dead's Wall of Sound a few times. At Watkins Glen we were so far from the stage we did not get the full effect but the next year at the Philadelphia Civic Center we heard it in a relatively small hall. The sound was close to perfect. Thee was very close to zero distortion. It was so far ahead of it's time that no one I knew believed my ravings about it. The Dead pioneered concert sound. At that time in 1974-75 they were the best. You felt the music shake the floor but you did not leave with your ears ringing like from other shows of that era. There was nothing like a Grateful Dead Concert!
Yeah, no matter what format I shoot someone isn’t happy. I generally shoot for Facebook (horizontal) then vertical for IG. I didn’t think this one though!
Brilliant! Back when the actual Wall existed and was touring, I attended a Dead concert, on the east coast, and heard the thing. Clean, clear, resounding bass. And it was huge! I wish I could hear your creation. And, thank you for sharing this!
I've seen some pretty big audio systems, but holy cow that's alot of speakers! I'm wondering why they've chosen small diameter drivers over larger-coned drivers (especially for the bass rig). I was laughing until you mentioned those 8" drivers were Beyma. Very impressive array, thanks for sharing. It's fun just looking at it, even though hearing this monster would be the cat's pajamas.
This is what I do in my basement! On a smaller scale, with less tracks (made a couple videos). Can't imagine the flexibility to mix the sound. So much fun!
@@scottyshobbys The tracks all come from a band I know who provided them. How are the results from RipX? I haven’t tried any of this type of software in a while but for live music I found they didn’t cut it. I’d love to find a good one though.
@@ac4068 It's OK, soundboards come out better. But it only separates 4 stems - drums, bass, guitar/other, and vocals. So simpler 3 or 4 piece bands with minimal overdubs sound great. I do it more for the fun of essentially remixing some of my favorite tunes.
I saw and heard the Wall of Sound at Alexandra Palace in London, UK, in, I think 1974. No home-based sound system can come within 10,000 light years (from home) of what that thing sounded like in a hall that held only about 10,000 people. Probably 3/4 of whom were thoroughly well dosed, me included. Nearly blew the roof off. My head and the Palace. But this scale project is really interesting and, from what I have read, pretty well engineered. And with plans to scale it up to maybe 2/3 real size. There were actually two complete Walls in the original because it took so long to build up and take down, the road crew had to hop-frog to keep up with the tour schedules of the times. Recommendation: Read the autobios by Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, and Rock Scully. I've been seeing shows, in 2 continents and 3 countries (Like a Rolling Stone), for 50+ years, and the only other PA system that came even close to the Wall, IMO, was the Roger Waters 2017 tour of The Wall (irony there does not not escape me) which I saw with the apple of my eye at the LA Forum. This year's Covers Project has upped the ante from previous (again only IMO): some amazing musicianship and getting into longer sets. Keep the faith people, the bus will carry on and carry you...
I'm not watching 30 minutes of vertical video. Goodness. How do you watch any OTHER TV show or movie? This isn't a silly clip, bro. It's 30 minutes long. Turn you dang phone.
As a Front of House engineer and a Grateful Dead fan(early 70s/wall of sound era being some of my favorite) this is so interesting to me. Was curious what the signal chain was on your replica. the use of the m32 as a way to route signal to cross overs/amplifiers via Aux outs makes the most sense. I’d love to see what your processing on the console looks like in another video. Im sure you could make that rig sound great with all the compression, eq, gating, fx, ect capabilities on the inputs/outputs a modern digital mixer features. In fact you could probably make it sound much better than the original lol
So interestingly enough I don't have a background as a sound engineer so I'm learning as I go. Yes, having all the gating etc. at my fingertips is a huge help. I am able to set limits that the Dead didn't have that helps protect the system. The only parts of the system that are use crossovers are the keys, vocals and drums. They function as if they were each their own PA. The rest of the channels being one way speaker cabs are pretty untouched other than deciding where the sub x-overs are and the gates. I real experienced sound engineer would have a field day playing with the system and dialing it in. I'm working on getting schematics together to share on the entire system soon. Once it's set up and dialed into a specific venue I will dive deeper into how it's set up at the console.
So glad someone did this,I do have an original 12 inch woofer box, possibly owned by jerry or Phil , maybe Bobby from thier house.I know that’s crazy,but I showed it the the soundboard member. Mc
also, really dig the style of TLEO from 74 you're playing on lead...similar pops through the chorus. Not sure what else to call it, but I've heard that in Jerry's tone. Good video! Great setup!!!
It’s half scale based on speaker diameter. Technically all of the speakers are a bit larger than 1/2 the diameter of the original. There are still 500+ speakers, 50,000+ watts, and functionally it operates the same way as the original. You can see a lot more of the information on Facebook page is under “Le Petite Mur De Son.
