Half Scale Wall of Sound Walkthrough

Take a 30 minute tour of the half scale Wall of Sound. I try and go into a little more detail of the system and how it functions.

[@ChrisVecchiolla]

Anthony, this walk thru is fascinating! I’ve watched this video several times just to absorb all the information. The amount of thought, creativity, ingenuity, problem solving, craftsmanship, labor, time, money, and most importantly..passion, is absolutely amazing. The original wall of sound was “one of a kind” and this is to. The Grateful Dead community owes you a VERY big “Thank You”! 🎉

[@ac4068]

Thanks for the kind words Chris! I’m desperately looking for a venue willing to host it long term so more people get the opportunity to hear and play through it!

[@davidcorner1174]

Looks amazing. I bet it sounds amazing too.

[@SaraStearns-t6f]

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!

[@Think_Up]

That's incredible! Imagine having to continually tear that down and set it back up like the crew used to do. Amazing.

[@jacksonlee602]

Super cool. Can’t wait to hear it someday.

[@TheHeartOfGoldBand]

where the microphone pad in front of the mic step on and on step off and it is off.

[@ac4068]

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.

[@FOHGeek]

It looks like a pipe organ made of speakers.

[@kbtube8125]

you should twist you phone 1/4 for a picture thats 66% bigger. there are two giant blank spots on each side of the picture.

[@ac4068]

Unfortunately, between Facebook, KZbin Instagram… There’s no one format that works best for all! That said, this one probably would’ve been better or horizontal in hindsight!

[@bladebaker6000]

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

[@MM-hq2bd]

Another engineer here I'll second this.

[@ac4068]

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.

[@SaraStearns-t6f]

Third - I'll second that, too! @@MM-hq2bd

[@JimboHotWings]

You're doing God's work my friend.

[@kingcrowing]

This is simply incredible, I really hope I get to see this in person... and of course the full scale WoS when that comes to fruition!

[@djstay]

This is amazing to see would love to see this in action

[@csj9619]

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.

[@A_Bit_of_Thought]

The Dead had the right idea. Your typical sound system just mixes everything together and plays it all through the same speaker(s). That results in a bland and homogenized sound like one would hear on the radio. Using separate speakers for each member gives the sound a certain liveliness and depth.

[@BluebirdBridge]

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!

[@skeeter197140]

Thank you! I look forward to the full size WoS!!

[@krayperzz5006]

NO Macintosh power ?

[@ivansbacon]

Awesome. Thank you. Love the Zohm's . Nice Ned reference. Pet Peeve - video should be shot in landscape orientation, you have a gimbal.

[@ac4068]

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!

[@rollerdragon]

thanks for this... the test videos sounded amazing... i want to play on this system!! gabriel g... manchester ct!!

[@sempercompellis]

an average concert at your local modern arena sounds infinately better than the wall of sound ever did- it was highly directional.

[@SwirlyWhirlyXYZ]

Build neo-Greek stone amphitheaters into vallies aligned with moderate climates in the new climate paradigm.

[@larshetfield3747]

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.

[@imark7777777]

Yeah the only thing that made the VVS bearable was that I'm running at 2X speed and there's a lot of vertical stuff.

[@marci9380]

tax the rich

[@A_Bit_of_Thought]

Why?