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A New Grateful Dead Book Tells the Definitive Story of the Band’s 100-Foot-Wide Speaker System
A new Grateful Dead book 'Loud and Clear' tells the definitive story of the rock band's famous 100-foot wide speaker system.
Anderson, a longtime music journalist and editor, draws on hundreds of interviews with band members, engineers, roadies, and crew to tell the story of how a group of idealistic audiophiles attempted, and briefly achieved, sonic perfection on a stadium scale. The Wall of Sound, first unveiled in 1974, was the brainchild of LSD chemist and audio visionary Owsley “Bear” Stanley, who worked alongside Dan Healy, Mark Raizene and engineers from Alembic, including Ron Wickersham and Rick Turner, to create a modular PA system unlike anything the music industry had seen before. The system was also notable for its technical innovations, including a feedback-prevention microphone setup that used matched condenser mics wired in reverse polarity, a technique that allowed the vocals to be heard cleanly without the squeal of onstage feedback.
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