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quad sound at live venues

murph7489

murph7489

Nov 9, 2017
1,216
1,932
Hornell NY / myrtle beach SC
#1
I was thinking about back in the 80s I went to see Roger Waters of Pink Floyd in a hockey rink auditorium...He had speakers in all four corners (for lack of a better term) flown and the sound was quad as I could hear stuff going in circles ( okay, so I was on some psychedelics but I know what I heard).

then a couple years later I went and saw the grateful dead and they did the same thing in the philly spectrum..it was really cool and i wondered why it didn't really become an industry standard also I wondered about the physical logistics of how you make a certain sound come out of different speakers like that..was it some kind of rack gear that does it, or is it a manual aspect of turning knobs..

I also saw the GD in several football stadiums. They had stacks of speakers up on forklifts about 60-70 yards from the stage and I heard or read somewhere they were "delay stacks" which leads me to believe that those are set to be delayed or something so that the sound comes out at the same time as the front arrays when you are further back in the crowd..but they also had quad capabilities too...

Is this a nightmare for FOH engineers and thus not done much anymore or is it that most music doesn't use quad tech...would you need a special type of console to do this kind of thing?...
 
#2
murph7489 said:
I was thinking about back in the 80s I went to see Roger Waters of Pink Floyd in a hockey rink auditorium...He had speakers in all four corners (for lack of a better term) flown and the sound was quad as I could hear stuff going in circles ( okay, so I was on some psychedelics but I know what I heard).

then a couple years later I went and saw the grateful dead and they did the same thing in the philly spectrum..it was really cool and i wondered why it didn't really become an industry standard also I wondered about the physical logistics of how you make a certain sound come out of different speakers like that..was it some kind of rack gear that does it, or is it a manual aspect of turning knobs..

I also saw the GD in several football stadiums. They had stacks of speakers up on forklifts about 60-70 yards from the stage and I heard or read somewhere they were "delay stacks" which leads me to believe that those are set to be delayed or something so that the sound comes out at the same time as the front arrays when you are further back in the crowd..but they also had quad capabilities too...

Is this a nightmare for FOH engineers and thus not done much anymore or is it that most music doesn't use quad tech...would you need a special type of console to do this kind of thing?...
Click to expand...

Even true stereo is not really practical in a live setting. The issue is there is a very small space between the speakers where it is possible to hear a stereo image. Move out of the area and you hear primarily the speaker that you are closest to, so the stereo image collapses.

I actually do some light panning when I mix on a stereo PA. Although, it's not really possible to create a stereo image, I feel that it opens the mix up a bit.

Quad was sort of a gimmick that never really caught on. Most people don't listen to music in the middle of a band, so it's not actually a very natural way for most people to listen to music IMHO.

You may be aware the movie sound tracks and home theater use surround sound. AFAIK, the rear channels are mainly used for sound effects and ambiance.

Yes delay is used to align the speakers in large sound systems. I used to run systems with Left and Right mains and also center fills spaced across the lip of the stage. If I remember correctly, I typically delayed the center fills about 4mS so they would integrate better with the LR mains. I also frequently delayed all of the speakers back about 18mS so the sound coming from the PA time aligns approximately with the back line. Note sound travels 1.13' in 1 mS, so you usually just think of one 1mS as about 1' of displacement.
 
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#3
Today the 'second' stacks you see a certain number of rows back from the mains on and over the stage usually are extra fill for the farther reaches of the space, and are delayed (or time-aligned) to where it all comes out even . . . . hopefully.

I saw Emerson, Lake, and Palmer in the late 70's touring BRAIN SALAD SURGERY with a 'quad' PA. You have to remember that recordings and home gear were being sold in a 'quadrophonic' format (to my mind, not really much more than a stereo receiver with both the A and B speaker pairs operating at the same time from the corners of a room). I remember a JVC receiver that had a 4-way joystick to precisely level all 4 channels for your seating position.

Anyway, it was crazy as the aft stacks were facing the stage ! They must have had a quad board or some processor because at a few spots in several tunes, the sound would spin in a 360 around your head. Nuts !
 
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#5
Back in the ‘70’s quadraphonic sound was the next “big thing” in home audio gear. I remember a friend who had an inexpensive set up that included four speakers and a screen on the receiver with a joy stick purporting to balance the sound so you were directly in the center “sweet spot.”

I also remember seeing Rat Race Choir, a very popular cover band in the NY tri state area, often play their gigs in a quad set up with speaker columns in the four corners of the room they were playing. That, too, was in the mid to late ‘70’s.

Quadraphonic sound was all the rage back then.
 
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#6
I encountered it in 2019, loved it, and really want to get into surround-sound production myself.
But (and of course there's a "but") this was absolutely not on arena scale. This was in a house-sized venue, and there was space for maybe 100 people to squeeze into the soundfield.

Apart from the issues already mentioned, you need a musical arrangement that makes use of surround-sound, such that it makes sense to hear things moving around. At the least, the lyrics need to provide a reason for it.
Otherwise, it's like the 3D films from the '80s where things were flying out at you at every opportunity, because the producers had paid for the technology, and by golly they wanted their money's worth out of it. You want to make Fury Road, not Treasure of the Four Crowns.
So I have that challenge to overcome, as well :)
 
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#8
All good comment here - I actually did a quad show last year, before lockdown. In a Church. A son et Lumiere event, where there are loads of lights and amazing sound. In this case we had choirs that were live, choirs that were recorded and a narration with the churches history going back to the Vikings. We had historic events and the voice would say "The king arrived at the main doors of the church" and the lights would dim apart from those coming up on the door. Huge sound effects of staffs being banged on the door and the squeak of the door hinges opening would come from the rear stack - a sub woofer and a door knock is very impressive - the orchestra came from the other end, and the invisible procession moved to the front of the church, followed by lights moving on an invisible king! In other places we had voices coming from all five (as we had a central voice only channel near the altar. Pretty much the music itself was either mono, or different instruments. Midas M32 mixer with 5 outputs in use. Faders controlled by cubase on a MacBook, which had all the audio tracks.

I also went to a stadium show of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds and they used quad to amazing effects - with the eeee-aaaaah coming from the four corners. Amazing. Normally, our theatre shows are pretty much mono, with only keyboards with wide programs coming from the left and right.
 
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#9
Quadraphonic sound is (was?) mostly a gimmick. As with most gimmicks, it needs to be used sparingly - you'll drive people nuts if you do those swirling 3-D pans all night long. It's hard to justify the gear & work needed to pull it off for just a couple of minutes unless you're somebody like Pink Floyd or ELP in their heydays.

Speakers out front are typically fills for some zone that otherwise wouldn't get good coverage from the mains as well as "delay stacks" to reinforce at a greater distance from the stage without having to turn the mains up loud enough to liquefy the first 10 rows. Look up "Haas Effect".
 
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#11
murph7489 said:
I was thinking about back in the 80s I went to see Roger Waters of Pink Floyd in a hockey rink auditorium...He had speakers in all four corners (for lack of a better term) flown and the sound was quad as I could hear stuff going in circles ( okay, so I was on some psychedelics but I know what I heard).

then a couple years later I went and saw the grateful dead and they did the same thing in the philly spectrum..it was really cool and i wondered why it didn't really become an industry standard also I wondered about the physical logistics of how you make a certain sound come out of different speakers like that..was it some kind of rack gear that does it, or is it a manual aspect of turning knobs..

I also saw the GD in several football stadiums. They had stacks of speakers up on forklifts about 60-70 yards from the stage and I heard or read somewhere they were "delay stacks" which leads me to believe that those are set to be delayed or something so that the sound comes out at the same time as the front arrays when you are further back in the crowd..but they also had quad capabilities too...

Is this a nightmare for FOH engineers and thus not done much anymore or is it that most music doesn't use quad tech...would you need a special type of console to do this kind of thing?...
Click to expand...



A friend of mine, we play together frequently..............

plays with a quad amped setup though not as much lately. Each string had its own amp in our rehearsal space in the corners.

What was interesting was she developed her own "consecutive" fingering technique. She would make the sound go around us clockwise or counter clockwise. Sometimes it would bounce corner to corner. The Who's 5:15 sounds amazing this way.

All I know is eventually I took Bass lessons from her as I normally played guitar.

I asked her about the technique. My thinking was it wasn't enough just learn a bass line, depending on what she wanted to do she knew how to play the song with multiple lines with different inversions. Can imagine how that brain works.......beyond my skill level.

She didn't do it all the time, probably close to half the time. She didn't think it worked on all songs and when she wanted to play conventionally, she flipped a switch on her bass that "summed" the 4 pickups.

Wasn't something we used out much but on occasion it was used on an outdoor gig....our drummer had their own normal mix and the sound guy supplemented the sound with the summed signal.

She said it was something that is just plain fun to do. I'm still in awe of her doing this, she still does on occasion.
 
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#12
some things from the 70s really should be left in the 70s

428fa1a444557d416ea271733443f93b.jpg
 
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#13
Quad sound isn't really a thing anymore in concerts because most people at the show can't hear the effect. On large tours, the delay stacks that are set up are also largely out of the world of the FOH engineer and more in the world of the system engineer, which focuses on the amplifier/crossover/delay/speaker end of the system while the FOH engineer tends to focus more on getting the band to sound right. In a smaller setup the FOH engineer will play both roles and work on getting everything time-aligned as much as possible. I've done weird shows where the mains couldn't be set up in parallel and one side had to be delayed, and also I've delayed the mains to match what's coming off the backline. It really makes a difference, especially in the bass frequencies, depending on how deep the stage is.
 
#14
murph7489 said:
I was thinking about back in the 80s I went to see Roger Waters of Pink Floyd in a hockey rink auditorium...He had speakers in all four corners (for lack of a better term) flown and the sound was quad as I could hear stuff going in circles ( okay, so I was on some psychedelics but I know what I heard).

then a couple years later I went and saw the grateful dead and they did the same thing in the philly spectrum..it was really cool and i wondered why it didn't really become an industry standard also I wondered about the physical logistics of how you make a certain sound come out of different speakers like that..was it some kind of rack gear that does it, or is it a manual aspect of turning knobs..

I also saw the GD in several football stadiums. They had stacks of speakers up on forklifts about 60-70 yards from the stage and I heard or read somewhere they were "delay stacks" which leads me to believe that those are set to be delayed or something so that the sound comes out at the same time as the front arrays when you are further back in the crowd..but they also had quad capabilities too...

Is this a nightmare for FOH engineers and thus not done much anymore or is it that most music doesn't use quad tech...would you need a special type of console to do this kind of thing?...
Click to expand...


I took a class a few years ago at a convention with Buford Jones. Buford was the mix engineer for the Momentary Lapse of reason tour where they not only ran surround in arenas for the first time, but it was also the first tour to use subwoofers in the modern sense. It was a very interesting talk, and touched on a lot of things that would absolutely be considered taboo to most sound persons. His point was that at the time they knew that it wouldn’t be perfect for everyone in the audience but that they could give a totally new experience to a lot of them so it would be worth it. They used the auto pan function in two Yamaha SPX90s to make the female vocal on the Great Gig In The Sky fly around the arena

As far as delays go, that’s very common these days and it’s just a matter of knowing the math and how to apply it.
 
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#16
There are some extremely dated views on multi-channel music reproduction on here. Roger Waters latest Wall tour was still touring with rear channels for various sounds and effects. Apparently they don't really crash a real airplane into the wall every night. Obviously this only necessary above a certain production value and I suspect very few are actually panning individual instruments through rear channels. I remember Queensryche bringing rear channels to some smaller venues when they were touring the Mind Crime anniversary. As Wasnex said, its effectiveness was varied depending on your location in the venue. I disagree with those that say stereo sound is a waste on larger system. Again, like Wasnex said, it gives you the ability to open up some space in your mix. Too many people treat the pan knob like it's a three position switch, thinking it's got to be left, center or right, rather than placing small stereo images within that mix.

As far as multi-channel in the home goes, since they moved away from derivative limited frequency band width rear channels of Dolby Pro-Logic some time in the 90's to digital surround decoding, all channels have the ability to play as much information as the front channels. Most modern receiver's rear channels are given the same wattage as the front channels. Unfortunately, many people still use the same small piece crap surround speakers they used in the 80's and don't benefit from this decades old technology.
 
#17
With a software setup (no bass involved) I did a 5.1 surround live set at a warehouse in London, pre lockdown - that was using Ableton Live with 6 separate outputs, each going to a different speaker. It sounded good although I spent most of my time mixing and moving instruments between speakers rather than 'playing'. The other acts who played before and after me sounded good also.
 

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