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Friday, March 20, 2026
The Quad Console: Reconstructing The Desk For Pink Floyd's "Live at Pompeii" Performance In 1971
ProSoundWeb: It’s October 1971, and the Pink Floyd sound crew is setting up for the filming of “Live at Pompeii” in an ancient Roman amphitheater, having driven the equipment by road for three days from the UK. Pride of place is a new Allen & Heath 28-into-6 “Quad” mixer, the brainchild of maverick Floyd road manager Peter Watts.
2 comments:
Katherine P
said...
As someone who has mainly only designed and mixed for plays and musicals, it has always interested me how it would be different for a live concert performance, especially one that has very modern, electric instruments, unlike my high school orchestra pits that I am used to. It is very interesting to see how the proper types of organization that we talk about in class really have such applicable vitality to all design fields. I guess the craziest thing for me is the speakers. The article talks about the different options for speaker set ups and the sheer amount of such large speakers is absolutely insane. It leads one to wonder if all of the giant line arrays that they have at concerts are really necessary. At the end of the day, the designer has a lot of decision-making ability, but they still have to carry out and contribute to the overall vision of a production. For example, how Floyd did not opt to use mons onstage because they felt they could hear themselves well enough through the PAs.
I think it’s super cool that equipment and technology can have just as much history and importance to them as the music or the person creating with them. It highlights how much people care about the things that were used to create music and want to recreate a certain sound with as much accuracy as possible. I once went to the rock and roll hall of fame in Ohio, and what really stood out to me what that in really big exhibits they also had a lot of old mixing surfaces, instruments, and sound equipment. I appreciate this article for diving into how they were able to reconstruct the console but also what it was like in audio back when the console was a brand to piece of technology for the industry. I would love to learn more about old mixing consoles and audio tech that have their own history with them.
2 comments:
As someone who has mainly only designed and mixed for plays and musicals, it has always interested me how it would be different for a live concert performance, especially one that has very modern, electric instruments, unlike my high school orchestra pits that I am used to. It is very interesting to see how the proper types of organization that we talk about in class really have such applicable vitality to all design fields. I guess the craziest thing for me is the speakers. The article talks about the different options for speaker set ups and the sheer amount of such large speakers is absolutely insane. It leads one to wonder if all of the giant line arrays that they have at concerts are really necessary. At the end of the day, the designer has a lot of decision-making ability, but they still have to carry out and contribute to the overall vision of a production. For example, how Floyd did not opt to use mons onstage because they felt they could hear themselves well enough through the PAs.
I think it’s super cool that equipment and technology can have just as much history and importance to them as the music or the person creating with them. It highlights how much people care about the things that were used to create music and want to recreate a certain sound with as much accuracy as possible. I once went to the rock and roll hall of fame in Ohio, and what really stood out to me what that in really big exhibits they also had a lot of old mixing surfaces, instruments, and sound equipment. I appreciate this article for diving into how they were able to reconstruct the console but also what it was like in audio back when the console was a brand to piece of technology for the industry. I would love to learn more about old mixing consoles and audio tech that have their own history with them.
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