thread: today's listen is 4/21/84, last of 3 nights in Philly. Yesterday I recc'd the SBD bc the Civic Center was an acoustic mess. But where there's a will, tapers will find a way. Because this night, Rob Eaton brought his Neumann U87 large diaphragm mics & set up in row 17 1/

"Ok," you might say, "but FOB tapes of the grateful dead are a dime a dozen, particularly in the wild and woolly days before the taping section." But these U87 mics were BIG CHONKIN mics that belong in a studio, not at a Dead show. That's in on the left next to to AKG414 2/

Not only that, they split the mics 30 ft, about 10 chairs away from each other. And they had to use mic stands because they were damn heavy. Not only that, they had digital recording equipment. Last week I mentioned PCM/Beta digital audio and how the band was an early adopter 3/

Jeff Silberman had a Technics PCM encoder. It was a gray market thing that recorded in 14 bit word lengths (which ultimately lost out to the 16-bit standard for CD) and recorded it to VHS tape. Anyway by getting up close and splitting the mics, they were able to 4/

... beat the room's bad acoustics by capturing the back line amplifiers, creating an amazingly clear soundstage. There's also SBD, but this is the one you want for today.

Grateful Dead Live at Philadelphia Civic Center on 1984-04-21 https://relisten.net/grateful-dead/1984/04/21?source=94510