Summer Jam PA by D.B. Sound

Summer Jam PA

D.B. Sound · 1973

Evidence status · documented

Identity and core specifications are documented; some historical fields remain unavailable.

For the Summer Jam at Watkins Glen on 28 July 1973 (the Allman Brothers Band, the Grateful Dead and The Band), FM Productions built a main stage system plus speaker towers spaced out into the crowd, the furthest about 600 feet away. Eventide supplied three of its new DDL 1745 digital delay lines to time-align the distant towers, with up to 525 milliseconds of delay.

Why it mattered

01
It forced engineers to solve time alignment over hundreds of feet at a festival of enormous size.
02
It was an early field use of digital delay in concert sound, making delay towers a standard tool.

Engineering record

Delay towers: Additional towers roughly every 200 feet, out to about 600 feet[1]
Digital delay: Three Eventide DDL 1745 units; about 350 ms at 400 feet and 525 ms at 600 feet[1]

Original pricing

No reliable period price located

2026 equivalent

Not calculated without a reliable original price.

Public price evidence was not sufficient to publish a defensible original figure.

Use in the field

Summer Jam at Watkins Glen, 28 July 1973[1]

Manuals & original documents

No authoritative manual or original document has been located for this profile.

Sources

1Summer Jam at Watkins Glen, Part TwoPS Audio / Copper · archive · 2021-10-08

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