Steal Your Ears: The Grateful Dead Drop High-End Home Speakers With McIntosh
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The Grateful Dead is gifting deadheads a slew of gear to celebrate its 60th birthday. One of the best releases? A pair of Grateful Dead speakers from the band’s longtime audio partner, McIntosh.
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Announced today, McIntosh’s new Grateful Dead speakers include new dead-ified versions of its RS150 and RS250 wireless loudspeaker systems. McIntosh’s amplifiers have long been used by the Dead, but these collaborative speakers are all-in-one home systems for casting music from your phone, tablet, or other music streaming device. Pick up the Grateful Dead x McIntosh speakers here. The RS150 is priced at $1,500 and the RS250 is $3,500.
The Grateful Dead x McIntosh RS250
$3,500
The Grateful Dead x McIntosh RS150
$1,500
This release is one in a series of Grateful Dead collabs from the high-end audio brand. “The Grateful Dead is always a cool thing for us,” says Charlie Randall, President of McIntosh Labs, “We wanted to do something in the product category that basically any Dead customer could aspire to, without having to go to a complete system.”
The new Grateful Dead x McIntosh speakers pay homage to the band’s innovative “Wall of Sound.” The revolutionary audio system — designed by Owsley “Bear” Stanley with McIntosh amplifiers — provided Dead fans with exceptionally clear, distortion-free sound at a string of shows in 1974.
“The Dead were the first to realize that there’s no substitution for power,” explains Randall. “If you tried to use the PA system at most venues, they just weren’t powerful enough. “Like when the Beatles came to the US for the first time, for example, that venue just didn’t have enough to overpower the crowd. And if you tried to overpower the crowd at that time, it was full of distortion,” he says. “What the Grateful Dead inspired was a very low distortion and also far-reaching sound, and the only way you can get that is out of the line array.”
The innovation with the Dead’s Wall of Sound came down to channels: “The really cool concept behind the Wall of Sound was there were 11 independent channels,” says Randall. “There was one for vocals, one for the lead guitar, for the guitar and piano, and four for bass and three for drums.” The result of this setup was arguably the best concert experience to date, although the Wall of Sound was retired after just eight months when the band temporarily disassembled.
These new McIntosh speakers honor the Dead’s longtime commitment to crisp, clear sound — only these don’t require 604 speakers and 89 amplifiers like the Wall of Sound did.
Pick up the McIntosh x Grateful Dead RS150 and RS250 speakers now at McIntoshLabs.com.
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