Greetings-
I have been reading this thread with interest- I am a big Dead fan, as well as JBL, and of course McIntosh.
My fav year of Dead music is 1974, when the WOS was in use. The music and the sound are unmatched.
Those of you who are Deadheads know that "Bear" Owsley Stanley passed away recently, and there is a fascinating interview with him online:
Remembering Owsley "Bear" Stanley | Grateful Dead
and more of the interview is avalable here:
20110330-Wed2000.m3u
Bear was really the vision behind the WOS even though he was not an engineer. He started with the Dead in the 60's, supplying them with the PA system they started with, which was his Macintosh home system at the time. In the interview he explains the whole story, as well as how he realized that the music scene was behind the times technologicly in those days and what he did to change that.
Joe