Sound Engineer - Stanley Miller
Chicago Tribune
You might say Neil Diamond is going out in a blaze of sound - four channel sound .
His ten day sold out engagement at the Greek Theatre here will be one of his last appearances in concert for more than a year. The concert series is the first ever to be done in quadraphonic sound.
I has been recorded for an album. In essence, quadraphonic or four channel sound, now beginning to make some headway into the stereo, or two channel, recording field, is composed of four separate channels enveloping the listener and making him feel he is at a concert, or, if he is at a concert, making him feel he is on stage - where no doubt, a great many fans would like to be.
Behind all this is Stanley Miller of Stanal Sound. Miller has been Diamond's sound engineer for two and a half years. Last year he did Diamond's Greek Theatre concerts in stereo, also a first.
This year he has mounted banks of speakers on scaffolds along the sides of the outdoor theatre. He is using more than 60 speakers and 56 microphones, the latter necessitated by the addition of 35 string players to the usual 7 musicians behind Diamond. The strings are fed through the rear speakers while the other instruments are divided between the speakers alongside and over the stage. Diamond's voice is on all front speakers. The effect is wrap around sound. Miller, who had no formal training in sound engineering, started it as a hobby in college . "It's such an expensive hobby, that I had to make it pay"
Tom Catalano, Diamond's record producer, has recorded five of the performances for album release as "Hot August Night" ( a line from a Diamond opus) which will contain 24 songs. Though it was recorded in quad sound, Uni Records plan to release it initially in stereo. Catalano said it will not be a "greatest hits" type collection, but "the culmination , the high point of Neil's career to date. It's what he has reached now, before he stops his concert career for a while"
A live concert in quad sound is a larger than life performance that can only succeed in an outdoor setting, where the trees create none of the complications of reverberation found in concert halls. Miller, who spent three days setting up the more than five tons of sound equipment, has no more plans for quad concerts even though some of Diamond's remaining concert dates will be in outdoor theatres.