PINK FLOYD – QUADROPHONIC TO HOLOGRAPHICS TO AMBISONICS

Pink Floyd have long experimented with multichannel sound both in recording and live — the magnificent ‘Azimuth Coordinator’ shown below (at London’s V&A Museum where the current exhibition is running) was the first panning control for a live quadraphonic sound system, introduced by the Floyd at a Festival Hall gig in 1969 promoted as “The Massed Gadgets of Auximenies” (cheapest seats 7’6” — see poster). A decade later Roger Waters of Pink Floyd employed Hugo Zuccarelli for a short stint on TheWall to try out his ‘Holophonics’ recording system, and then the band somehow persuaded the Argentine-born inventor to work for free on TheFinalCut, which Zuccarelli later described as “the worst decision of my life”.

“Pink Floyd decided not to record any music with it,” he later told Argentinian publication Diario

Publicable. “I have wonderful masters recorded with Holophonic sound with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Michael Kamen playing The

Final Cut’s ’s songs, but they decided not to use it.” Prince Charles had allowed the rival Ambisonics system to be used for recording his wedding to Diana in 1981, thereby boosting the fortunes of this British-licensed technology, and when TheFinal

Cut’s ’s special e¡ects were received with relative apathy by Floyd fans and critics alike, Zuccarelli was thoroughly disillusioned and considered his e¡orts to have been “sabotaged by EMI”.