The Quadraphonic Experiment: Pink Floyd’s ‘Games for May’ Sound System

The “Games for May” concert on May 12, 1967, at London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall was Pink Floyd’s first big attempt to turn a venue into a sound laboratory. They installed a custom-built quadraphonic PA system—the Azimuth Co-ordinator, a joystick-controlled panning device—that allowed the band to route instruments and effects through four separate speaker clusters placed around the hall. This was before consumer quad was even a thing; Floyd essentially invented their own surround sound on the fly.

Only a few songs from the set were mixed to take full advantage of the four-channel setup. “Interstellar Overdrive” got the full treatment, with guitar and organ swirling across the room, and “Pow R. Toc H.” used the panning to make its eerie whistles and sound effects dart unpredictably. The group also debuted “Arnold Layne” and “See Emily Play” in quad, though those mixes were more conservative—mostly ambient backing and echo moving around while the vocals stayed centered. The whole thing was a commercial flop (too expensive and impractical to tour), but it laid the groundwork for the immersive sound Floyd chase on later albums like Dark Side of the Moon.