The installation
Putting a soundfield into a disco rather than leaving it in a laboratory.
In October 1990 Billboard reported that AGM Digital Arts was preparing an installation at First Leisure’s new Swindon complex which it described as being thought to be the world’s first Ambisonic disco. The report identified an eight-way Stage Accompany Performer system and AGM’s CSP “A” Ambisonics processor. A local Swindon record dates Cairo’s opening to 28 November 1990.
The important point is not the superlative — the archive retains it as a contemporary claim rather than converting it into a modern fact. What is clear is that AGM’s Ambisonic processing was being used in a real high-level entertainment venue, where sound had to work for a moving audience rather than a single listening position.
Processing and system control
Studio Sound subsequently described Cairo’s as using AGM Enhanced Ambisonic Surround Sound processors together with Stage Accompany’s SAnet, a PC-based serial network used to control Stage Accompany processors, amplifiers and parametric equalisation.
Terminology matters. SAnet at Cairo’s was Stage Accompany technology. It was not AGMnet. AGM’s own remote-control and diagnostic network is separately documented from 1992 and is covered in the next archive entry.