Besides the power and pressence from high efficiency horn speakers in these large venues, I always notice that the loudspeaker arrays are typically positioned HIGHER UP in relation to the seating area bellow! I feel that there's something to be said about this. One, there's a sense of grandure and overshadowing pressence from having speakers locted higher up, as opposed to being more "down low", like you find in many home systems.
Also, speakers are less localized in the rears/sides when you get em higher up.
I personally prefer having my theater speaker systems setup with the speakers more towards the ceiling boundary, rathern than the floor boundary, one, because I do find the sound to be more dramatic and authoritative when they're up higher, than down lower, for some reason. Two, I am conscious of the fact that speaker located down on the floor, or lower, can propegate sound towards the room boundaries near the ceiling, which focuses/reflects right back down to the seating position -causing acoustical reflection point issues, smearing imaging and dynamics a bit there. (of course, radical room acoustics treatments tames alot, but often impractical to go full out here) Obviously for musical soundstaging, there's some tradeoff there. But still, I think the rewards better outweigh the negatives.
Anyone else here ever consider these points of contention, for sound performance applications?
