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Why does rock concert sound suck?

I have been to two rock concert in the past year : Brit Floyd in Bridgeport CT and Eric Clapton at Madison Square Garden, NYC (last Monday)

For Brit Floyd I was about 40 feet form the stage and treble end was an ear-splitting distorted sound - the soprano solo on Dark Side of the Moon sounded like a chain saw running at 5x speed.

For Eric Clapton I was sitting at floor level about 20 rows behind the mixing desk - i.e., the opposite end from the stage. In this case the high top end was not so distorted, but the voices were still very harsh - seemingly a massive response peak at ~1500hz. Imagine AM radio with the treble turned up 20db.

I knew a lot of the words form the songs ahead of time of course, and just about recognized them, but otherwise the lyrics were unintelligible. The only exceptions were when he sang a quieter song - e.g., “Tears in Heaven” . Clapton moved back from the mic rather than place his mouth right next to it. Then the sound was quite listenable .

Of course managing the acoustics in such a big venue is no doubt a challenge — but does it have to be this bad?

oliver_reid

Showing 2 responses by tostadosunidos

tostadosunidos's avatar
tostadosunidos
1,197 posts
 

Sound men start with the drums, getting a great-but-too-loud sound from the kit.  Then they do the same with the bass.  After that there's nowhere for the higher pitched instruments and vocals to exist.  And it all sounds like crap.

My wife and I were once at a Los Lobos outdoors show and the sound was so bad we decided to go home.  As we were walking away we hit a point where the sound was decent enough so we sat there and stayed for the rest of the concert.  So it can be a relative thing.

The most painfully loud band I ever heard was the 13th Floor Elevators at the Safari Club in Baytown, Texas ca. 1968.  This was long before big PA systems so I'm not sure how they managed to do it.  Small room, I guess.

tostadosunidos's avatar
tostadosunidos
1,197 posts
 

wolf-garcia, I accept that you know more about this area than I. But when I was playing that’s what I experienced--standing around while the drums and bass were done first, and pushed to a high volume.  I won't say we never had good sound in the end.

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