Why does rock concert sound suck?

I’m a decades long pro musician (basically retired now) and small venue live sound mixer. Most people have absolutely no idea how modern sound systems work, including claims of "electronic manipulation." Huh? You mean EQ? The mains mixer has all the control, and it’s up to that person to make things sound good. Go to a concert at the Berkeley Music Hall and see things done right...I avoid large shows mostly because of dumb crowds and bad sound, but sometimes we get invited to something like a few years ago seeing Steely Dan (with Becker) with Elvis Costello opening at some gigantic outdoor thing in Boston...sounded great. Paul Simon and Sting at the Garden from a "box" sounded great...Jeff Beck some years ago at the House of Blues with perfectly balanced sound. So hey...good things CAN happen. Talked into going to the last day of the Newport Folk Festival a while back and the sound people must have been asleep...inexcusably bad sound at a legendary show...Gillian Welch played her first couple of songs, and note these guys use 3 mics or something, and she had to ask the sound people to turn on the guitar mic of the brilliant David Rawlings...man...I could go on and on and on...wait...I just did.

Blaming Class D phased array speakers is silly...a good sound mixer can make nearly anything work well. Also, now that in-ear monitors are nearly universally adopted, the on stage levels can be anything. A little history: Piles of Altec A7s or similar JBL boxes were standard (often with Mac amps) until maybe the mid 70s when Clair Bros. boxes (or similar) were introduced. They could have JBL 15s with other JBL horns and tweeters in a single box often stacked or flown)..often powered by piles of Phase Linear amps...anybody think those amps sounded better than modern Class D arrays? No they did not...the days of super loud crowd blasting sound had arrived.

I can accept people commenting on bad sound as hey, people pay for a good experience and they should have one whether it’s an audience that behaves themselves (note that classical concert attendees are very touchy about audience jerkwads, although jerkwads still show up), or clean sound. The goal for mixing should be to have an audience not notice it. I can’t accept pseudo expertise in a field I know something about so I will feel free to share my knowledge because after all...I’m a giver. Feel better teo? Good...I knew you would. Note that sound mixers don’t start with the drums and bass...in large venue mixing you simply get a signal from all the mics or direct line feeds in their respective channels and mix ’em. I mention "large venue" because in smaller shows (under 500) it’s not uncommon for musicians to crank an amp up too much and ruin the mix...about which there’s nothing the sound mixer can do other than anger a musician, and you don’t want to do that.