It has been a long time since I went to a big concert and ended up at Red Rocks and seeing The War On Drugs and support this week. The sound was interesting. Lots of washy echo, clear yet layered guitars, keyboard synths and a bass so firm my mid chest vibrated (and I kept telling myself to buy a subwoofer). It sounded for all its loudness completely involving and visceral. The live impact was huge and that idiot audiophile thought that my system should capture it an obvious pipe dream, unless I want to build a room the size of a hall and put a PA system in place! I was with another audiophile and we both said how much we had missed such gigs. In the end the sound does suck but that’s not why you go. The sheer presence, volume and of being there made the band so much better than their recordings and that musical immediacy far outweighs pristine HiFi sound. Sure smaller venues or better rooms sound a lot more HiFi and artists with more complex and intimate sounds suit those venues well. But for a rock concert with a rock band, then that’s different. In the end recorded music and gigs are very different experiences and long may it remain so.
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?