# Arena concert sound. What is normal?



## JChenault (Jan 13, 2019)

I went to my first live concert in an arena in over 30 years last night ( Elton John's Farewell Yellow Brick Road). Very nice use of video. Nice use of lighting to fill the space - but I could not hear the lyrics. Even when it was just Elton talking to the audience it was a bit difficult to understand what was being said. In the middle of a large number, I could tell they were singing but words were not just there.

Instead we got wonderfully loud drums, piano, etc.

My question - is this the norm for large arena concerts? or was this a choice by the producer? or perhaps an issue with the venue ( Moda center in Portland Oregon)

What is the 'standard' goal for concert mixing these days?


----------



## TimMc (Jan 14, 2019)

I don't know who is mixing Elton these days but the last time I worked/saw him I thought his vocal sounded more 'processed' than in the past. Perhaps that has morphed in to "sing along inside your head"?

I know that at this level of act someone is likely dictating certain artistic decisions to the mixerperson. That could be artist's significant other, artist manager, tour technical director, etc.

At a recent show we did the artist specifically instructed the mixerperson to "bury" his vocal under the guitar level and had a couple of specific FX he want used all the time (a doubler and a short delay) - all the time meaning when he talked between songs, too. There was a constant stream of punters complaining about the vocals and all we could do is say "sorry, we're not in charge of that." While I doubt Sir Elton voiced such an instruction over the PA at sound check, I also doubt that a mix light on star vocal is that way because of incompetence or indifference on the part of the mixerperson.

And John, you missed the entire "lead kick drum" revolution!

edit ps/mini rant - When I got started in audio we built systems from individual components - speakers, drivers, horns, custom woodwork - and picked power amps carefully and used the processing of the day, usually a 18dB/oct analog crossover. Before we ever heard it make a sound as a system there were many hours invested just in research and assembly. Then came "chequebook" systems, the kind where decisions about horns, drivers and cones were made for you, and maybe had proprietary processing. Along came Digital processing and "fixed" much of what couldn't be done in analog. Then the DSP was stuffed into the power amps, power amps went Class D, and their offspring are now built into the loudspeaker box. All the stuff you once had to be smart about is now part of the purchase price. Equipment is subjectively better than it ever has been, and is objectively lighter, louder and more easily handled than ever.

So why does live sound still suck?


----------



## MNicolai (Jan 14, 2019)

Could be a poor mix. Could be room acoustics. Possible it was an artistic decision. I've seen singers before ask for their mix to get buried when their voice was strained and they didn't want to risk blowing the show _and_ what's left of their vocal cords all at the once.

I'm not familiar with Moda Center, but in general for big arenas you're talking $1.5M+ in acoustic fuzz to make those rooms behave well. It's usually one of the highest priorities during design and then the first thing to get nixed in VE. If you're lucky like Amalie Arena here in Tampa, you get the RNC to foot the bill when they hold their convention there, but they went 16 years with hardly any fuzz at all and tons of complaints.

Honestly, when I really want to see a big act I go to an outdoor festival rather than an arena. Any show is going to be hit or miss on sound quality, but it seems like indoor arena gigs have a lower batting average.


TimMc said:


> Equipment is subjectively better than it ever has been, and is objectively lighter, louder and more easily handled than ever.
> 
> So why does live sound still suck?



There's also never been as many techniques and technologies for tuning line arrays, which IMO creates a disparity in system tech qualifications and in audience experience. L-acoustics' Array Morphing, Martin MLA, EAW's Anya, d&b's ArrayProcessing, and the good ol' fashioned Bob McCarthy method -- none of which are created equal.


----------



## Ancient Engineer (Jan 14, 2019)

I remember back to the JBOS days of live sound. Things have gotten better and worse. Line arrays are used in venues where it is not the best choice (usually because the promoter is all about dem sightlines). Line arrays, and to a lesser degree stacks, are frequently poorly, or quickly tuned. The array can make the sound very nodular (especially if tuned haphazardly). You might not have heard Elton, but somebody 11.34637' to your right could just as easily_ only_ been able to hear Elton. The worst for me is a line array that has been massaged to some degree of goodness... and gets ruined because the promoter wants another set of speakers hung "...pointing to the sides, ya know, so everyone can hear..." <collective face plant>.

IMHO, the real problem nowadays is the amount of energy being released into the air... For some unknown reason the kick drum must cause people to involuntarily close their eyes a mile from the venue. I measured (because I do these kinds of things) at a show I went to in Cleve-land recently: The kick drum was transient over 118dB (!) The band was generating about 106-110dB on average for the preponderance of the show (90mins). I was about 75' from the stage using C weighting (oh please don't bash me on this, I have science on my side...) and fast response.

<geezer voice> Back in the day we tried to limit the energy to about 100-102dB on average at the FOH position. The nuts could still get bloody noses next to the stacks and the rest of us got away with foam plugs...
We also had the luxury of time to fart around with the gear until it sounded good. There are new pressures now that limit the engineer's time with the rig.


So, to the OP, was your Elton experience normal? Yes and no. 


I doubt highly that the FOH team was incompetent. 
I suspect the venue/promoters/time constraints led to the sound being the best it could be given the external (not directly sound related) factors.


----------



## Ancient Engineer (Jan 14, 2019)

Because somebody asked... JBOS: Just a Bunch Of Speakers.

<sigh> And why C weighting.. : https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/decibel-d_59.html
Look at the calculation spreadsheet...

And some light reading from Canada: http://hearrightcanada.ca/how-loud-is-too-loud/


Education, check.


----------



## spenserh (Jan 14, 2019)

Ancient Engineer said:


> I suspect the venue/promoters/time constraints led to the sound being the best it could be given the external (not directly sound related) factors.



Time is always an issue, especially since nobody wants to sit through 30 minutes of pink noise if it can be avoided.

We had a large PA deployed in the theatre last week, there was another event the night before so the PA company loaded in early AM and had the rig fired up and half-ass tuned by 11:30 when the artist arrived. Walking around the room during soundcheck we found a few holes in the low end coverage but by that point it was too late to play around with array times.

We were happy with the deployment overall, ST would have liked another 30-45 minutes to get things perfect but sometimes production schedules get in the way.

On another note, the best PA deployment in the world can be ruined pretty quickly by a BE with an ego. Nothing warms my heart like a BE who adds delay to his FF matrix because he thinks he can hear better than FFT software.


----------



## Ancient Engineer (Jan 14, 2019)

I always wanted to make FFT software called "The Gospel Truth". 

I am always surprised how many "professionals" never take their own hearing into consideration. How long-term exposure has affected their ability to analyze.

...or the effects of chemistry... I used to hump cases for a road show where the FOH was well-baked by showtime. You could shave on those high frequencies... 

Testing and baseline data are the best way to know your own "EQ" I get tested twice a season. I am amazed how far I have moved from my baseline back in 1986.


----------



## MNicolai (Jan 14, 2019)

@Ancient Engineer That's the first lesson at Smaart school. Measuring systems is about identifying issues, deciding which issues to try and fix, and which issues you aren't going to fix, and which issues aren't real because your test method isn't accurately representing those results. Anyone can make a system _look_ good by cranking their EQ until it shows a flat line, by turning their averaging up, or setting their scale on the side of their measurement window so far zoomed out that you hardly see the peaks and valleys in the frequency response.

Problem is a lot of people learn system tuning by playing their favorite CD and hitting EQ knobs until it sounds like their car radio does (swear to god, this is the benchmark most people have for "good" sound), or they learn through trial-by-fire on gigs. The $1500 or whatever it is to take the class from Rational Acoustics, or to go get the equivalent from Meyer on SIM is well worth the investment.

I still know guys who wave an RTA around and that's their only tool for system tuning. There is a time and a place for RTA's in identifying any resonant or problem frequencies, but that shouldn't be the end-all/be-all of your tuning procedure.


----------



## Ancient Engineer (Jan 14, 2019)

Yes I agree about the RTA, some folks forget that is a fixed point in 3D space.

I always contend that a great mix comes from a little science, a little experience, a little moxie, and observation.

I worked closely with a FOH who would tune to what seemed to be a pretty peaky EQ. Then the venue filled and the human dampers made it like butter sliding off a hot biscuit.

He knew the venue well and knew that his end-of-night EQ was radically out from the initial setup.

I always compare my before and after board logs after the gig to try to determine "what happened" and what could I do next time to reduce the amount of time I spent tilting at windmills..


----------



## MNicolai (Jan 14, 2019)

I know a consultant who wanted to tune a system with the concert hall filled with people on their inaugural night -- all he needed was 30min of 1600 willing subjects patiently not talking while he blew pink noise at them and walked around. Shockingly -- the theater refused to let him do that.


----------



## TimMc (Jan 14, 2019)

Well thank you all for your inputs (pun intended). The question was more rhetorical than practical, actually.

I think there are two "craft" areas: System designer/tuning/optimization, and Mixing. The needs and responsibilities then get filtered by use: theater/musicals, pop music concerts & festivals - arenas and stadia, theaters and soft seaters, clubs; houses of worship of various scales; corporate presentations - from boardrooms on up.

Over all I find most of the audio at the level of artist/show/tour being discussed here to be acceptable to the performer/producer representatives. Over on the ProSoundWeb live audio forums we have fellow soundhumans occasionally complain about a mix or coverage (especially in arenas, and when you try to make music in a room built for basketball/hockey, you're taking your chances - hit it, Zuben!*). There's a whole lot of non-intuitive stuff going on when loudspeaker systems overlap and reducing the damage takes time and FFT analysis with aural confirmation of success (or not). Measurement is another item I'll cover below. Some of the guys/gals who get the most from the quiet time they have are theatrical touring. They have lots of things to take care of in 8 hours and they have to concentrate on the stuff that matters, first.

As we move down the food and money chains the level of "what's going on" awareness starts curving down until you hit the bar band mixed by the drunk guy who consistently finds the "Suck" knob and turns it mercilessly. It's more in the middle of the bell curve that the Suckage Constant® seems to move about for no apparent reason - an otherwise serviceable mix defeated by lousy coverage, clipping amps or distorting wireless, or a system deployed as best it could be, only to be fed a _Mixxe Crappe. _At this mid level, often one audiohuman wears several hats, too, and their expertise may not be equally distributed among said hats. They do well enough to keep the gig.

Measurement is one of my favorite things and up front I like to admit I made hundreds of invalid or inappropriate measurements when I started out. I took my first Smaart class in 2004 and I think it helped me make fewer bad measurements than I might have otherwise. What the training covers is using the FFT measurement tool, but the "why" of any particular measurement is left for Day 3, and the why is the most important part - if you don't have some idea of what you should be looking at/for, how will you know if you're seeing it and, most importantly, do your ears confirm what you see on screen?

I've said before that _Mixxes Crappe_ exist because the mixerperson doesn't know what things are supposed to sound like and, if they do, they lack the experience and ear training to manipulate the controls of the console to achive the desired output. Or the Suck button is stuck again.

* Extra points if you name the artist I paraphrased.


----------



## Ancient Engineer (Jan 15, 2019)

Frank Zappa... 

The "suck" button is one of the many reasons I luv HOG lighting consoles.

Oh, and don't even get me on the boil about yutes clipping amps...


----------



## StradivariusBone (Jan 15, 2019)

MNicolai said:


> all he needed was 30min of 1600 willing subjects patiently not talking while he blew pink noise at them and walked around.



He should have called it a modern art exhibit. He could've charged admission.


----------



## TimMc (Jan 15, 2019)

StradivariusBone said:


> He should have called it a modern art exhibit. He could've charged admission.



Such a rich palette! Pink and white noise. Hmmm is there a Prussian Blue Noise? Bob Ross?


----------



## RonaldBeal (Jan 15, 2019)

JChenault said:


> I went to my first live concert in an arena in over 30 years last night ( Elton John's Farewell Yellow Brick Road). Very nice use of video. Nice use of lighting to fill the space - but I could not hear the lyrics. Even when it was just Elton talking to the audience it was a bit difficult to understand what was being said. In the middle of a large number, I could tell they were singing but words were not just there.
> 
> Instead we got wonderfully loud drums, piano, etc.
> 
> ...



Having done several Elton tours, I know one thing that the FOH engineer has to fight is monitors....
Elton is deaf as a doornail. Audio would regularly put an SPL meter by Eltons mic, and would meter 120 DB. They turn it down, and he would complain that it wasn't loud enough.
About once a week or so, during the show, the monitor engineer would swoop across the stage with a new Clair double wedge in hand, remove one of the now burning wedges from the floor, put the new one in, continue across the stage to SR, and drop off the smoldering wedge by dimmers, and head back to his desk. More than once we had to pour water on those wedges to put out the literal fire.

There is only so much magic that the FOH guy can do when 120 db of band is also going into the vocal mic.

Hope this helps.
RB


----------



## Amiers (Jan 15, 2019)

RonaldBeal said:


> Having done several Elton tours, I know one thing that the FOH engineer has to fight is monitors....
> Elton is deaf as a doornail. Audio would regularly put an SPL meter by Eltons mic, and would meter 120 DB. They turn it down, and he would complain that it wasn't loud enough.
> About once a week or so, during the show, the monitor engineer would swoop across the stage with a new Clair double wedge in hand, remove one of the now burning wedges from the floor, put the new one in, continue across the stage to SR, and drop off the smoldering wedge by dimmers, and head back to his desk. More than once we had to pour water on those wedges to put out the literal fire.
> 
> ...



Is he to much for an in ear monitor?


----------



## RickR (Jan 15, 2019)

A thought to all from a non-sound guy.

Age related hearing loss affects vocal intelligibility first. I can easily hear the piccolo parts but TV dialog is getting mushy. Most super music fanantics seem to be young or at least set their preferences young. This must color the 'standard' sound choices.


----------



## Bob Musser (Jan 16, 2019)

I've been away from Arena shows for a long time as well, and saw Roger Waters at the Golden One Center in Sacramento in 2017. Had nosebleed seats on the side, and was pleasantly surprised how clear the mix was. G1C's predecessor, ARCO/Sleeptrain Arena, wan't called "Echo Arena" for nothing! A friend passed along a main floor audience recording of the performance, and that was remarkably clear as well. So, it can be done! Probably has something to do with Rog doing the same set every night of the tour...


----------



## RonaldBeal (Jan 16, 2019)

Amiers said:


> Is he to much for an in ear monitor?


He will never use in-ears... just doesn't like them


----------



## derekleffew (May 31, 2019)

Resurrecting this thread as I found this article pertinent: https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainm...6m7p8xCRYNXAEulSStW3XY-gszeZU5ZxkWDblfnMUcqYk .

> Dublin's Croke Park and Cardiff's Principality Stadium, which were the first two stops on the Spice Girls' tour, "are notoriously horrible for sound", says stage designer Willie Williams, who is best known for his work with U2.
> 
> "They're not ideal on many levels, never mind sonically."
> 
> The problems with playing music in sports stadiums are well known, agrees Scott Willsallen, an Emmy Award-winning sound designer who has worked on multiple Olympic and Commonwealth Games ceremonies.


----------



## TimMc (May 31, 2019)

The BBC article is spot on. For me the highlights are crowd noise, locale-based SPL limits and audience expectations.

The first 2 are hand-in-glove linked - people screaming and yelling and having full voice conversations whilst the performance is going on. The amount of noise local to an individual can easily be louder than the PA system 150 ft away (inverse square law); audiences have gotten much ruder in the last 20 years. I remember when audiences would whisper during a Bob Dylan concert, now it's a free for all. Local SPL limits mean this: the *show*, either in the form of the tour itself or the promoter is fined when SPL from the show exceeds stated limits. The police don't go after the audience because any ONE individual isn't capable of exceeding the limit but _en mass_ they are. So the promoter or band management has to pay the fine at settlement (deducted from proceeds) if the Mixerperson turns it up to get over the audience. My boss spent 25 years mixing an international act "very popular with the 'scooter crowd'" and at one stop in northern California the SPL limit was only a couple of dB greater than the band's stage SPL. The band leader told my boss "do the regular show, that's what our fans expect." The group played the show and received only a couple hundred dollars (instead of thousands) after the fines were deducted (some magic carpet ride). Perhaps in the UK the authorities will arrest the soundman or the band, but either way it represents a compromise to the audience.

Audience expectations - a source in the article mentions ear buds and that means the audience "knows how it's supposed to sound" but I think there is little that could be further from the truth. The versions of music distributed by Apple, Google, Amazon, and presumably the streaming services as well, have 'remastered' the audio with multiband compressors to "maker everything louder than everything else." There is very little dynamic range because the loose fitting ear buds are too leaky - the result is that lower level audio is masked by ambient noise around the listener. Ditto for tonal EQ; it's been bass-enhanced because of the poor seal between the earbud and the ear canal. The result is that audience members THINK they know how something is supposed to sound, but even if they have well fitted ear buds, what they are hearing bears only a passing resemblance to what the artists and producer heard when the tracks were originally mastered. The iTunes and Google Music customers, the Amazon subscribers, the Pandora/Spotify listeners complained loudly and since these tech giants have no musical soul they consider tonal modification and extreme "normalization" to being good customer service, while it's a disservice to the performance and production of the original... but the casual listeners frankly don't care about that so from a commercial perspective, the content providers are right.

Finally there's the issue with putting on shows in sporting venues. As pointed out in the article stadia and arenas are designer to transmit and reflect sound as part of the fan experience. The multiple reflections and RT60 times are pretty much the antithesis of what is needed for amplified music but nobody is building 50k-80k capacity venues for live music, so what to do... As Frank Zappa said when opening a Mothers of Invention show with the LA Philharmonic "When you make music in a room designed for hockey, you take your chances. Hit it, Zuben!"


----------



## techieman33 (May 31, 2019)

I don't think there is a normal. There are just way to many variables these days. We had a tough one recently in our theater. The local sound company mixed the opener and they sounded great, nice clean vocals. Then a popular country singer from 25 years ago came out and had his own FOH engineer. It sounded terrible, the overall mix was bad, the vocals were quiet and muddy. To the point that people were getting up and leaving. They were especially upset after being able to hear the opener, and then couldn't hear the headliner that they paid to see.


----------



## Amiers (May 31, 2019)

techieman33 said:


> I don't think there is a normal. There are just way to many variables these days. We had a tough one recently in our theater. The local sound company mixed the opener and they sounded great, nice clean vocals. Then a popular country singer from 25 years ago came out and had his own FOH engineer. It sounded terrible, the overall mix was bad, the vocals were quiet and muddy. To the point that people were getting up and leaving. They were especially upset after being able to hear the opener, and then couldn't hear the headliner that they paid to see.



I call that complacency. That’s not a variable thing. Especially if the opener used the same equipment as the headliner.


----------



## macsound (Jun 5, 2019)

I know your experience was with a large budget arena show, but I've also been to shows where the venue was far too large for the artist, but it was probably a percentage deal for rent so the artist didn't care that the balcony would go unsold. 
In this case the floor area was easily covered by the touring line array, but they didn't aim anything to the balcony as they didn't intend there to be that many attendees. Balcony tickets were not blocked out by the venue and people were sitting up there for a song or two of the opening act while even though the floor wasn't anywhere close to filled.
After a couple from upstairs walked down to the bar and realized it only sounded bad upstairs and the news spread, the entire balcony emptied out.


----------



## TimMc (Jun 5, 2019)

macsound said:


> I know your experience was with a large budget arena show, but I've also been to shows where the venue was far too large for the artist, but it was probably a percentage deal for rent so the artist didn't care that the balcony would go unsold.
> In this case the floor area was easily covered by the touring line array, but they didn't aim anything to the balcony as they didn't intend there to be that many attendees. Balcony tickets were not blocked out by the venue and people were sitting up there for a song or two of the opening act while even though the floor wasn't anywhere close to filled.
> After a couple from upstairs walked down to the bar and realized it only sounded bad upstairs and the news spread, the entire balcony emptied out.


I'm not sure who you're responding to, but I have some comments (imagine that!)....

One of the arenas I work in is fastidious about seat kills. The have blackout roll drops to hide the 3rd seating tier if they are not on sale. They cover (with black cloth) swaths of unsold seats on the 2nd tier and consolidate ticket buyers to the front of their sections to make it look better to the performers.

In that same venue the second singer heard on MTV (with an overly loud and major jerk husband/guitarist) played a make-good date from a tour stop that was postponed due to her illness. Because this was after the official tour run the promoter hired a regional production company (not the one I work for) for the show. The company clearly missed covering sold seats, both on the floor and most of upper part of the lower tier (upper tier not on sale). Fast forward to a festival a couple months later and that company was supplying for another stage and I went over to say hello. It was clear that for the festival, they were not properly covering the audience area. When I asked one of the company techs how they arrived at the trim height and line array box angles I was told "this is the way we always do it." Oh really? My only response was "thanks, I never knew how you all did it."

In both of those cases it's up to the headline performer's production manager and the mixerperson to make sure the PA vendor is doing the job correctly and to insist on correction prior to sound check (or doors, if it comes to that). There is no excuse for the mental laziness above but it's up to the artists crew to prevent it from compromising the audience experience.

Another arena I work in is fastidious about coverage, making sure we cover all the seats with quality audio, whether or not those seats have been pre-sold or will be occupied by walk up ticket buyers.

The other arena I work in doesn't give a horse's anus about anything but price as they are responsible for hiring production for the promoter if the tour is not carrying production. The only reason they care about coverage is if customers demand refunds (which happened when the arena cut the side hang PA from the budget one time).


----------



## blue439 (Jun 12, 2019)

Amiers said:


> Is he to much for an in ear monitor?


Apparently, he doesn't like them.


----------

