So my GF and I went and saw Shinedown, Breaking Benjamin and Sevendust last night at the Portland ME arena. It's your basic hockey rink type arena and boy did the acoustics suck... Your first bands usually don't sound as good, I'm assuming they don't have the sound system as the headliners? You could barely hear the lyrics to Sevendust, just ear pounding music.

Breaking Benjamin was much better, but I'm not sure if it's the way Ben holds the mic all wrapped up by his hand or something else. You could hear some songs great, other songs not so much. Shinedown was better, but when the sound is bouncing off a metal roof I guess you should expect some issues.

We saw Shinedown at an old Theater type building in Boston back in the spring and it was a lot smaller, maybe 1000 people and it sounded so much better.

When we saw Def Leppard, Styx at an "out side" platform which has a metal roof, but no walls the sound was still better than this Portland arena.

This is part of the reason why I don't like going to concerts, I prefer the sound of the disks and rarely do concerts sound as good.

The venue where I saw Rush a couple of years ago had really bad acoustics.

IMO the venue makes a LOT of difference; but there's also many other factors; like crappy amps\audio equip.; a crappy sound engineer\mixer, speaker position, etc.

If your favorite band(s) ever play here, it's a must see!!

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/...lorado-19691231

Makes sense.

Some of the best concerts I've seen and heard were at outdoor amphitheaters.

Indoor coliseum concerts vary for me. The classic stadium rockers like Styx, REO, and Journey that I saw a few years ago sounded awesome. Indoor stadiums were their bread and butter so they know how to make the most of them I think. I saw AC/DC in our coliseum in '90 and although it did sound great...I was nearly deaf when I left. It was just WAY too loud (and I wasn't too old...I was 23...lol). I saw Zac Brown Band a couple years ago and they sounded pretty good, but there were times when it wasn't quite right with the acoustics either.

I saw Fuel at a local big nightclub a few years ago because I really like them. That was another place where it was just too loud. Plus they seemed to play a bit faster so it didn't sound quite right either. I think they were geared up for a stadium...lol.

Our city puts on a festival every year and in an outdoor tent I've seen some great concerts that sounded awesome. Blue Oyster Cult, 38 Special, and Peter Frampton come to mind as very memorable.

The best acoustics that I've ever heard were outdoors at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin. The Who, btw...

The dead toured 72-74 with the legendary Wall of Sound,

http://www.preservationsound.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/WallOfSound_Sketch.jpg

which totally flattened out just about any venue. I
saw them twice at the Pacific Colosseum with that
setup, and the sound was just about like wearing
headphones, even out in the concourse at the
concession stands. I've never seen nor heard
anything like it since; of course they also
legendarily fed it masses of money, and barely
broke even on those tours. There were actually
two full sets, in several semis, so one could be
delivered and set up while the other was being used.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=grateful+...AQIHg&dpr=1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wall_of_Sound_%28Grateful_Dead%29

Some places are just not designed for acoustics. I've never checked to see if there is a listing somewhere of venues rated according to consistently good acoustics, but I haven't been to a rock concert for a long time and probably won't any time soon.

The Lakewood Ampitheatre in Atlanta (currently called Aaron's Ampitheatre in Lakewood) has some really great acoustics. It's open air and the sound is as great from the grassy area in the back as it is in the front row. I saw Yes there for the Union tour from the very back, then saw them again from the second row center for the Talk tour - great sound both times.

Here in Columbus we have a smaller venue called the RiverCenter Bill Heard Theater. It seats 2,580 but is world class. I have seen several orchestral performances there as well as ballets. The acoustics are great.

We also have the Columbus Civic Center which seats 10,000 but the acoustics are not very impressive, but then it is designed more for sporting events than anything else. Also, with places like this, a lot depends on attendance - full attendance (the presence of so many bodies) swallows up acoustic energy that would other wise cause unwanted reverb in a half-filled situation.

Yes, the current main stadium venue in Vancouver,
"BC Place", is a great big stadium with a plastic
dome top which has been recently rebuilt in a different
shape, and I haven't been there since the refit, but
I don't imagine it will have made much difference -
listening to a performance in there was like sitting
inside a balloon. The resonance was just insane. I
only went once, to see the Who, and it was a total
waste of time. You could make any sound you wanted
in there, and if it was loud enough to be heard at
the other side of the building, it would sound like
*boing*.

Still, I bet a modern version of the Wall of Sound
could handle it, though no one could afford to mount
one. Basically a sufficient quantity of point sources
in a plane to synthesize a flat vertical wavefront
across the width of the hall, coupled with a graph to
notch out the resonance. One thing about the giant
wavefront, it doesn't have to be loud, so there isn't
so much rebound, yet it can still be heard clearly
everywhere.