Let’s face it: The vast majority of big concerts you’ve ever seen probably had awesome lights, great sets, and huge video screens, but a lot of them probably didn’t sound very good.
It turns out, a big reason for this may be simply because they were in stereo.
Stereo audio, where the sound is divided into left and right channels, works great in headphones or at home, where you can position yourself right in the middle of the speakers, but when that sound is pushed into larger spaces using big PA speakers, fewer and fewer audience members actually hear the music as intended.
That’s because depending on where you’re sitting in a venue, you might be able to more prominently hear one side of the speaker setup, and therefore one channel of the mix, making everything lopsided in your ears.
“We’ve been fighting this for [30 years],” says Laurent Vaissié, CEO of L-Acoustics, company that’s at the forefront of large-venue sound design, and helped to design this Las Vegas residency with THX and Aerosmith. “It’s very frustrating to us as manufacturers to know that the experience for fans was limited.”
Read the full article: Dream on: The concert of the future is in Vegas, and Aerosmith leads the charge