When the throngs begin to pour into Grant Park later this month for the annual Chicago Jazz Festival, the savviest listeners will be easy to spot: They`ll be the ones wearing headphones.
Not that they won’t want to hear the glorious music on stage. They simply have learned – after years of enduring excessive volume, over-reverberation, piercing feedback and other assaults on the ear – that the only way to really hear what`s happening on stage is to tune in the live broadcast on WBEZ-FM 91.5.
That fans must resort to listening to live music via radio says a great deal about the sorry state of concert amplification in America today.
Whether you attend the free music fests in Grant Park or high-priced events at echo chambers such as the Aragon, United Center or New World Music Theatre, chances are you’ve wondered why you bothered showing up in the first place. With the distorted, over-amplified sound often provided in large and/or outdoor venues, it’s a wonder anyone strays from the home stereo or car radio anymore.
“It`s gotten worse every year for the past 20 years,” says Jim Brown, president of Audio Systems Group Inc., which handles sound engineering for such superbly amplified venues as spacious Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and intimate Jazz Showcase club in Chicago.
“It’s gotten to the point where, unless I know the venue has good sound, I don’t even go. Why bother?”
Indeed, the attitude at many venues often seems to be, “Why should we pay one penny to improve acoustics if we’re going to sell all the tickets anyway?” says Don Pearson, president of San Francisco-based Ultra Sound Inc., an audio consulting firm. It was Pearson and his staff who provided the widely admired sound for the Grateful Dead for nearly two decades.
In Chicago, venues such as the Skyline Stage on Navy Pier, Arie Crown Theatre in McCormick Place and the House of Blues in River North have been excoriated by critics, ticketholders and even performers.
During the second night of Nirvana’s stint at the Aragon in 1993, Kurt Cobain told the crowd: “Raise your hands if you’ve been to the Aragon before. Doesn’t this place suck? You can’t hear a damn thing. You’re definitely getting completely ripped off. Next time you’re here, bring a pillow and put it over your ears; it’ll sound the same.’ “
And when the United Center, home of the Chicago Bulls and Chicago Blackhawks, presented Billy Joel in the stadium’s first concert (in 1994), the singer was less than pleased with what he heard: “So how’s the sound now? Is it getting a little better?’ “
The badly blurred, echoing response from the crowd suggested it was not.
In rock and jazz, in indoor venues and outdoor arenas, the same acoustical problems seem to plague many (if not most) of Chicago’s major concert spaces.
No easy answers
The question is why? Why do musicians put up with it, why can’t venues improve it, why can’t technicians refine it, why do audiences pay for it?
The answers, of course, are numerous and complex.
For starters, the great older rooms — such as Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre, which is world famous for the clarity of its acoustics — predate the miking and amplification that emerged in the late 1920s and ’30s. So even if Frank Lloyd Wright may have been correct in calling the building “the best listening room in America,” his comment pertained to unamplified symphonic and operatic music.
Certainly Auditorium Theatre architects Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan could not have anticipated the torrents of sound that bands such as Pink Floyd, Jefferson Airplane and Styx would send careering through the room’s sound system. That most rock, pop, jazz and classical performers still rank the Auditorium among the country’s better concert spaces says a great deal about the room’s congenial dimensions (with a comparatively low ceiling) and materials (stone and wood).
The costly, top-notch design talent and materials that made the Auditorium a landmark, however, were not lavished on concert spaces built in more modern times.
Thus listeners heard music in inferior places such as Arie Crown Theatre, where everything from stage productions of George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” to concert performances by Ruth Brown and Koko Taylor sounded like so much mush. With its gargantuan dimensions, Arie Crown was bound to sound bad: The music emanating from the stage simply was lost in space (Arie Crown is currently undergoing a renovation and is scheduled to reopen in November).
But Arie Crown, opened in a rebuilt McCormick Place in 1971, was just a sign of reverberant things to come. As the pop and rock record industry expanded, its biggest acts required arenas of a size more commonly accorded professional sports teams.
“Most of the (arena) venues around the country were never designed with the thought that music would be performed there,” says Pearson.
In the case of the United Center, “The goal was two-fold,” says Sam Berkow, whose New York-based SIA Acoustics has been working on the United Center’s troubled acoustics.
“First of all, sports facilities want incredible speech intelligibility,” meaning sports stadium owners want fans to be able to understand spoken announcements.
“Second, they want this incredibly powerful (sonic) impact — they want to be rocked. In other words, they want crowd noise.
“Those two goals are diametrically opposed.”
In other words, it’s extremely difficult to design a sound system that amplifies the roar of the crowd and clarifies the sound of words and music. When that room is several stories high and seats approximately 22,000 people, as the United Center does, the challenge may be insurmountable.
“In a place like the United Center, you’re fighting a huge volume of space,” says Cory Stone, audio engineer for Grant Park.
“And if, on top of that, you have hard surfaces — like the glass skyboxes that reflect the sound back down to the listeners — you’re going to hear as much `reflected sound’ as `direct sound’ (from the speakers), and that’s hard for anybody to discern.”
So listeners attending a concert in a room the size of the United Center cannot expect very much.
“Is it ever going to sound like a concert hall? Of course not,” says Terry Savarise, vice-president of the United Center.
Then why bother presenting musical acts in a hall the size of the United Center, aside from the profit to be made?
“I’ve seen talent perform in front of 3,000 people and in front of 22,000 people, and there’s nothing like, say, seeing the Rolling Stones at Soldier Field,” says Savarise.
“It may not be the best sound, and you could sit at home and listen to it on your CD player. But the crowd is part of that experience.”
Each listener, of course, will decide for himself how much good sound he’s willing to sacrifice for the “experience,” but the fact remains that the sub-standard sound of the United Center is rapidly becoming the norm.
Problem? What problem?
Consider the New World Music Theatre, built in 1990 as a state-of-the-art concert pavilion with lawn seating. Since the first notes were sounded there, the World has gained a national reputation for its muddy sound.
When the Grateful Dead played there in 1990, they vowed, publicly, never to return.
“The World is the most awful-sounding place I’ve ever heard in my life — it’s beyond my wildest imagination,” former Dead sound man Dan Healy told the Tribune in 1991. “There’s only one other place that’s more horrifying, and that’s the Hubert Humphrey Dome in Minneapolis.
“A couple of really big mistakes were made when they built the World — that big cavity behind the proscenium and those high-rent skyboxes coming down in front of the audience with their flat surfaces bouncing the sound back toward the stage.
“For a place supposed to be designed for music, it sure violates music.”
The World was remodeled and rechristened the New World in 1995, and though its sight lines have improved, its sound has not.
Yet the New World is typical of the kinds of venues being built today, where developers are “more intent on squeezing in skyboxes and getting the name plaques in concrete than in working on sound,” says Pearson.
“Why is it more important for sponsors to have a say than in being acoustically correct?” asks Pearson, who surely knows the answer: money.
“First of all, when you get into larger spaces that were designed for sports, the other uses — such as concerts — are very secondary and tend to get short shrift in the design process,” says Brown.
“There are many factors that come into play to get a project in on budget, and because everything tends to come in over budget, acoustics fall by the wayside.
“It’s common for a building project to have very specific acoustic recommendations: certain shaping on the walls and certain materials on the ceiling (to avoid reflection of sound). And the architect and the cost accountant looks at these items and say, `Gee, that’s another hundred grand. We can’t do that.’ “
There are other reasons that even the best venues can sound bad on some nights.
“So many artists are used to playing small rooms, that when they get into a larger venue, they’re overwhelmed by the size,” says Michael Donohue, head sound engineer at Ravinia, which enjoys a deserved reputation for first-rate sound.
“These artists think they have to play louder to hear each other, and once you lose control of stage volume, you’ve pretty much lost control of the house.”
But not every venue is willing to concede that there’s even a problem.
When Jesus Alemany and his Cubanismo jazz band played the newly renovated Apollo 2000 theater, on West Cermak Road, last May, the trumpeter and his ensemble sounded as if they were playing under water. The extremely high ceiling of this gutted movie palace surely didn’t help.
But Javier Galindo, who has been presenting concerts there, says that there was not a problem.
“I myself believe the sound is above average, and the people who have been here also seem to believe that,” says Galinda.
And the folks who run the New World Music Theatre doubt that there’s anything wrong with the venue.
“The World Music Theatre (presents) mostly the A-talent lineup of touring acts, and they’re all carrying their own sound and lights, which we have no control over,” says Scott Gelman, vice-president at Jam Productions, which operates the World.
“I don’t think (the World’s design) has anything to do with it. Different engineers have different ways of handling their acts.”
Certainly it’s true that even the best sound system in the finest venue can perform no better than the individual who is running the mixing board.
“It’s that old story,” says singer Dennis DeYoung, who has played virtually every venue under the sun with his rock band Styx.
“If I pick up a Stradivarius violin, it’s not going to sound too good. If you’ve got someone who knows how to play it, that’s another story.”
“It was not long ago when the average sound person didn’t know what a decibel was,” says Berkow. “Now they (often) come in asking about `phasing’ and `equalizers,’ although there’s still a long way to go.”
Even the most talented technician, however, cannot accomplish miracles. So even though Grant Park sounds passable during symphony concerts (when the audience is relatively small and quiet), it proves unbearable during the massive music festivals (when the crowds are huge and rowdy).
“The problem is the ambient noise level,” says Stone, Grant Park’s audio engineer. “Those speakers do best when there is not a whole let else going on around there, when there’s not a lot of traffic and it’s a nice summer evening.
“When you have a bountiful crowd with people celebrating,” as in the case of the Jazz Festival, “it’s hard for sound to get out there.” The speakers, in other words, can’t compete with the roar of the crowd and the din of traffic.”
Sound solutions
So is there no hope? Are we destined to hear nothing but inferior sound at all but the most exclusive concert halls and intimate clubs?
Perhaps not. Earlier this year, the Skyline Stage on Navy Pier spent approximately $175,000 to change its widely criticized sound system. By putting in directional speakers (which aim sound at specific segments of the audience, rather than cover an entire auditorium with a blanket of sound) and a digitally controlled mixing board (which enables visiting bands to work from particular settings already established for rock, jazz and classical music), the Skyline Stage surely has improved its sound.
The utterly indecipherable wash of overamplified sound has become somewhat more discernible, with particular instrumental voices rendered more clear to the ear.
Yet recent concerts by the Mighty Blue Kings (in which song lyrics often were rendered indistinct) and the Rising Stars Youth Steel Orchestra (which was badly overamplified) show that the place is not yet up to par.
Similarly, the United Center spent approximately $500,000 adding sound-absorbing baffles to its sky-high ceiling and making other changes (such as opening skybox windows during concerts).
“Whenever you open a new building, it takes time to learn the place, to find out what works, what doesn’t,” says United Center VP Savarise.
“Billy Joel was not a good start, but since that show the building has come an awful long way.”
So the struggle continues, with listeners in Chicago — and in cities across America — subjected to sound that is often very bad and not likely to get better.
Alas, there doesn’t seem to be a lot listeners can do.
“What’s the choice? Not see the show?” asks Pearson. “Perhaps if the fans would protest more vocally to the local promoters, that might help. They’ve got to learn to build the venues with the fans in mind, not just the investors.
“They’ve got to think about not just how many skyboxes they can get in.”
Unless you’re lucky enough to tune in a radio simulcast of a concert, as in the case of the upcoming Chicago Jazz Festival, you may have to be content with seeing — rather than hearing — a favorite artist.
BAD VIBRATIONS
Aragon
May have sounded great during the Big Band era but flunks the test in modern times.
Grant Park
Not bad for symphony concerts, but unbearable during mass-appeal events such as the Jazz Festival.
New World Music Theatre
A richly deserved, national reputation for terrible sound.
Skyline Stage
Improved since the bad old days but still deeply flawed.
United Center
An echo chamber better suited to screaming sports fans than serious listeners.
BEST PLACES TO HEAR THE SOUND OF MUSIC
A few of the Chicago area’s better sounding venues:
Auditorium Theatre: State-of-the-art for theater and concerts of all kinds.
Orchestra Hall: As good as it gets for pop and jazz in a large, indoor setting.
Park West: A warm and embracing room that sounds as good as it looks.
Ravinia Festival: Thanks to expert sound engineering, a haven for jazz and pop.
