Concerts at the New Stadium

[Nerine]

There’s several anecdotal posts in this thread about times where GnR have been unreliable, late, and crap. I’m not saying they can’t pull off great gigs at all, just that they can’t do it reliably.

Sounds like they had serious issues last weekend, and they are trying to blame it on the stadium.

I just don’t buy the excuses, especially since they didn’t do sound checks etc.

There were definitely issues at the weekend. I'm not going to disagree there.

It's difficult to pinpoint where those issues stemmed from. I don't think it's right for the band to "blame" the venue. As @The Scarecrow has noted above, gigs in large stadiums aren't ideal from a sonic perspective due to late reflections, slapback echoes, comb filtering, phase cancellation, which frequencies are being absorbed/amplified etc.

The crew and the system techs and riggers should know this, though and with an act as large as GNR, large stadiums won't be unfamiliar to them - although ours will be an outlier due to the lack of data in the modelling programs that are used to calculate the system requirements. It smacks a bit of lack of preparation, but these shows are run on a real tight schedule. The logistics are mind boggling. I think the Guinea Pig comment from Richard Fortus is fair. They were.

It's a cavernous space, and more often than not, for a non-purpose built/designed venue specifically for audio, it's usually a bit of a crapshoot as to what venues will sound "good". There are plenty of studios around the world that technically shouldn't sound good, but they just do, whether they're purpose built or not.

That unknown can be mitigated somewhat by the systems and placements and absorption methods used, but never entirely.

As for Guns, they aren't gonna blame themselves. Axl had an off night, but the band were tight af. It usually is anecdotal evidence nowadays as previously Axl was a massive diva. Nowadays, I think that all but been stamped out and he's a lot more chill. Usually they're on time judging by the setlists I've seen on this tour give or take 10 mins or whatever. I won't disagree that historically it has been a huge issue, though, because he has been a complete (and well documented) knob in the past, so i understand the prevailing attitudes towards him as a performer.

 

[beats1]

So I have experience as a acoustic engineer designing 3 music studios as well as having been on arena tour at Wembley and whatever the one at Birmingham is called now.

So to design a good music venue or more specifically a good venue for live instruments is to have a reverberation time that is low. This is often depicted as a rt30 time, it measures how long it takes for a signal to reduce by 30 db after being played. Now for instrumentation you need a low RT30 time, this allows The musician to hear their own instrument better and also have less interference/phase issues between their own standing waves.

For a football stadium you kind of want the opposite you don’t want the stadium to sound dead, you kind of want a longer reverberation time which is what are you hearing singers the reverb put on but even for singers they don’t listen to themselves with Refurb it’s normally added whereas at the stadium you want them sound basically all to kind of gel together make one big noise like a choir hall.

Notoriously Wembley Stadium is one of the worst stadiums for music as the sound will just bounce off all the different surfaces at the stadium and then slowly come back, mixing up what the musician is playing/hearing and crowd was hearing

The new Wembley tried to avoid this whole issue by implementing diffusion amongst all the different surfaces so that when they do bounce back they kind of get dissipated. If you go club wembley, you may notice the windows are offset slight to each other. Though this loses the Wembley roar.

Now I know the audio engineers job is to make the sweet spot that every setup has, as big as possible and sound good. Problem is when you have older musicians who are superstars, they are pain in the arse to deal with and sound check never goes right because as far as they’re concerned they are the star it’s not about the experience for fans it’s about making them sound good(not the band).

So what ends up happening is he spent way too much time faffing about with the band and you don’t actually get to kind of equalise every song because it does take a long time. So you end up with the concert is just a bit of a shit show and you fix it with the next concert on the tour with the first one being a write off. I will say this doesn’t happen with every concert or tour, it’s just happens with the unprofessional ones

 

[Delboy75]

If they didn’t use the stadium sound system that was available and specifically designed for the stadium is there really anymore to say. It sounds like this was largely down to guns n roses. Hopefully GaGa will be a different story.

 

[Metalhead]

I must admit that I wasn't impressed with the comments made by Fortus, much as I understand him protecting the band.

 

[Delboy75]

Still very weird on Twitter. Some people saying they had the best time ever and others it’s the worst concert they’ve been to in their lives ??‍

 

[1961beavera]

Its the marmite factor, some love and some hate.

I thought the atmosphere and sound were good, I did not know what to expect as the only previous experience at the ground was football. It may take a few more 'gigs' before they get it right, or do they just leave it to sports and not have music events at the stadium

Apart from the wait for the main course. I am happy that I did not spend 4 hours travelling to Wembley (like a colleague at work) for Ed the tractor boy to do a 90 minutes set or pay obscene money to witness a tired diva try to crank out an hour long set.

 

[Cornpattbuck]

Spoken to my cousin who went on Friday and an Arsenal supporting mate who went on the Saturday. Both were on the pitch, as it were, for GnR and both absolutely loved it - and couldn't sing the praises of the stadium enough. Neither do social media... ??‍?

 

[YB123]

Spoken to my cousin who went on Friday and an Arsenal supporting mate who went on the Saturday. Both were on the pitch, as it were, for GnR and both absolutely loved it - and couldn't sing the praises of the stadium enough. Neither do social media... ??‍?

Very true. Its like trip advisor. Could go to a 5/5 restaurant but some div will rate it 0/5 or slaughter it on twitter because the water wasnt room temperature.

 

[Hotspur1978]

Springsteen will be playing the stadium next year. Not announced yet, and I’m afraid I haven’t gone through the mods for this ITK, but it’ll be announced very soon.

Looks like NWHL missed out

 

[SirHarryHotspur]

Another strike, not having the best of luck with these concerts and strikes.

Industrial Action for Lady Gaga concert on Saturday 30 July | Tottenham Hotspur

Fans attending the Lady Gaga concert at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Saturday 30 July are asked to note that industrial action will be taking place across the country on Chiltern, GWR, LNER, London Overground, Greater Anglia, Southeastern, Hull Trains and West Midlands rail services.

www.tottenhamhotspur.com

 

[Nerine]

The issue wasn’t with the band. Or with the stadium.
The system was hugely underspecced for the event.
Clare Brothers supplied the system for the Guns tour.
They used the same system on each leg of the tour - Which is laughable.
My friend, who is a system tech for TOOL and System Of A Down went to the Guns show the same night as I did.

I saw him the week after and I got to pick his brains about it and generally share thoughts. As I’ve noted in previous posts, there wasn’t enough boxes on the hangs, too few subs, the delay towers were really badly done and too small/few etc etc


Not the stadium’s fault. Not really Guns’ fault.
Clare Brothers generally suck for this kind of thing. Uk companies are much better at doing PAs.

If anyone went to see Pearl Jam at Hyde Park the following weekend, you’ll know what I’m talking about. 15 line arrays across the venue. Sounded good everywhere.

 

[Delboy75]

GaGa fans saying they will camp out overnight on Tottenham high road. Good luck with that ?

 

[tierhause]

In terms of acoustics, it's a fairly unique venue, so they were guinea pigs, I'll give him that.

So, as a professional acoustician, let me try to shine some light on this.

First of all, closed stadiums really aren't suited to host concerts. The distance between the perimeters simply is too big, and you will get unfavourably late reflections. But not only that. Sound at high frequencies is attenuated by air to a much, much higher degree than sound at low frequencies. So when the sound reaches the back of the stadium, the spectral content will be skewed towards the bass, and the sound that reflects back will be the same. So when that reflection reaches a listener, not only will it be perceived as an echo, it will also be heavily dominated by bass notes, which will drown the medium and high frequencies.

So why is this a particular issue at our ground? Well, it might not be. It can be something as simple as the geometry of the stadium, and the fact that it's the first concert. But I also think that the padding in the ceiling might play a part. Usually, in concert halls, you want a high ratio of reflection from the side walls, and a low ratio of reflection from the back wall, for the reasons explained above.

And the ceiling? Well, that depends on the venue and the type of music. To take the venue first, if the distance to the ceiling is big, you don't want too many reflections coming from there (unless you're performing music that benefits from a very high reverberation time). If the distance is small, reflections will be beneficial for most types of music.

The distance to the ceiling in our ground is, compared to concert halls, quite big. However, compared to the distance to the wall at the opposite side of the stadium, it's quite small. So by the time a reflection reaches you from the back wall, the same reflection will have reached you several times back and forth from the ceiling. If it wasn't for the padding. So now we have a ceiling that's barely reflecting anything, and back walls that are reflecting lots of bass. So we're not getting any early favourable reflections from anywhere, really. If we did, those would help strengthening the direct sound and make the late reflections less noticeable.

Besides, the padding is designed to dampen reflections from the crowd, so I assume it's at its most effective between maybe 250 to 1000 Hz. So if there's any sound reflected from the ceiling, that's mostly going to be bass as well.

And the solution? Well, there's hardly going to be a silver bullet. As I said, closed stadiums aren't suited as concert venues at all, and particularly for bass heavy music like rock and metal. It will be better when the sound engineers get used to it. But if we're serious about using the stadium for concerts, we should get some sort of mobile membrane absorbers that can be mounted at the back, and maybe ceiling too if my assumptions about the padding are correct (although that seems difficult in practice) before a concert and taken back down after. Of course, that also won't make the stadium a perfect concert venue, nothing will, but it should help to improve it.

Sounds like Sunn o))) are the perfect band for our stadium...

 

[freeeki]

Inundated with messages from TheGays tonight telling me how stunning the Tottenham Hotspur stadium is.

It’s like, tell me something I don’t know, lads.

Not gonna lie, kinda gutted I’m not there. I love Lady Gaga, and the fact she’s playing at our ground absolutely blows my mind.

 

[TheChosenOne]

Looks like NWHL missed out

The Aviva in Dublin were charging 130 euro for the cheapest tickets. Fackin robbers.

 

[Wick3d]

Inundated with messages from TheGays tonight telling me how stunning the Tottenham Hotspur stadium is.

It’s like, tell me something I don’t know, lads.

Not gonna lie, kinda gutted I’m not there. I love Lady Gaga, and the fact she’s playing at our ground absolutely blows my mind.

The stadium itself is brilliant. The surrounding area is quite grim.

I've honestly never seen so much pink descend into the area before in my life

 

[Wick3d]

This video is quite on point and how I imagine most of the people descending into Tottenham will feel like

 

[freeeki]

 

[Bofrok]

Inundated with messages from TheGays tonight telling me how stunning the Tottenham Hotspur stadium is.

It’s like, tell me something I don’t know, lads.

Not gonna lie, kinda gutted I’m not there. I love Lady Gaga, and the fact she’s playing at our ground absolutely blows my mind.

 

[Yiddo100]

Any sound for info?