Quote Originally Posted by Jimbo View Post
I pop into a major concert Hall quite regularly in Birmingham which is meant to be one of the best sounding concert halls in Europe and I must say I have heard some great stuff there Jazz, classical and rock music. But occasional you get a muppet on the mixing desk with cloth ears and it all goes horribly wrong and I have heard some dreadful poorly mixed stuff which have completely ruined my experience and that was usually with fantastic artists I had been waiting years to hear!

Best ever sound was Kraftwerk a few years back and it was utterly spellbinding and magnificent but I am sure they had absolutely everything under very tight control.

So even concert halls with great acoustics can sound terrible if you have amplified sound that is out of control. Not even the acoustic design of the hall can save you from thunderous amplified bass that swamps everything.
The Symphony Hall was opened in 1991, so by they had learnt a lot about acoustic by then. I haven’t been there, but I can believe it does have world standard acoustics.
A neat idea used is to 'alcoves' which can be opened or closed to suit the required acoustic appropriate to the size of the performing group.