I went to see an act here in Memphis at the Fedex Forum this past weekend and the sound was downright horrible. It's been a long while since I'd been to a concert in an arena so I can't really remember if arena sound has always been like this or not.

The bass wasn't even in the mix.....nada, nothing......could barely hear the drums other than the kick drum......was mostly guitar and vocals with harsh, ear piercing high end. It was downright brutal and really effected my overall experience of the show. There was some low end in the mix but it was a sub sonic thud and i couldn't really tell if it was the kick, toms, or the bass....just every now and then I'd hear an extremely low end thud under the mix. I walked away extremely unimpressed with both acts due to the awful sound.

Is this just something normal with arena sized sound or not?

I thinlk it depends on the act and the soundman. It is alot easier to get a great mix today with the technology available.

it was the soundman indeed. he was probably in a bass hot-spot, he thought the bass was huge, and never bothered to walk around the arena to see how it sounded in different spots. or the sub amps were blown...

some arenas have bad acoustics-issues. on large-scale gigs it´s the system engineer´s job to design the system to cover the whole audience area, so the mix engineer can focus on his job.

system engineer optimizes the PA-system for sufficient power, throw and coverage by designing and adjusting correct throw angles and designing a system with sufficient fills, and supervising rigging and setup. he´s also usually the one who tunes the system to the room.

not always is the mix engineer to blame. I´ve been in situations like these, and it´s a drag.

that said, some rooms are almost impossible to make good...

on the other hand, there are mix engineers who plain suck.

What you experienced is pretty much the norm unless you go see a very well established act that has the pros and connections that help get a great arena sound. Your seat placement does also have an impact in some venues.

Here in Québec, the Colisée is a basically a reverb box that make pretty much any act sound muddy or clanky: it is a pretty small building and was built solely for hockey. Tragically Hip sounded like an old gramophone with way too much kick drums and no vocals. The only band that always sounds decent to great in this hellhole is Rush (with Iron Maiden a close second, but I've seen one Maiden show wich plainly sucked), but they've played that place so many times it's a no brainer for them. They also probably have the best in the biz mixing for them.

If I sit in a big stadium somewhere to see a big band, I always buy tickets near the soundboard. It seems to really help a lot with getting the best mix. Rock bands in an arena setting are usually less than ideal to me, it's just too much sound bouncing off too many things.

I think the big arenas have always been the most challenging just based on real estate. One mix won't cover the whole place.