I saw Martin Short

at the Ariene Schnitzer Concert Hall last night. I was very disappointed with the theater. The acoustics were bad. I could not understand him a lot of the time. There was to much reverb in the theater. When the orchestra played, the reverb did add to the sound making the orchestra sound fuller however for the speaking voice the sounds were muddied. Too many hard surfaces and not enough sound deadening. The sound system also had too much base boost. A large base drum was too loud and when the tuba played moving into the lower notes from higher notes its volume increased unnaturally. I wonder if there is a sound engineer on staff. Maybe part of the problem was that I was in the cheep seats in the upper balcony coupled with the placement of the speakers.

The theater is beautiful and deserves a better acoustical tuning when used with sound-reinforcement (speaker system). The hall looks like it would sound good for a acoustical only performance of an orchestra and I would love to find out sometime.