Quote Originally Posted by Greg View Post
Turning to the visiting side is fine, unless you are in the ends of the stadium. This has to be solvable and horns are miced on other situations. Percussion instruments may not need a mic, they are the only thing I hear in the corner end zone.

If we are just talking horns and woodwinds it seems to be an issue that can be resolved.

Either that or if you must use field mics have people holding them and make them part of the band to move with the instruments. The band, when static (such as in the old seats) comes through the sound system fairly well. The mics need to move with the instruments or it is a waste of time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zn6VIrBt8Zg I present this as an example.

Part of the issue with the field mics is that there is a delay between when we play and when it finally gets through the speakers. It's especially evident the farther we stretch back across the field. If you take the mics away, sound will hit the front audience all at the correct time - from the early days of marching band, you realize that you have to listen behind you to stay in time. That image of Freddie Mercury on stage with a stadium full of people moving their arms in time with when audio actually reaches them (definitively showing the speed of sound) is another example of that problem.

Short version - it's a lot more difficult in reality to make any of this work. The ideal solution would be an array mics suspended above the field all feeding into a mixer on field level, with speakers on the sidelines projecting away from the band - this way, it would never matter what direction we're facing. For many obvious reasons, that's never going to happen. The stadium PA system just isn't a good solution - that's why the BSO brought their own speaker system when they performed halftime a few years ago. No stadium PA is ever going to address that, so we work with what we have.