Why does rock concert sound suck?

It's too bad that a good home hi fi set up can & often does sound better than many live rock concerts. Small venues (less than about 400) can still sound really good but the larger venues rarely do; very hard, upper midrange peaky, boomy loose bass & shrill highs. This is the worst example of what the solid state / horn combo can do if poorly done. 

IMO, here's the reason & when I was in pro sound reinforcement, this wasn't the case. The use almost universal use now of arrays from just maybe 6 speakers to upwards of 20 powered by high powered, well built, very reliable but sound crappy class D amps. The theory of the array is to try to create the same sound balance for every seat in an arena w/ minimal "sweet spots". The benefits of the pro class D amps are obvious but sacrifice a  lot. Almost Every instrument in a band is now run through this stupidly loud, hard as hell sound system & the beautiful magic of stacked Marshalls or Fender tube powered amps is lost.

I saw the Grateful Dead many times in the 70's, never w/ their short lived, giant "wall of sound" system ,but w/ a very good one that included about 30 Macintosh 2300 amps, & piles of Altec & JBL speakers. The sound was truly dynamic, meaning loud only when it was supposed to be & not continually, crisp, clean & beautiful. It was the same w/ many great shows I saw at Radio City Music Hall in NYC back then w/ many great bands. If you had a good seat, fantastic sound & if not it was ok. Today, its pretty bad in any seat but arenas are still filled so no one seems to care.  

I guess the sound today of rock concerts is on par w/ the music itself...... loud, bland, boring & bordering on unlistenable. 

Thank you @wolf_garcia ​​​​@panzrwagn for sharing and validating that yes, it can be done.  

@sparksgja "Lots of washy echo, clear yet layered guitars, keyboard synths and a bass so firm my mid chest vibrated (and I kept telling myself to buy a subwoofer). It sounded for all its loudness completely involving and visceral."  - sounds like you got the War on Drugs exactly as you should have.  Love that band.  
 

Honestly (and not to be mean) the rest of this thread should be followed up with a "Get off my lawn" type of complaint.  Know the venue, know your band, and set expectations accordingly.  

Sincerely, fellow grey haired gentleman.  

I put my money on the venue/structure and the design/build in the bad acoustics. Where I come from is a great example, in Edmonton Alberta, Rodgers Place(home of the NHL Edmonton Oilers), is perfect venue for concerts in its design and sounds awesome. When they built the building concerts/music was part of the design/build. Now go south down the highway to Calgary Alberta, and the Saddle Dome(home of the NHL Calgary Flames), the building is shaped like a "saddle" and every concert I've been to there, the acoustics suck...bad, really bad! 

Blaming Class D phased array speakers is silly...a good sound mixer can make nearly anything work well. Also, now that in-ear monitors are nearly universally adopted, the on stage levels can be anything. A little history: Piles of Altec A7s or similar JBL boxes were standard (often with Mac amps) until maybe the mid 70s when Clair Bros. boxes (or similar) were introduced. They could have JBL 15s with other JBL horns and tweeters in a single box often stacked or flown)..often powered by piles of Phase Linear amps...anybody think those amps sounded better than modern Class D arrays? No they did not...the days of super loud crowd blasting sound had arrived.

’electronic manipulation’, wolf, in this case...means ’dsp based acoustic redress’, or some similar meant set of words. But the paragraph,and half the post’s intent was that it as all about DSP based attempts at acoustic manipulation so for me to say it in that specific sentence was not required.

You CHOSE to quote it out of context.

When others say something you don’t have to go out of your way to misinterpret what they say, so you can put a chip on your shoulder about them, and then attack that thing you created. It’s disingenuous. then you proceed to lambaste that person as uninformed an an idiot in a smarmy round about condescending way.

Grow up child. You attempt to appear as an adult; Then show yourself to be one.

IMO it’s a large part of why your commenting PO’s a notable number of people. It’s missing critical aspects of human integrity in the idea of sharing space on a forum and relating.

I PO people for different reasons. To each their own ability to PO, I guess.