I am not quite sure where to post this, as it is not strictly about ITM only, so please accept my apologies beforehand!
I went to a traditional Hogmanay Ceileidh in a small village hall (capacity 80 people).
A band of five young musicians was on the stage: two fiddles, one guitar, one octave mandola, one djembe(!). At the beginning, while folks arrived, the band had a warm-up without amps switched on, and music sounded quite good, with great fiddle playing. But then for the dance amplification was used, everything got very loud, and the fiddles were drowned out by a loud guitar and mandola, further aggravated by the djembe. The result was loud boomey rhythm with a hint of hard-to-hear melody by the fiddles. It was rather painful to listen to and spoiled my dancing, and I left early.
What I don’t understand is: why does a dance band find it necessary to use amplification in a small hall? The fiddles are loud enough to hold their own unamplified. All for the sake of the guitarist? Why do musicians find it acceptable to use amplification in smallish spaces and create an awful sound? Can they not hear the output from their amp systems? Do they not care to check for musical quality?
Sadly I found that the same thing is happening in our own community hall with concerts of visiting groups. This hall can seat 300, but is built as a pentagon, the audience forming three sides of it, the rows of seats going up a step at a time, forming a bowl. The acoustics are excellent (a player of the Scottish National Orchestra called it one of his favourite venues to play), and to my experience no amplification is necessary. Yet all bands use it. To me it spoils many acoustic concerts, where the immediacy of the musicians is lost behind the amplified sound. At least the sound system is better than what was used at the Ceilidh mentioned, and there is an actual sound man monitoring from the back. So it depends very much on his whim and ears what quality is delivered, but it never matches direct unamplified sound, which is a pity.