I have been to three live concerts in total, the first was Imagine Dragons so obviously that one was massive in a basketball stadium, the next was Wardruna so slightly less massive in a concert hall and the last was Moon Walker in a pretty small venue. So standing through a whole concert kind of sucks and the most recent one didn’t even have an option for sitting. And the one that I actually could sit at had the most uncomfortable sets I have ever been in. And despite having silicon ear plugs at the last two, I could understand most of the words being sung with the drums drowning out everything at the Wardruna concert. This was once I might have thought that venue had poor sound balancing but twice in a row? The nice thing about the most recent concert is that the openers offered to chat with fan at their merch tables but since they were in the same room at the on going concert so it never really felt quite enough to talk to anyone. I don’t know it feels like everyone else there got way more out of it than me that is a sucky feeling.
Edit: I’m going to bed so won’t reply for a while but you answers have been reassuring and helpful.


I do enjoy the live music at the local cafe and you bring up a lot of good points. This time I figured I would do it sober but edibles definitely improved things last time. I did play with wearing and not wearing the ear plugs and still had a hard time making out the words, though I was fairly close to the stage so that may have played a big part in that.
yeah, the closer you are to the stage, youre getting more of the “stage sound” and less of the “room sound”. many bands use in ear monitors(earphones) rather than wedge monitors(speakers on stage). so basically you have loud drums, and probably loud amps, but the vocals are coming from speakers further away from you.