Originally Posted by Sprry75

I saw Pearl Jam at the Idaho Center in 2000 or 2001; it sounded much better than concerts at ESA, I'm afraid. It's not about the expense of the arena, but the purpose of the design. The Idaho Center is comparable to Utah's E-Center, which was designed as a multi-function, midsized arena. It was specifically contemplated that concerts would be held there, and there are multiple concert arrangements engineered into the building. While not a great arena, the E-Center (and comparably, the Idaho Center) is decent enough for bigger shows ("bigger" on a Utah scale).

The ESA is a sports arena built for basketball and monster truck pulls. I've bitched about it before, I know, but what makes the ESA one of the noisiest arenas in professional basketball is what makes it so lousy for concerts. The volume of the music, coupled with the volume of the crowd, resonate and reverberate forever. After a few minutes, there's a thick, muddy wall of sonic noise through which the music has to travel.

It is a horrible venue for music. I'll be there, of course, but why this concert wasn't booked at USANA Amphitheater, I'll never know.