High Fidelity

On any given evening when the tenant teams are away, the nation’s sports arenas are invaded by concert fans in pursuit of a little rock ‘n’ roll heaven. But what they frequently find is mush. The buildings may be fine for the roar of a hockey crowd, but those barns with bandstands can swallow, mangle and scatter guitar solos.

So the news that Southern California has a new, glittering, state-of-the-art arena might be viewed by music fans as a mixed blessing, along the lines of “oh, great, now we’ll have the biggest and grandest barn of them all right here in Los Angeles.”

And indeed, the sheer size of the Staples Center has made for a daunting challenge to designers, who say their goal was to make the building both a major sports venue and “the capitol of the entertainment capital.”

Have they succeeded? No one will know until Oct. 17, when the arena has its musical inauguration ceremony--a visit from the bombshell tour of the year, the reunion of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band. Only when the rockers from New Jersey test the building by cranking up “Born to Run,” or offering up the plaintive hush of “The River,” will we know if the Staples Center is a true music lover.

“The problem with arenas historically is that 20,000 seats is not exactly optimum for your intimate concert experience,” says Tom Clelland, the Bose Corp. senior project manager who handled the venue’s $1.5-million sound system. “In some arenas, the shows are virtually incoherent. But that’s not going to happen in L.A.”

The venue’s managers and designers concede that no arena can match the acoustical beauty of, say, the Wiltern Theatre, but they also say the high-tech design of the Staples Center will defy the stereotype that arenas are low fidelity.

The acoustical impact of everything from the “height of the ceiling to the material used for seat cushions” was calculated during design, and numerous computer models were created to gauge the sound quality, says Bobby Goldwater, the arena’s general manager. “We are great thieves,” he says. “We took every good idea done in other arenas and brought it here to the Staples Center, and in a big way.”

Big is the word for it--the center is about a million square feet. And size very much matters when it comes to the science of sound, says Jack Wrightson of WJHW Inc., the Dallas-based acoustical consultants on the project.

“A 20,000-seat music venue is, in the history of the Western civilization, a relatively new thing,” Wrightson says. “All of the grand music halls, the places viewed as the best for non-amplified live performance, none seats much more than 2,000 to 2,500.”

Reverberation times, misplaced echoes, dead zones, the wavelengths of low-frequency sounds--all of these issues that can confound music performances are made more troublesome by huge rooms. So how will the Staples Center overcome that? Acoustical treatments (one expert called the stuff “fuzz and goo”) were installed strategically throughout the interior to absorb or reflect sound for the best results. Empty spaces were left behind some walls to capture the low-frequency sounds that can “roll around rooms for a while” and muck up the performance, and 20-foot-long baffles hang horizontally from the ceiling to absorb “misbehaving sounds,” Wrightson says.

Those measures and many others drove up the cost of the building, but Wrightson says they will make major differences in the sound quality.

Of course, the Staples Center is, first and foremost, a building devoted to sports events. And basketball games and concerts demand very different things of a building when it comes to sound. A room designed to stir up and amplify the sound of cheering hoops crowds creates acoustical havoc during a music performance. Likewise, a room designed to soak up errant sounds to deliver crisp clarity for concerts will also deaden the roar of fans going crazy at an NBA playoff game.

It is a reality of modern arena economics that the buildings must not only have pro sports team tenants but also must fill the empty calendar between games with revenue-producing events, which often means concerts. The designers of every new arena must make trade-offs between their venue’s dual duties.

In Chicago, the United Center was opened several years ago to be the new home of the Chicago Bulls and Chicago Blackhawks. But the building has been savaged by music critics for its poor sound during amplified music concerts, with one local reviewer asserting that “at times the music sounds like it is coming through a neighbor’s apartment floor rather than [from] the stage.” Wrightson’s company handled the Chicago arena as well, and he says it was clear from the beginning that the room was going to be designed for cheering, not hearing. “Believe me, the Los Angeles arena will sound much, much better. There’s absolutely no comparison.”

The acoustics expert says he already has noted some unlikely harbingers of the venue’s quality--the sound of hammering and the clang of dropped pipes during construction. “You can tell a lot by the way sounds rattle around in there, and just listening to those construction noises has me cautiously optimistic.”

While the designs for the Staples Center clearly are dazzling, veteran concert promoter Andy Hewitt says no expert forecast or computer simulation can pin down the true vibe of a building. That, he says, will take a concert.

“There are a lot of places that look great, and sometimes they work out and sometimes they don’t,” Hewitt says. “Other buildings have a lot of problems you can point to, but they sound great.” He offers the example of the Greek Theatre as an “old, funky building” that magically transforms into a grand music venue during shows. “So we won’t really know about the Staples Center until Bruce plays.”

The Springsteen shows--he will also play Oct. 18--bring up sound quality of a different sort, the caliber of performers who will play the new venue. Goldwater pledges that the Staples Center will become a center stage not only for Southern California, but on a national level. He points to the New Year’s Eve concert featuring the Eagles, Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt as one of the “special, sparkling moments” that he hopes will be the venue’s trademark. Also on tap are a concert by Latin pop sensation Ricky Martin on Nov. 13 and a major music event that everyone can watch but few can attend: the 42nd annual Grammy Awards in February.

The show’s producers were called in early in the design stages to offer insights, with their suggestions incorporated into the plans. “That kind of disposition toward collaboration is very seldom done,” says Michael Greene, president and CEO of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences. “It led to some meaningful changes.”

Goldwater says major announcements about other concerts will be made in upcoming months, but the former vice president of facilities presentation for Madison Square Garden says the new venue will not sit back and wait for tours and promoters to knock on the door with offers. Earlier this year Goldwater was actively pursuing a reunion of the three surviving Beatles for the venue, a pie-in-the-sky goal to be sure (“Paul McCartney was just not interested”), but one he says shows the arena leadership’s ambitious and aggressive style.

The Staples Center’s calendar will be bristling with events, Goldwater says, and he dismisses the notion that the sports tenants will unduly limit concert dates. The Lakers, Clippers, Kings and Avengers--an arena football team--will play a combined 137 home games a year and, even with wrestling, ice skating and other events, there likely will be 140 days a year when concerts can be scheduled.

So the building will have great sound and great acts. But will fans have a chance to get in to enjoy it all?

Some critics question whether the venue’s suite levels gobble up too much space and push the upper deck seats too far away from the stage action. “If you aren’t wealthy enough to afford a suite, and if you aren’t lucky enough to get a floor seat, then you’re going to get a nosebleed,” says one entertainment industry insider who toured the arena when it was under construction.

Goldwater counters that the seats just below the suite levels were kept as general sales seats to give all fans a chance to be in close to the show. “The good news for average fans is that opens up rows 1 through 18 for them,” he says. “Our goal was the best of all worlds for all fans.”

Of course, some fans, wowed by the marquee artists and amenities, will love the new arena, but even Goldwater acknowledges that others will not think the biggest is the same as the best.

“I know a lot of entertainers and managers are not necessarily fans of going to arenas because they think a lot of them are just barns,” Goldwater says. “I think a lot of them are barns. But we’ve gone to significant lengths to be different. I’ve been in there a lot, and it feels good. I think it’s going to be something very special.”