linus wrote:

This is not a classical music show, it's a live multimedia show. The open expanse and hard echos are going to bring out all the phenomenal brilliance of their tracks... I will drive 7 hours just to hear the shriek from Antenna bounce off that black pyramid or the drip from Mitternacht fly off into the cavernous hall. This really has all the trappings of a once in a lifetime event.



An acoustic unamplified classical music concert would actually stand a better chance of sounding decent in that space if that space were untreated, much in the way that choral halls, churches and cathedrals use the hard surfaces to reflect amplify and enhance. You'd swear It's almost like they were designed that way.
When you start introducing amplification (which is the only way Kraftwerk's programme can be transmitted unless they're going for Kraftwerk unplugged) via multiple sound sources from many different transducers (microphones AND drivers) in a space as reflective as that ,you're goinna end up in phase, nodal and standing wave hell unless the room is properly measured and treated accordingly.
Anyone who has ever tried to place even a basic PA in an environment like the nightmare pictured above could tell you that.

Really there are few options if you want that space to sound coherent, measure and treat the space, or hand everyone a set of headphones on the way in and have a 'silent disco'.

My point was that most of their music lends itself quite well to the kind of acoustic distortion you get in a space like this, in addition to the atmospheric synergies such a setting provides.

OK, I've cleared my cache, rebooted, dusted off the keyboard, oiled my mouse, pulled out my credit cards, ready to pull the trigger on events number 1 and 4, Autobahn and Man Machine... fingers crossed (metaphorically speaking of course)!

I got into a similar system last week for Springsteen in Buffalo. It's fair, but frustrating as hell. Theirs isn't a queue system, but a virtual waiting room that randomly lets batches of people through as space becomes available.

just morphed into this unwelcome screenful:

The connection has timed out


The server at www.showclix.com is taking too long to respond.





The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few
moments.
If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network
connection.
If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure
that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

Scheiße!

Kuntz.

The F5 key came through, back in the queue for both Autobahn and Man-Machine, though being still stuck the queue 23 minutes after the opening, my chances have got to be slim...

"All tickets for all Kraftwerk performances are either being held by other users while they're being purchased or completely sold-out. If those ticket buyers that have reserved tickets do not complete their reservation, those tickets will become available for purchase again within a few minutes."

oh well..

Aw, nuts. Sorry linus.

I guess the odds of landing this must have been pretty bad, neither of my two friends also going for this having landed any tickets. I'm guessing 300 to 500 spectators for each show, something like 50,000 fans worldwide vying for 3000-4000 spots.

linus wrote:
My point was that most of their music lends itself quite well to the kind of acoustic distortion you get in a space like this, in addition to the atmospheric synergies such a setting provides.



And mine is that nothing will sound good in a highly reflective space like that if you're going to ampify multiple sound sources (particularly with regards to the bottom end of the frequency spectrum and the inherent long wavelengths) which is what Kraftwerk are big on live, unless either really attenuated or properly measured and treated.

The room may look nice and be in accord with their quirky material but it sure won't sound good.

One day in the late 70s, my Ma arrived home to find me listening to Autobahn. "Turn that bloody rubbish off, I've been listening to it all afternoon" [at a work colleague's atheist funeral].

linus wrote:
I guess the odds of landing this must have been pretty bad, neither of my two friends also going for this having landed any tickets. I'm guessing 300 to 500 spectators for each show, something like 50,000 fans worldwide vying for 3000-4000 spots.

Not too mention the scenesters that have probably never listened to them, but heard that everyone was talking about these shows, so they needed to get tickets to say that they were there.

Heh. The obligatory Downfall riff in the side-nav.

$150 on a Bjork ticket, now we know the real reason for the third reich's downfall.

OK, it turns out that my friend's friends weren't able to get tickets either, the odds of landing them must have been a lot slimmer than I thought.

Reminds me a bit of the Hop Crisis of 2007-8, which our local bolshy homebrew suppliers dealt with via rationing rather than price increases. Call me an elitist plutocrat if you must, but i'd rather buy an ounce of hops for $10 than be forbidden to buy one for $3.

The inevitable apology.

Still, this is no excuse. We should have never advised MoMA to allow the tickets to be sold in the fashion in which they were, because in the end—even if everything were to go smoothly—many people would have been very disappointed. ShowClix didn't set the proper expectations from the beginning, nor did we properly prepare our load balancing servers in order to prevent the queue from timing out. Ultimately, we failed many of you.