Most of the festivals I used to enjoy have now become much larger and louder than wot they used to be. Folks like me that enjoy harmony singing and an acoustic session find ourselves in a huddle with our fingers in our ears trying to hear ourselves and each other.
Some years ago I helped build the "singing room" at the Woodford festival in Australia. It was built from straw bales and did make some improvement to the sound levels but had to be demolished after the festival (waste of materials and effort).
Bearing in mind that the external sound level is about 100 dB (not much below the threshold of pain!) and the desirable sound level for a concert hall is about 20 dB we need some pretty serious noise reduction.
Any acoustic engineers out there able to come up with a design for a transportable, reusable "concert hall" that could be hired out to festivals. Ideally this would use some high tech sound absorbing material in the walls but with a hard surface inside to give some life and resonance. Perhaps active noise cancellation could be used also to reduce the level of intrusive "Doof" which is apparently essential to cater for the "Yoof" market.
An impossible dream?
Bearing in mind the budget available to the larger festivals I would guestimate that even if such a structure cost say $100,000 to build then it might be economic if it could be used by ten or more festivals through the year. I would imagine a similar need occurs at the larger festivals in other countries also.
There again I could just stay home and stop my bloody whinging I suppose.
Keef