I'll tell you what I'd like to see. I'd like to see the festival organizers use volume as a means to sort out some of the loudest casual performance acts, like the drummers that gather near the fountain. With so little actual space to listen to so many acts outdoors, those who play loudest like the drum circles and "others" should be given a location to perform that removes them from dominating areas saturated by the most sound. The festival could offer them an inside location or one far enough away (on the outskirts of the grounds) as to lessen the impact of their instrumentation on the overall din of the already overlapping performances within the area where most of the performances are taking place. By removing those who would dominate by the sheer volume of their instruments the overall din would be lessened and the space in question could be more easily accessed by many more performing artists who have instruments of lower acoustic volume. This minority of the loud who have for years kept the majority of the quiet players out of the area should be delt with by the festival organizers. The good of the many should be placed before the good of the few.

The recent result has been acoustic musicians bringing amplifiers to the grounds to compete with the volume and thereby increasing the overall din volume. The festival then responds by creating rules against such amplifiers and sends out squads of security goons to browbeat offenders into submission. This does nothing but cause those playing quiet instruments to questions the legitimacy of the event when it doesn't even try to accomodate folk playing folk music casually. Entire groups like the bluegrassers have decided to start their own festival and give up on the event.