Beastmode

Seattle is loud but I just don't see how it could be louder than the Dome. I'm no sound wave professor, I know there are many factors effecting sound travel but an open ceiling, it doesn't take a scientist to tell you that sound is escaping through that big hole. It could also be the effects on the human ear. Quantitive, it may not be louder but to the human ear it could sound entirely different.

st thomas

i have to agree the volume in the dome is always tuned down so the broadcasters can think themselves heard.

SaintsBro

My unscientific take on it is that, even though it's open air, Qwest has all those metal aluminum type panels and rods and junk all over it, the girders and stuff, which the sound reflects off of, making the sound waves bounce around in there a lot more, you get reflections and little echoes and thus it seems louder...the three stadiums that come up over and over again in discussions of "who's the loudest?" are always the Metrodome, the Superdome, and Quest, and all three of them have a lot of steel and metal in their construction, more harsh exposed metal than the average modern stadium. The old '70s domes are all girders and big honking metal panels, like the walls up top in the Dome, and even though it's more recent, Qwest kinda copied that look and feel. The acoustics in the Superdome are in fact, terrible, which is why concerts there were usually pretty awful (if anyone is old enough to remember seeing the Stones or Prince there back in the day, the sound was bouncing all around and it sounded like mud almost anywhere you sat)