I was reading the New York Times this weekend (yes, I still read the Times. And yes, it's still on paper) and I could hardly miss a great big article about U2's new tour. Buried in the middle of the article that was mainly about how the band is trying to prove they're still relevant was a bit about how they're trying something new with the sound system in their new tour:

The tour’s most striking innovation isn’t immediately obvious. U2 has moved its sound system to arena ceilings: an oval of 12 speaker arrays that sends the music downward evenly everywhere in the arena. When I walked all around the coliseum as the band played, the music was uniformly transparent and strong, the volume constant from front to back. “If you’re trying to blast sound the length of the venue from the stage, the venue sometimes wins and you get mud,” the Edge said. “With this, you don’t have to have it so loud — you’re getting good quality sound from something that’s much closer to you than normal.”

I have no idea if this is an old idea they're revisiting for this tour, if it's brand new, and not at all about whether it will work or not. But it was cool to hear them trying something new. Took me back to my days when I was running wires all over a small theatre trying to get as many different outputs from an amplifier as I possibly could in order to simulate different areas of a Disney theme park. Even further back it reminded me of Israel Horovitz's Spared, which places speakers throughout the theatre too.

What audio experimentation have you done lately? Did it work? How did you do it? Chime in and let me know!