Depends on the acoustics of venue. Sometimes it’s just not possible, especially if there are any hard flat walls. IMO a good sound engineer will leave the booth and walk around and make adjustments to balance the sound as best as possible for all the different spots in the audience.
If in doubt, stand somewhere near the center middle where the big speakers cross. That will have the best sound on average.
Okay… but the seats face the stage. So from an audience perspective, the Front of House is at the back of the house.
Although I suppose it’s like Stage Right, these designations are made by people who spend most of their time in audience-free theaters (not empty because they’re filled with the people who work there).
I’d say that’s the difference between the house (the whole building) and the hall (dk if this is the corect term) inside of the building. In a usual theater/opera house you’d have the main entrance in the front (of the building), then the audience room, and the stage/backstage at the back of the building. So the audience is usually facing the back of the house.
It’s not so much about the audience perspective as it is the layout of the building. Just like backstage is the area behind the stage, other areas like behind the bar, or the storage areas, green rooms, offices, tech rooms, weird tunnels full of mysterious cables, etc are all collectively ‘back of house’.
Like when you go to a big box store and they see if they’ve got something ‘out the back’, the back of house areas are those generally not seen by the public. The term front of house likely evolved as the opposite of this.
Front of house
Often shortened to FOH
This.
Adding to that: In concert halls or club venues it’s called the same, it’s not only a festival thing.
In theater it’s sometimes called the ‘Bio Box’. However, in theatre it is often tucked away right up the top, and is called 'The Gods '.
It’s where the concert sounds best!
Seems to me, from watching a Dave rat video or two, a good sound engineer can make it sound good everywhere
Depends on the acoustics of venue. Sometimes it’s just not possible, especially if there are any hard flat walls. IMO a good sound engineer will leave the booth and walk around and make adjustments to balance the sound as best as possible for all the different spots in the audience.
If in doubt, stand somewhere near the center middle where the big speakers cross. That will have the best sound on average.
Makes sense, you can only polish a turd so much.
I wonder why this name came about?
Probably from the theater. The stage would be at the back of the building, and this would be in the “front of the house.”
And the house is where the audience seats are!
Okay… but the seats face the stage. So from an audience perspective, the Front of House is at the back of the house.
Although I suppose it’s like Stage Right, these designations are made by people who spend most of their time in audience-free theaters (not empty because they’re filled with the people who work there).
I’d say that’s the difference between the house (the whole building) and the hall (dk if this is the corect term) inside of the building. In a usual theater/opera house you’d have the main entrance in the front (of the building), then the audience room, and the stage/backstage at the back of the building. So the audience is usually facing the back of the house.
It’s not so much about the audience perspective as it is the layout of the building. Just like backstage is the area behind the stage, other areas like behind the bar, or the storage areas, green rooms, offices, tech rooms, weird tunnels full of mysterious cables, etc are all collectively ‘back of house’.
Like when you go to a big box store and they see if they’ve got something ‘out the back’, the back of house areas are those generally not seen by the public. The term front of house likely evolved as the opposite of this.