I think we are all missing an important fact that is becoming more apparent every show I experience.
The amplification that is occurring right now is, for the most part, being very badly utilized. What was argued and accepted to be a means to utilize special colours and exotic instruments in the pit has become an excuse to crank up the mallet instruments and generally distort the acoustic relationship between the field music and the pit. Doesn't anyone have a problem with seeing the musical efforts of all those hard working, accomplished battery players being mixed together and coming out of, usually, two mediocre speaker towers? It's very sad that the tremendous efforts of the marching members can be overcome with the slight movement of some jerk at a sound board. The aural difference between the electric sound and the acoustic field sound diminishes the field sound. It also, as we see to our dismay, has become the means for some corps to "push the envelope". Thus, for example, The Cadets shows the past few years. The hard working, extremely talented, kids in the corps are the ones who have to listen to the nearly dead silence that follows their show this year. At least, up till now, it isn't greeted with the venom it received last year at Pasadena.
The synth issue is the logical next step in the transformation of drum corps into what might be termed a "super band" program. DCI is in pretty serious trouble now and, I believe, if they continue to allow the extreme fringe to dictate their artistic product they will soon have alienated a very significant portion of the base that pays for the activity.
RAS