etan4

It is the laws of acoustics. The usage of panning. If you pan a marimba player all the way to left of right....the sound appears to come out of the left or right. If you pan the sound dead center.....the sound appears to come from right in the middle of the two speakers. It is often referred to as the "ghost channel." Put your favorite album on, with a good old backbeat coming from the drummer, through some decent headphones. You will hear what I am talking about. Close your eyes, the snare will "sound" like it is right in the middle of your head. also the kick drum and maybe some other things. Guitars may sound like they are heavier to the left or the right. This is panning. The same ideas are used in the front ensemble. You can make a marimba player sound like they are coming from the far left, right, the middle or anywhere in between. Make sense ?

The point of having SPEAKERS not "amps" (amps are used to power the speakers) on either side of the pit is so that the pit maybe mixed and balanced left to right so that each players sound is coming from exactly where they stand in the front ensemble setup. The art of stereo mixes, it's been used for the past couple of years. Acoustically, it makes perfect sense, in fact it is the norm.

nice, I saw them on a free day in chicago in 2005. They put on a good show.