TAMPA, Fla. -- This weekend, the Sunset Music Festival is rolling into Tampa. Some of the area’s top techno DJs will be performing at Raymond James Stadium.
But all that pounding bass has some neighbors making some noise of their own.
“Believe me. I am dreading it. I am dreading it,” said Grace Luis, who is not looking forward one bit to a weekend of electronic dance mix, Techno and Dubstep. Vexed by volume that is definitely not music to Luis‘s ears.
“Last year, I could not go to sleep. I could not watch my TV. My windows vibrated. I couldn’t hear. I had to stick cotton in my ears,” she said.
Each year, for the past several years, the Sunset Music Festival at Raymond James Stadium has sent sound waves into the surrounding neighborhoods.
All day. Until midnight.
Wall-shaking, window-rattling bass that - unlike other events - drives neighbors nuts.
“I live through football games. I live through regular concerts. They don’t bother me,” said Luis. “You don’t hear them that much.”
“That’s enough! All day long. At 10 o’clock, stop!” said neighbor Jimmy Spagnolo.
Spagnolo says he doesn’t mind the music itself, but can’t understand why they don’t end the show earlier.
A neighborhood of his, he says, even rents a hotel room away from the area, “Because you can’t sleep. Oh, OK. Because there’s a lot of noise, you know?”
This year, organizers say they’re doing what they can to mitigate the noise. Physically, by aiming the concert’s huge speakers toward Raymond James Stadium, and by using technology too.
Part of the technological approach includes a team of people riding through the neighborhood surrounding the stadium using decibel meters.
If the volume gets too high in any particular part of the neighborhood, they’ll get that information back to the stadium so the people operating the audio boards can make adjustments.
Those changes are a high-tech fix. Computers can literally shape the sound waves so they don’t move in straight lines. Instead, equalizers “bend” them so they don’t travel as far.
Jimmy Spagnolo says he likes the *sound* of that. “Because that’s something that helps. Not a lot of noise on this side, you know?”
Still, Grace Luis says she’ll believe it when she hears it. Or she thinks -- doesn’t.
“What can I tell you?” said Luis, “They say a lot of stuff and then it doesn’t happen.”
This weekend’s stormy forecast might not help, because sound waves from the show could bounce off those low hanging clouds.
The Tampa Sports Authority has set up a hotline for people in the surrounding neighborhoods to call if they feel like the volume is getting out of hand.
That number is (813) 350-6545.
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