When I saw U2 at the Staples Center, we were way way up in the nosebleeds. I got the sense that what we were hearing up there was different from what everyone else was hearing, even though the PA speakers were suspended from the ceiling like titanic bunches of black grapes as opposed to being stacked up on the stage.

It was almost like a "power curve" (if you're familiar with statistical jargon)... flat... flat... flat... until it hits the stands and then "whoooooooop!" Up, up, up it goes in a sharp upward curve... getting all broken-up/fragmented and tinny as it goes.

If/when I'm in a small hole-in-the-wall club, attempting to frighten and offend the punkers... instead of a half stack I'd get a pair of 2x12 cabs, side-by-side as opposed to one-atop-the-other... equally powerful (if not more so) but nice and evenly dispersed as opposed to being a bazooka blast of sound. So... like buckshot from a sawed-off as opposed to a deer slug. The slug can kill a grizzly or a moose, and it'll blow a big-@$$ hole in a human being's chest cavity... but the buckshot out of the sawed-off will kill the human just as dead... along with four or five of their friends.