Great Venue, Good Neighbor: Why Dillon Doesn’t Have to Choose
The Dillon Amphitheater grew up. Its sound plan didn’t. Here’s how the town can close that gap before 2027.
There are few places in the country to see a show like the Dillon Amphitheater. The stage sits on the north shore of Dillon Reservoir, the mountains go dark behind the bandshell, and on a summer Monday night a few thousand people from across Summit County show up for free music.
The Town of Dillon built that, and it built it on purpose, one step at a time.
From community stage to regional destination
1993: A town venue. Dillon opened the amphitheater as a community gathering place on the lake. Before its renovation, shows drew an average of about 700 people. The Lake Cliffe Condominiums, a short walk away, had already been there for more than 20 years. They were built in 1972.
2017 to 2018: Going bigger. The town tore down the old structure and rebuilt the stage and bandshell, adding green rooms, restrooms, concessions and a walking plaza. The project was budgeted at $8.4 million and came in at about $9.7 million. The new stage was built larger and pushed back toward the lakeside path for better sight lines. The stated goal was to attract bigger touring artists. It reopened in June 2018 and added paid concerts for the first time.
2018: Bigger crowds right away. Friday shows that first season drew 1,500 to 2,000 people, more than double the old average. Council minutes from that summer already note noise complaints and a commitment to keep working on noise reduction.
2019: A production upgrade. The town approved a new sound system of about $627,000, explaining that it wanted touring bands to see Dillon as a serious production stop. National acts followed. Notably, the town also said the new system was meant to help with neighbors: it was designed so sound would drop off as it left the venue, and staff would be able to monitor decibel levels to limit the impact on nearby residents.
2021 to 2024: Turning the corner. As recently as 2021, the venue ran a deficit of close to $250,000 a year. Mountain Music Mondays launched in 2023. By 2024 the venue hosted 44 live music events, up from 36 the year before, guests gave it a net promoter score of 72, and some council members pushed for more paid shows.
2026: The neighbors push back. Residents near the venue organized, filed complaints and, eventually, formal notices of claims against the town.
Read that timeline as a music cities person and you see a smart, steady build: a bigger stage, a bigger sound system, bigger acts, more nights, more revenue. Read it as a sound person and you see something else. Every step turned the intensity up. What didn’t evolve at the same pace was the work of fitting that intensity into the neighborhood around it.
That 1972 date matters. For the agent of change fans out there: the principle says whoever arrives last takes responsibility for managing the impact. Here, the neighbors came first. The amphitheater arrived in 1993, and every expansion since, from the bigger stage to the bigger sound system to more nights, has added to the impact the newcomer is responsible for managing.
That’s a real music cities success story with a gap in it. And it’s why what happened this year matters.
A poll that asked the wrong question
This fall, a local newspaper ran an online poll asking readers whether they agreed with the changes Dillon made to the amphitheater in response to noise complaints. Among the answer choices: “changes risk the concert experience” and “complaints are valid,” as if a reader had to pick one.
An opinion poll built on answer choices like these is, frankly, absurd. It can’t tell a town anything useful, and it pushes people into corners they don’t actually occupy. It has three problems, and they’re the same three problems running through the whole public conversation about Dillon.
It assumes people know what the changes were. For months, the town wouldn’t say. You can’t judge a fix without knowing what it is and whether it worked.
The answers aren’t opposites. You can believe the complaints are valid, believe the town’s changes were appropriate, want to protect the concert experience, and think more work is needed, all at once. The poll made people pick a side.
It turns a compatibility problem into a contest. Music lovers on one side, neighbors on the other. That framing makes good solutions harder to find, not easier.
Here’s how I would have asked it: What should the Town of Dillon prioritize when managing sound from the Dillon Amphitheater? Then let people choose as many answers as they want:
• Maintain a high-quality concert experience.
• Reduce sound impacts on nearby residences.
• Adjust sound-check times and concert scheduling.
• Conduct independent sound measurements, including inside affected homes.
• Make sound management data and policies publicly available.
• Improve communication between the town, residents and venue operators.
Now you’re gathering information a town can actually use to make decisions.
“The question isn’t whether you support live music or support the neighbors. The question is whether your community is willing to do the work necessary to support both.”
What Dillon has done, and what it got right
According to local reporting, the neighbors who filed claims heard nothing back from the town between February and June, and later withdrew their claims in good faith. In August, the town council approved a statement saying it had made changes, but staff wouldn’t say what they were. A sound study by independent analysts, hired through the town’s litigation counsel, was withheld as attorney-client privileged.
In October, the town finally explained. The analysts found that the shape of the venue was working against it: with subwoofers in front of the stage, the bandshell was amplifying bass and sending it out of the venue. In other words, the stage built to make the music sound great was also helping it travel. The town moved the subwoofers to the sides of the stage in a cardioid arrangement, which steers low frequencies toward the audience and cancels some of what was escaping. It also re-tuned and re-angled the system, added real-time sound level monitoring, started Monday shows 30 minutes earlier, limited when the sound system can be used, and enforced a 10 p.m. soft curfew. It says it may replace the speakers in 2028.
Credit where it’s due. The subwoofer change was the right call, and the neighbors said so. They told reporters it was what they had been asking for, and their own readings late in the season showed levels up to 10 dB lower. Ten decibels is roughly what most people hear as half as loud. That’s a meaningful improvement.
Still, it raises a question. Bass from standard subwoofers spreads in every direction, including backward, and a hard bandshell will throw that energy right back out. Steering bass toward the audience with directional subwoofer setups like the one Dillon just installed is a well-known, widely used technique in live production. If it took an acoustical study, hired through the town’s litigation counsel, to arrive at that, that’s concerning. It suggests nobody was asking the practical questions until lawyers got involved.
Speaking of industry standards, many of the most effective steps cost little or nothing. Dillon has already taken a few, like the earlier Monday start times and the 10 p.m. curfew. Others are just as simple:
• Set clear bass limits at the mixing desk, measured with a meter setting that includes low frequencies, and trim the subs when readings get close.
• Mark and lock speaker and subwoofer positions so visiting crews can’t move them without sign-off.
• Put the venue’s sound limits in every artist agreement, so touring crews know the rules before they load in.
• Keep sound checks to predictable, reasonable hours.
• Publish the show calendar for neighbors, and give them a phone number that someone actually answers on show nights.
The subwoofer fix will help. But on its own, it won’t get Dillon where it needs to be. Lasting results usually take attention at all three points where sound can be managed.
Source, path, receiver
Sound can be managed in three places. The source is the stage, the speakers and the mix. The path is everything in between: distance, terrain, the shape of the venue, barriers. The receiver is the home where someone is trying to read, sleep or put a kid to bed.
Dillon has done real work at the source. But when it comes to noise complaints, I always say: trust but verify. Take every complaint seriously, then go measure it. To my knowledge, the town has not measured sound inside the affected homes even once. That’s telling.
Residents have done it themselves. I have seen video footage from inside homes in Dillon showing sound levels above 85 decibels during shows, on numerous occasions, and that’s on the standard meter setting that mostly ignores bass. On residents’ porches during one EDM concert, readings that include the bass hit 115 decibels. That is unacceptable by any standard. For perspective, Colorado’s noise law treats 50 decibels at night, measured outdoors at a residential property line, as the threshold for a public nuisance. Town-owned venues hosting concerts are exempt from that law. Which means the only thing standing between those neighbors and 85 decibels in their living rooms is the town’s own judgment.
That EDM reading is also a reminder that programming is a sound decision. A bass-heavy dance show and a bluegrass night are very different neighbors, even at the same overall volume. Who you book, how often, and on which nights shapes what the people next door live with.
A reading at the edge of a venue doesn’t tell you what’s happening in someone’s bedroom. Without that receiver data, nobody can say how much better things can get or what the next step should be.
Here’s something most people don’t realize: a lot of the time, the problem isn’t the volume. It’s the bass.
Most sound meters and noise rules use a standard setting built to match how our ears hear voices and everyday sounds. That setting mostly ignores low frequencies. So during the same song, at the same spot, a standard meter might read 75 decibels while a measurement that includes the bass reads 90. One number says things are under control. The other explains why a neighbor’s windows are rattling.
Bass also behaves differently once it leaves the venue. Walls and windows block a lot of the higher-pitched sound, but low frequencies travel farther and pass right through them. That’s why a show that seems reasonable in the parking lot can still feel like it’s in someone’s living room. It’s also exactly what Dillon’s own analysts found: the biggest problem was bass. This is why you measure inside the homes: to understand which low frequencies are getting in. Once you know that, you can target the fix.
Cities are catching on. More and more of them are adding bass standards to their sound rules, setting limits on the measurement that includes low frequencies, right alongside the standard one. Raleigh, North Carolina, approved new amplified sound rules in 2025 with separate limits for bass. Oxford, Mississippi, added them in 2021. Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has added them too, including bass limits measured inside homes. Dillon doesn’t have to invent anything. The models are already out there.
Let’s be honest about what’s possible. People who live that close to an outdoor amphitheater are going to hear it inside their homes. No speaker arrangement makes that go away. And for the people next door, how often the shows happen, and whether they get regular breaks between them, matters as much as how loud any one night is. The venue went from 36 events to 44 in a single year. But there is a lot the town can do to reduce the impact, and measuring at the receiver is how you find out which steps will matter most.
Transparency is your best friend
From what I understand, the residents near the amphitheater aren’t asking for the music to stop. They want to be communicated with. That’s the number one frustration we see in this work, in city after city. It’s rarely the sound alone. It’s the feeling that nobody is listening and nobody will tell you what’s going on.
We tell every client the same thing: transparency is your best friend. Share what you’re measuring. Explain what you’re changing and why. Tell people what to expect on show nights, and follow up when something goes wrong.
On this, Dillon has fallen short. Residents tell me they’ve been writing to the town for three years without a meaningful response. Neighbors who filed formal claims waited four months to hear anything back. The town announced it had made changes, then declined to say what they were. A sound study paid for with public money was kept behind attorney-client privilege. The town now says it has real-time sound monitoring at the venue. That’s useful, but only if the town shares what it measured. Data that stays in a control booth doesn’t build anyone’s trust.
I say that from experience. We once worked with a festival that had received more than 400 noise complaints the year before we got involved. We set up professional sound monitors with a public-facing dashboard, so residents, organizers and city staff could all see the same numbers in real time. We paired that with targeted sound mitigation and clear, regular communication with the neighbors. The festival ran at about the same levels as the year before. Complaints dropped to four.
Same levels. Ninety-nine percent fewer complaints. That’s what transparency does.
When a town owns the venue, it’s both the operator and the regulator, and that makes openness even more important. Dillon’s silence made a solvable problem harder.
I want to be clear about this. In more than 30 years in this work, and in more than 40 communities, I have never seen a town that produces the sound ignore the residents who live with it. Not once. Cities that own venues usually feel that responsibility more, not less. Dillon is the exception, and it shouldn’t be.
What we learned in Austin
When I led the City of Austin’s Music & Entertainment Division, we cut noise complaints by about 75 percent. People started calling me “the sound whisperer,” but there wasn’t any magic to it.
The thread I pulled was community psychology. Most complaints aren’t really about decibels. They’re about whether people feel heard, whether they know what to expect, and whether anyone will do something when it goes wrong. So we focused on compliance over enforcement and on process over technical mandates. We put venues and neighbors in the same room, shared what we were measuring, and built sound plans together. That approach, Community Sound Management, is what Sound Music Cities brings to cities today.
The equipment matters, too, and today’s sound systems can do more than most people think. Stubb’s, one of Austin’s best-known outdoor venues, uses a d&b audiotechnik system built to keep the sound pointed at the audience and out of the neighborhood. When Lady Gaga played there, I was standing right outside the fence and had to walk into the venue to make sure she was actually on stage. These systems work. Dillon says it may replace its speakers in 2028. When it does, that’s the standard to aim for.
The lesson I carried out of Austin is simple: the people living with the sound have to be part of the solution.
A neighbor down the road
Dillon isn’t the only Colorado community working through this. In Colorado Springs, the privately owned Ford Amphitheater opened in 2024 and drew hundreds of complaints in its first season, some from homes four to five miles away. The response there has been far from perfect. The complaints kept coming, and neighbors have challenged how sound is being measured.
But some of the basics happened in public view. The mayor and council president held a listening session. The city commissioned an independent noise study and said it would publish the results. The operator presented a mitigation plan covering physical, sound system and operational changes, including bigger sound walls and earlier end times.
Colorado Springs also shows why measurement matters. In 2025, the city logged 1,469 complaints through its reporting app, but more than 900 listed only the venue’s address, not where the sound was heard. Complaint counts alone can’t tell you where the problem is. Good measurement, in the right places, can.
Before the 2027 season
None of this came out of nowhere. In July 2018, in the very first summer after the renovation, the town council’s own minutes recorded noise complaints and a commitment to keep working on noise reduction. A year later, the town said its new sound system would help limit the impact on neighbors. That was seven seasons ago. The town knew sound was part of the deal from the start. What was missing was a plan to match the ambition.
Dillon invested close to $10 million to become a regional music destination. It hasn’t shown the same investment in sound compatibility, transparent measurement, thoughtful programming or relationships with its neighbors. The good news is that those things cost far less than a bandshell, and the town council has said it will take up amphitheater policy before the 2027 season. Here’s where I’d start.
1.Measure at the receiver: Commission independent measurements inside affected homes, including low-frequency sound, and use them to set targets for next season.
2.Make it public: Release the sound study findings and the venue’s sound policies, and post the real-time monitoring results after every show. Neighbors and fans should be working from the same facts.
3.Put neighbors at the table: Create a standing group of residents, venue staff and production crew that meets before, during and after the season.
4.Program with intention: Look at how many shows run each week, build in quiet nights so neighbors get a real break, match bass-heavy genres to the right nights with tighter bass limits, and pay attention to sound-check times. Make show frequency and breaks a standing part of the conversation with residents. Small scheduling choices can make a big difference to the people next door.
5.Write a plan: Pull it together into a Sound Impact Plan for the venue, with clear targets, including a limit for bass, plus monitoring and a simple way to report and resolve problems.
A city shouldn’t have to choose between being a great music destination and being a good neighbor. Good leadership makes those two goals inseparable. Dillon has already proven it can build one of the best little venues in the West. Now it has a chance to prove it can be a great neighbor, too.