Rose Music Center at The Heights — Attraction in Huber Heights

On August 2nd, 2025 my wife and I attended a concert featuring April Wine, Molly Hatchet, and Sweet at the Rose Music Center in Huber Heights, OH. Before I go into my review, I want to state that my wife and I are prolific concert goers. Combined, we have watched over 1000 live concerts around the country. The concert last night at the Rose Music Center was by far the worst concert we have ever attended. We have been attending concerts at the Rose music center for years. Each experience has been a remarkable one until last night. A little background on the venue. The Rose Music Center is a first-class facility offering food, drinks, and many other amenities that are lacking at other music venues around the country. We have always loved this venue. It has brought in several of the best bands in the country. Last night’s experience was totally destroyed by their sound engineers. The entire performance was literally, physically painful to listen to. Not because the bands were bad, but because the sound engineers apparently are tone deaf when it comes to pushing their sound system beyond its limits. I honestly am at a loss as to how this could happen at a venue that has had such enjoyable music. It was so bad that we literally had to leave our seats to get away from the horrible distortion coming from the venue’s sound system. The sound was harsh, muddy, and fatiguing for my wife and me. The clarity of the sound was so bad that we could barely make out the vocals during the entire show. In all of our years of attending concerts, neither my wife nor I have ever gotten up to leave the venue and miss the show because the concert was too loud. Last night it happened. We got up in the middle of Molly Hatchet's set to save our ears. A trained audio engineer should carefully monitor sound levels throughout the performance, utilizing gain structure management and compression to prevent clipping and overdriving. I do not know if the sound engineer at the concert last night was employed by Rose Music Center or by the artists. All I know is that they clearly had no idea what they were doing. If the Rose Music Center is lucky, their very expensive sound system was not damaged as a result of the poor sound engineer’s work or obvious lack of knowledge on how to set up and manage the sound for a large concert venue. We have tickets to another show in September. If we have the same experience at this upcoming show, we will seriously rethink our choice to continue to attend concerts at this particular venue. Concerts are expensive. We drive over two hours to attend a concert at this venue. The money we spend is excessive, but we go because we love live music and the experience. If we attend another show at this venue and have a similar experience, we will just stop attending shows at this venue. I wish I could demand my money back after last night’s show. It literally was the first time we have left the venue immediately after the headliner band started their set. A solution to a distorted sound system is to wear earplugs, however, earplugs ruin the experience of a live concert in our opinion. Proper sound management of the facility is crucial to the entire show. Loud music is only this painful when the sound system is pushed far beyond it's limits to distortion. I want to congratulate the sound engineers for last night’s work. You have earned the title of the worst sound engineer in the world. Here is your gold star for pretending to be a sound...

I have seen several shows here & all of them were great! There are no bad seats in the house, as near as I can tell, and it's a lot cooler (temperature - wise) than Fraze. And the parking situation is the best of any local venue.

HOWEVER, for tonight's Peter Frampton show there were two issues involving RUDE patrons, which were very irritating. 1. People were smoking in their seats & in the restrooms, which made it hard to breathe at times, and we had to smell disgusting pot & cigarette smoke the entire evening.

People repeatedly got up & walked in/out of their seats DURING THE SONGS, like during the most amazing parts of the songs people would suddenly stand & at that very moment have to leave the row, making everyone stand up & then walk in front of us while PETER FRAMPTON was performing! I couldn't believe how many times it happened. It really dampened the magic. One woman got up, left briefly & then came back about 50 seconds later & made us all move again, both times during the talk-box portion of Frampton's most iconic song, Do You Feel Like I Do. The same handful of people left & returned about 10 times during the performance, mostly to get more beer. It was so rude!!!! What happened to waiting until the artist is between songs to get up so you don't disturb the enjoyment of those around you!

I don't know what can be done about this, but I wish someone at Rose would come up with a viable solution. Schuster doesn't let people return to their seats until intermission. Maybe placing workers at the base of the stairs & holding people from returning to seats until a song has ended would encourage people to stay in their seats. Or perhaps beer & concession sales could be halted once the show has started. At the very least, printing a reminder on tickets to be courteous & considerate of other patrons by going in/out of your seat/row between songs. And also making an announcement just before the show to remind people to limit their coming/ going to when the artist is not...

This is my second time at this venue, and I had a better experience than the first. The facility is very clean, the line for admission moved very quickly, which was good because it was raining. Small collapsible umbrellas are allowed just not the large umbrellas with the point on the end. If you've never been the The Rose this is an outdoor venue, but the entire seating area is under a permanent roof. The back and sides of the venue are open. There's also giant fans on the ceiling to circulate are. There is not a bad seat in the house. The capacity is about 4,000 people, and there is also video screens on either side of the stage. Prices for food and drink are fair. Pizza, nachos, hotdogs, hamburgers, pretzels, and popcorn were some of the items I saw available for purchase. Now, for the performance. The War and Treaty opened up and they were amazing. I was not familiar with them, but am now a fan. After their 30 minute set which began at 7 pm sharp there was just about a 30 minute intermission while the stage was set up. John and his band came on and performed for just about two hours. The show was one of the best I've been to. This visuals wet well with the theme of the show. The music sounded wonderful and he sounds even better live. If you get a chance to...