The evening headliners work like this: Mars Volta and Manu Chao play (essentially) opposite at the end of Friday, while Alejandro Escovedo, Swell Season (Oscar winners) and G Love play elsewhere about an hour earlier. On the same day, David Byrne and N.E.R.D. play simultaneously at 6:30 p.m. On Saturday evening, headliners Plant and Krauss (AMD Stage) will begin at 8:15 p.m., while Beck begins at 8:30 p.m. on the AT&T stage. An hour earlier, Roky Erickson, the Black Keys and Iron & Wine will all fight for a crowd together. Spiritualized will only have to pull from Duffy's crowd (or vice-versa) earlier in the day. On Sunday night, the Foo Fighters will perform unchallenged at 8:30 on the AT&T stage, and preceding that performance will be Band of Horses and Tegan & Sara both beginning at around 7:30 p.m. Gnarls Barkley and the Raconteurs will play opposite at 6:30 p.m.

The middle sections of the festival are a bit harder to plan for those of us interested in catching some local acts as well as out-of-town, independent "must-sees". On Friday afternoon, Yeasayer's set (1:30-2:30 p.m. on the Dell stage) is scheduled to end the minute Vampire Weekend's begins (2:30 p.m. on the AMD stage), so if you're trying to catch both buzz-worthy acts, you gotta hustle. Locals What Made Milwaukee Famous and the Strange Boys play (essentially) opposite each other as well, one beginning at 1:30, the other at 1:50 p.m. Seeing both solid Austin bands will be difficult, which is a shame (of course, it's not hard to see them other times around town if you're local, but if the bands were hoping to expose their act to some ACL attendees that don't typically see shows in bars, it'll be rough).

Keep reading and view the grid schedule after the jump.

Saturday's middle section features an unfortunately early set for Jamie Lidell, whose characteristically dance-fused, hip-hop influenced set might suffer from Friday's hangover-nursing late-comers, scheduled at 1:30 p.m. on the AT&T Blue Room stage. Also scheduled around that time is one other act that might (duh) want to lure some hip-hop and electro dance fans: Bavu Blakes (1:50 p.m., Austin Ventures). Later in the afternoon, Sharon Jones will perform opposite Band of Heathens and the Drive By Truckers. MGMT performs early in the day (12:30 p.m., AMD) with little competition from the indie rock genre on other stages. On Sunday, the Silversun Pickups will play opposite Neko Case (both begin at 4:30 p.m.), while White Denim kicks off their set at 5:15 p.m., making it hard to see all of the former (either Case or the Pickups) without missing some of the latter. Shooter Jennings fans will (maybe?) be upset that Blues Traveler is playing simultaneously, and Octopus Project battles the Kills and Adele in their 1:30 p.m. slot on Sunday.

Now, every year we get opinionated about the scheduling, even if we don't plan to attend, and this year is no different. Though crowd-splitting is certainly a concern for festival planners, a couple of the at-odds scheduling tactics are particularly unfortunate. As usual, even the most finely tuned itineraries and maps will be challenged by crowds and the distance between stages, which at times can seem more daunting than deciding which band you need to see and which you'd just like to see.

View the schedule here, and grab a PDF here. Still thinking about tickets? You can get a three-day pass for $170, and day passes are once again available, going for $80 each. There are some variations of those prices on Craigslist, but most offers are so close to the actual ticket price, they don't make driving to someone's house to pick them up worth the gas money.