TY - JOUR
T1 - Suitable reverberation time for halls for rock and pop music
AU - Adelman-Larsen, Niels Werner
AU - Thompson, Eric Robert
AU - Gade, Anders Christian
N1 - Copyright (2010) Acoustical Society of America. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the Acoustical Society of America.
PY - 2010
Y1 - 2010
N2 - The existing body of literature regarding the acoustic design of concert halls has focused almost exclusively on classical music, although there are many more performances of popular music, including rock and pop. Objective measurements were made of the acoustics of 20 rock music venues in Denmark and a questionnaire was used in a subjective assessment of those venues with professional rock musicians and sound engineers as expert listeners. Correlations between the measurements show that clarity, including bass frequencies down to 63 Hz, is important for the general impression of the acoustics of the hall. The best-rated halls in the study have reverberation times that are approximately frequency independent from 0.6 to 1.2 s for hall volumes from 1000 to 6000 m3. The worst rated halls in the study had significantly higher reverberation times in the 63 and 125 Hz bands. Since most audiences at rock concerts are standing, absorption coefficients were measured with a standing audience from 63 Hz to 4 kHz. These measurements showed that a standing audience absorbs about five times as much energy in mid-/high-frequency bands as in low-frequency bands.
AB - The existing body of literature regarding the acoustic design of concert halls has focused almost exclusively on classical music, although there are many more performances of popular music, including rock and pop. Objective measurements were made of the acoustics of 20 rock music venues in Denmark and a questionnaire was used in a subjective assessment of those venues with professional rock musicians and sound engineers as expert listeners. Correlations between the measurements show that clarity, including bass frequencies down to 63 Hz, is important for the general impression of the acoustics of the hall. The best-rated halls in the study have reverberation times that are approximately frequency independent from 0.6 to 1.2 s for hall volumes from 1000 to 6000 m3. The worst rated halls in the study had significantly higher reverberation times in the 63 and 125 Hz bands. Since most audiences at rock concerts are standing, absorption coefficients were measured with a standing audience from 63 Hz to 4 kHz. These measurements showed that a standing audience absorbs about five times as much energy in mid-/high-frequency bands as in low-frequency bands.
U2 - 10.1121/1.3263611
DO - 10.1121/1.3263611
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 20058970
SN - 0001-4966
VL - 127
SP - 247
EP - 255
JO - Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
JF - Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
IS - 1
ER -