New Methods in Architectural Acoustic Investigations to Evaluate the Acoustic Qualities of Concert Halls

Abstract

In recent years, efforts in architectural acoustics investigations have concentrated upon correlation between the physical data of a concert hall, on the one hand, and hearing events and judgments in the hall on the other hand. Contrary to earlier investigations in this field, these efforts do not concentrate upon finding the subjective correlate to an individual physical characteristic, e.g., reverberation time versus frequency early decay time, “Deutlichkeit,” and so on; nowadays, instead, the total hearing impression of an observer in a concert hail—the “Hörsamkeit”—s correlated with the total set of physical data measured in this room. L. Beranek, who started his work in architectural acoustics with exact calculations and measurements of rectangular rooms at the laboratory of F. V. Hunt, Harvard University, described the first important effort in this direction about 10 years ago. A deficiency of this and similar trials is the uncertainty of the subjective observations and judgments. In this respect in recent years, a great improvement has been attained by refining the collection of subjective judgments and by the aid of improved electro-acoustic transmission systems. A survey of these systems—especially head-related stereophonic systems—will be given and preliminary results will be reported. [The material in this paper is shared with this session and the F. V. Hunt Memorial Session I.]