No abstract

Stage acoustics were evaluated in six halls regarding solos (piano, harp, and violin) and chamber music (piano sonata, piano trio, and brass quintet). In each hall professional musicians were seated at two locations: with and without detached side reflectors. The performers expressed their opinions about hearing oneself, hearing others, ease of ensemble, and overall impression. Subjects in the audience were asked about the strength of individual parts and overall impression. A factor analysis yielded four groups among the musicians. Regarding overall impression string players favored the environments with side reflectors. An early-to-direct energy ratio (ED100) was more important than early support (STearly) and late support (STlate) subjectively. The optimum value of ED100 was V11 dB. The overall impression evaluated by the musicians was poorly correlated with the balance of individual parts evaluated by the audiences, indicating that there were orthogonal factors for designing the stage for solo and chamber music performances. [Work supported by the National Science Council of Taiwan.]

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A series of monaural and binaural acoustical measurements were taken at several source locations and multiple receiver locations in lecture halls, theaters, and multi-use rooms using the acoustical research instrumentation for architectural spaces (ARIAS) system. The rooms studied included a fire stair, small class rooms, lecture halls, theaters, and large, multi-use auditoria among others. Measurements of reverberation time, early decay time, early to late temporal energy ratios at various time periods, center time, lateral energy fractions, loudness, and interaural cross correlations were made. Reflectograms for locations within each room were also made. Summary graphs showing ranges of each measurement within each of the rooms and discussion of similarities and differences among the groups of rooms will be presented. [Work supported by the National Science Foundation.]

A dedicated, computer-based analysis system was developed to perform a complete set of acoustical measurements of recent interest in full-size rooms and in scale models of rooms. The measurements included reverberation time, early reverberation time, loudness, early to late temporal energy ratios, lateral energy fractions, interaural cross correlation, and speech transmission index among others. Measurements were made at multiple locations in ten large concert halls. Groups of listeners evaluated live music performances at three locations in each of the rooms using a seven point semantic differential rating scale. Correlation analysis and statistical modeling identified significant relationships among the qualities of the music in the room rated by the listeners with the physical measurements made in the rooms. Variations of subjective qualities were identified among the different rooms and within each of the rooms as well. The subjective qualities that contributed to overall acoustical impression were also identified. [Work supported by NSF.]