Characterization of the acoustic quality of classrooms in a music education facility

Abstract

Classrooms of a music education facility were characterized by the user by means of a questionnaire study and by acoustic impulse response measurements and subsequent calculation of reverberation time, definition, and other room acoustics parameters. The questionnaire study enabled to understand the preferences of students and music teachers regarding the acoustic quality of a total of twenty rooms for music practice and teaching. It was observed that preference for a certain room also depends on the instrument mostly played by the user. Three study rooms and three collective classrooms were the most cited ones and these have been evaluated according to ISO 3382. Opinions of the musicians showed to be coherent with the measurement data as the rooms considered to be dry had reverberation times around 0.3 seconds, and the rooms considered to be reverberant had reverberation times around 1.5 seconds. The six classrooms that were characterized as clear and well defined rooms, showed values for Clarity around 1 dB for live rooms and 14 to 22 dB for dry rooms. Definition remained above 43% for all rooms with Central Time below 24 ms for clarity rooms and less reverberant, and above 98 ms for the live rooms.