Perception of room mode damping from a musical perspective

Abstract

Undamped acoustic modes inside rooms - especially in small ones - are often responsible for a decreased acoustic quality, in particular when the rooms’ main function is ”critical listening” and/or ”playing musical instruments”. Mainly in the latter case, treatment with broadband absorption is not always efficient and yields either uneven or too short reverberation times. Rehearsal rooms are typical cases where the ”liveness” of the space needs to be guaranteed and putting a broadband absorber would make it ”too dry”.Rehearsal room design can be seen as a search for an optimal compromise between sound strength and reverberation time across the audible part of the spectrum. This contribution presents results from listening test experiments, in which the perception of modes was investigated, in particular with respect to what extent differences in axial room mode damping are audible.Undamped acoustic modes inside rooms - especially in small ones - are often responsible for a decreased acoustic quality, in particular when the rooms’ main function is ”critical listening” and/or ”playing musical instruments”. Mainly in the latter case, treatment with broadband absorption is not always efficient and yields either uneven or too short reverberation times. Rehearsal rooms are typical cases where the ”liveness” of the space needs to be guaranteed and putting a broadband absorber would make it ”too dry”.Rehearsal room design can be seen as a search for an optimal compromise between sound strength and reverberation time across the audible part of the spectrum. This contribution presents results from listening test experiments, in which the perception of modes was investigated, in particular with respect to what extent differences in axial room mode damping are audible.