Acoustical Design of A Concert Hall
Acoustical Design of A Concert Hall
Concert Hall
What is a good Concert Hall?
A good Concert hall has the audience and musicians contained
within the same space with no separating structure between them.
It balances the acoustical energy of various sections of the orchestra and
creates a rich and full orchestral tone
It counteracts the directional characteristics of individual musical
instruments and blends them into a whole
It enables members of the orchestra to hear each other better
It accommodates lighting fixtures and establishes permanent microphone
locations
Acoustical Design of
Auditorium for
Speech
To provide the desirable degree of intelligibility and to enable the audience to
appreciate the subtleties of the speaker (actor, preacher or politician), in
addition to
the General Requirements discusses, particular attention should be paid to the
following points:
In the interest of excluding exterior noise, lecture halls are seldom designed with
natural lighting and ventilation. This necessitates a complex ceiling,
incorporating
mechanical and lighting components into the sound-reflective ceiling.
Seating Capacity : 130
Volume : 455 cu m
Audience Area : 130 sq m
Volume / Seat : 35 sq m
Audience Area / Seat : 1 sq m
Mid Freq RT : 0.75 sec
The exact purpose of the lecture hall should be ascertained well in advance because
rooms to be used for demonstrations or for audio-visual education require
particular
care in their acoustical design and detailing.
Lecture halls with volumes up to about 150 to 200 will not require a sound
amplification system if their acoustical design is based on the recommendations
discussed so far.
For a rectangular lecture room with modest capacity of people, a diagonal seating
layout is particularly recommended. It automatically eliminates undesirable
parallel
reflections at the podium and makes use of splayed reflecting surfaces
Classrooms with rectangular shapes, level floors and floor areas normally between
59 to 93 sq m seldom create any serious acoustical problems.
The rear wall opposite to the speaker, even if not treated acoustically, causes no
audible acoustical defect (such as echo or long-delayed reflection), because the
length of the class room is less and the bulletin boards, wall tables and other
furniture elements dissipate and diffuse a considerable fraction of the incident
sound.
The RT of fully occupied classrooms should be approximately 0.6
to 0.8 seconds at mid-frequency, depending on the volume.