Toward better acoustics for concert halls

OCT 01, 1980

Full reverberation and good spectral balance are important, but recent experiments point also to the need for directional balance—“enveloping” the listener with sound.

DOI: 10.1063/1.2913787

Manfred R. Schroeder

Concert‐hall acoustics are governed by the meshing of two sets of problems: on the one hand the physical problems of wave propagation and attenuation in irregularly bounded spaces and, on the other hand, the psychological problems of how the human listener perceives the sounds impinging on his ears and what he prefers to hear.

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More about the authors

Manfred R. Schroeder, Drittes Physikalisches Institut, University of Göttingen, Germany; Acoustics Research Center at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, N.J.; and the Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique-Musique, Paris.