Reexamination of the favorable reverberation time of concert halls measured in a 3D synthesized sound field

Abstract

This paper examined the favorable reverberation time in concert halls for orchestral music. Anechoic music sources created by session recording were reproduced by a virtual orchestra with 45 loudspeakers set on concert hall stages and were recorded with a 32-channel spherical microphone at audience seats. Four orchestral music excerpts from the classical, romantic, and contemporary periods were chosen. By a fourth order Ambisonics playback in the laboratory, a series of psychological experiments were conducted. Twenty-one music experts judged the reverberance and clarity of the presented sound. It is found that midfrequency reverberation time RTM (octave band average for 500 and 1000 Hz) and early decay time EDTM are both highly correlated with the reverberance, and their favorable values are determined by the tempo: speed or pace of the music, not by the chronological classification of music. For the tempo from Presto to Allegro, the favorable RTM ranges from 1.7 to 2.2 s, and if extrapolation of this result is assumed, the favorable RTM ranges from 2.0 to 2.2 s from Presto to Andante.