The preferred level balance between direct, early, and late sound in concert halls.

Abstract

The preferred level balance between the direct, early, and late components of the sound field in a concert hall was studied by letting listeners manipulate sound field auralizations in an adjustment procedure featuring acoustics of two halls of contrasting designs; Berlin Konzerthaus (shoebox) and Berlin Philharmonie (vineyard). The room impulse responses measured at two positions in each hall were encoded for multichannel reproduction, split into direct, early, and late components, convolved with anechoic recordings of a symphony orchestra, and reproduced in a multichannel listening room. The listeners' task consisted of optimizing the level balance between the direct, early, and late components by adjusting the level of two of the components relative to one that was kept fixed. The results reveal a strong tendency to emphasize the early component for both positions in Berlin Philharmonie, where the early reflections contain less energy due to the fan shaped frontal auditorium and comparatively small effective side wall areas. In contrast, the median results for one position in Berlin Konzerthaus were within 1.5 dB of the actual acoustics of the hall, with statistically insignificant deviations. The relationship between the direct sound and early reflections is seen as a potential subject of further study.

Architectural Features That Make Music Bloom in Concert Halls

“…In one blind study, we asked subjects to control the level of the early reflections and the late reverberation separately in two different halls. The results were clear: in a vineyard-type hall, subjects raised the level of the early reflections much more than in a shoebox-type hall for the preferred sound [45]. In addition, the late reverberation is not enveloping as the high raked audience blocks hinder a uniform sound field around listeners.…”

Guest editors’ introduction to the special issue on “performance spaces for music: Acoustical and psychological measurements and their interactions” honoring Dr. Leo Beranek.

“…A major driving force of research in auditorium acoustics from its earliest days to the present is the complex question of how sound is perceived by the listeners. The papers by Henna Tahvanainen et al (2015; “Studies on the Perception of Bass in Four Concert Halls”) and of Aki Haapaniemi and Tapio Lokki (2015; “The Preferred Level Balance Between Direct, Early, and Late Sound in Concert Halls”) pick up this question and focus on how spectral and temporal timbre is perceived in rooms. The stimuli used in both of these studies were derived from measurements that were collected in several renowned European concert halls using the authors’ so called “virtual orchestra.” The timbre of sounds in concert halls is strongly controlled by the properties of the room’s boundaries.…”