21st Annual Student Research Conference
Impulse Response Measurements as a Method of Obtaining the Reverberation Time of a Concert Hall
Eric A. Dieckman
Dr. Ian Lindevald, Faculty Mentor
Schroeder (1965) developed a method for obtaining the reverberation time of a hall using impulse response measurements, whose ultimate result is equivalent to an average of infinitely many decay curves. Schroeder's method exploits the fact that the impulse response, which is a record of the strength and arrival times of direct sound and all the reflections from the hall's surfaces, contains all the relevant acoustical information for a specific source-receiver path. We have written a program in the graphical LabVIEW environment to control the capture and analysis of this impulse response data to determine the reverberation time of a concert hall. We used this program to study the Ophelia Parrish Concert Hall at Truman State University prior to anticipated acoustical modifications. A dual-decay analysis was implemented to find an early reverberation time of (2.07 ± 0.02 [1%]) seconds and a late reverberation time of (5.8 ± .6 [10%]) seconds.
Keywords: Acoustics
Topic(s):Physics
Presentation Type: Oral Paper
Session: 55-4
Location: VH 1416
Time: 3:30