Room Acoustics

Room acoustics is concerned with the behavior of sound generated within an enclosure. The basic influence on sound due to the enclosure is to generate many sound reflections: A large, plane, hard surface will produce a mirrorlike reflection of sound. The number of reflections we might be dealing with is considerable: An audience member in a large theater space receives about 40,000 reflections in the first second after the first sound arrives at the listener’s ears. After this first second, sound rays in the theater have experienced about 45 reflections. Another significant complication is that not all surfaces are flat; a bumpy surface will produce an impure reflection that is somewhat scattered. Comparison with behavior for light is instructive: Pure reflection occurs with a mirror; ...