Room Acoustics
Applied Acoustics : Education : Course Pages : Room Acoustics
General course information
Course code: VTA145
Lecturer: Mendel Kleiner In your emails to me please do not forget to put [RAC] at the start of the subject field.
Assistant: Erkin Asutay
The tentative syllabus for this year's course is being prepared. I have however not received some information needed from the School of Architecture & Technology so I ask all students to come to the start of the course on Monday Jan 21, 2013 @ 9 a.m. It is not clear at this time ow many students that will participate in the course so we do not know if we will start in the School of Architecture or in the department's teaching lab. I am sorry for the inconvenience caused by this delay. The schedule is hopefully going to be available next week.
In any case please note that the work after the start of the 3rd week of the study period will require you to be in groups with students in the School of Architecture and Technology. The groups will probably be formed as 1 RAC student for every two AT students. The assignment will be done by the course administration.
Please note that the syllabus may be changed at short notice. Please check this web page several times every week.
Also please note that since most of the teaching in the course is done during the beginning of study period 3 it is important that you take part in the course from the start on January 21, 2013
After registration by the students present at the registration meeting and lecture on January 21, 2013, the course may be full and more students cannot be accepted. Those not registered at that time are welcome to register for the course in 2014.
Noteboard
Note that lab task 2 is reported on February 15. No scheduled activity on February 8.
20130204: Posted PDF of slides for lecture on psychometrics, psychoacoustics and acoustics.
20130207: Posted PDF of slides for lecture on concert hall acoustics.
20130213: Posted PDF of slides for lecture on theater and opera acoustics.
20130225: Postedd slides and other material relevant to the lecture on sound reinforcement and active sound field control and earlier lectures.
Grading principles
The course is graded based on your design competition contribution, the lab task hand-ins, and a written test at the end of the course.
The grading on the lab task hand-ins is done collectively for the groups. Both the design competition work and the written test are graded individually. Equal weighting will be applied to all three aspects.
Hand-ins
There is an official hand-in date and time for each lab task. In case your hand-in is delayed there will be a grade deduction by 50% for the first week of delay and 100% after that. In the case that the delay is caused by circumstances outside your control, such as equipment malfunction, act-of-God, or similar, appropriate allowance will be given.
Competition
The design competition contributions are graded according to the judgement of the course jury that tentatively consists of Drs Morten Mose Lund (AT), Mendel Kleiner (AA), Ulf Jansson (AT) and others.
The best student design contributions may be submitted to the International competition.
Acoustical Society of America & Newman Fund Student Design Competition brief (http://www.newmanfund.org/):
Written test
Course Literature
The book primarily used in the course will be the book by Long, M. : Architectural Acoustics.. The price of a preowned copy this book is about GBP35 from Amazon.co.uk. However, the book will be available for loan from the department provided that you pay a deposit of SEK 200 to our administrator. The deposit will be refunded in full upon your return of the book at the end of the course or no later than 2013 05 31.
These books will be available at the ra2013 shelf in the division library for use in the division or in the AT3 room on the 4th floor of the Architecture building.
Additionally excerpts may be required from:
- Beranek, L.L.: Concert Halls and Operas
- Blesser, B. et al.: Spaces speak: are you listening.
- Cavanaugh, W.J. et al. : Architectural acoustics.
- Doelle, L.L. : Environmental Acoustics.
- Hammond, M. : Performing Architecture.
- Hardy, H. : Building type basics for performing art facilities.
- Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer : Theatres.
- Lord, P. : The Architecture of Sound.
- Lord, P. : Detailing for Acoustics.
- Mehta, M. : Architectural Acoustics.
Contents and conditions for loans of books on the 'room acoustics' shelf in the division library.
List of formulae
Lab tasks
The lab task part of the course will start already in study period 3. You will report on your lab tasks by using your group's web page. Your lab web pages will be graded according to clarity, completeness, creativity, and discussion.
General
Lab task notes and other material for lab task 1:
Lab Task 1: CATT and geometrical acoustics
Anechoic wav-files
Lab notes and other material for lab task 2:
Lab Task 2: Excursion to study the acoustics of spaces
Lab notes and other material for lab 3:
Lab Task 3: Room Acoustic Measurements
Lab notes and other material for lab 4:
Lab Task 4: Scale modeling & small rooms
RAC2013 Lab reports & web pages
RAC2011 Lab reports & web pages
CATT software
We will use the CATT-Acoustic software to predict the acoustical characteristics of medium sized and large rooms. Download the student version from http://www.catt.se/. Send an email to info@catt.se to obtain the key to the student version of the software. There will be a number of (time-limited) full installations available on some of the computers at the division as needed later in the course. The manual/tutorial can be downloaded from
Some modeling is simplified by the use of Google's SketchUp software as a geometrical modeling preprocessor. Unfortunatey SketcUp 6 which is required for interfacing with CATT is no longer supported by Google. Please contact Erkin Asutay for solve this software problem.
For small rooms we will use COMSOL's FemLab software.
RoomCapture software
Students that use Microsoft Windows platform computers can download the RoomCapture software to measure the acoustical characteristics of rooms. Download the student version from
RoomCapture software download site.
You will be given the password and user name information via email.
RoomCapture software description.
Student that use Macintosh OSX platform computers are recommended to download the free trial version of the FuzzMeasure Pro 3 software from
FuzzMeasure software download site.
Student Design Competition
Announcement:
Announcement and Design Scenario for the 2013 Student Design Competition.
Examples of previous student competition entries may be found at The Robert Bradford Newman Student Award Fund.. The winning entries in the 2009 and 2011 competitions were entered by Chalmers student. These entries are available here:
Lectures
PDFs of slides shown at lectures will be posted here after the lecture
Lecture slides 20130129, Room acoustics review (EA).
Lecture slides 20130207, Music performance venues: Concert halls.
Lecture slides 20130211, Small performance spaces
Lecture slides 20130211, Veneklasen's method
Lecture slides 20130213, Theaters & Operas.
Lecture slides 20130213, Performing arts centers.
Lecture slides 20130221, Practice rooms.
Lecture slides 20130221, Stage shells.
Lecture slides 201302121, Sound absorption by audience.
Lecture slides 20130225, Sound reinforcement and electronic architecture systems.
Suggested extra material
For those of you interested in room acoustics, the following books will be of interest (in alphabetical order):
Y. Ando.: "Concert Hall Acoustics."
L. L. Beranek : "Concert Halls and Opera Houses--Music, Acoustics and Architecture"
L. Cremer et al.: "Principles and Applications of Room Acoustics. Vol 1."
L. Cremer et al.: "Principles and Applications of Room Acoustics. Vol 2."
I. Hoffman et al.: "Halls for Music Performance: Another Two Decades of Experience, 1982-2002"
J. W. Kopec : "The Sabines at Riverbank"
D. Lubman et al.: "Acoustics of Worship Spaces"
E. R. McCue et al.: "Acoustical Design of Music Education Facilities"
W. C. Sabine : "Collected Papers on Acoustics"
R. H. Talaske et al.: "Halls for Music Performance: Two Decades of Experience, 1962-1982"
R. H. Talaske et al.: "Theatres for Drama Performance: Recent Experience in Acoustical Design"
You will also find much material on room acoustics at http://www.catt.se/, and at http://asa.aip.org/ which is the website of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA). It is also useful to look at the collections of papers from the bi-annual AES conventions and at the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society which you will find at http://www.aes.org/. The European site http://www.eaa-fenestra.org/Products/ActaAcustica/ also carries room acoustics information but less accessible.
A site with many links to various manufacturers of electroacoustic equipment is http://www.audioscientific.com/.
Two good university links are http://audiolab.uwaterloo.ca/aa_links.html and http://www.acs.psu.edu/Links/links.htm..
A good link for online courses on room and building acoustics is http://www.armstrong.com.
This web page was revised by Mendel Kleiner on 2013-01-08.
