Gary Li: Acoustic Reseach

When designing sound should be just as crucial as the form, experience, material, and light in a design. Sound is a different type of animal in that there are a lot of factors that go into sound design such as perception, sound pressure, and acoustic quality. One of the first examples of sound design was in the Fogg Museum Lecture Hall designed by Wallace Sabine. Sabine determined the acoustic quality of a room through a formula T=V/A*.161s, where T was the reverberation time, V was the room volume, and A was the total absorption area. He found that concert rooms had reverb times of 2-2.25 seconds, but the optimal time was 1 second. Now this begs the question of how do we determine what is the proper reverberation time. Sabine found that the reverb time could be calculated with . If you ask me I have no idea what this means but all I know is that its pretty complicated and hefty stuff. Not only does the form of the space have an effect of the acoustic quality but material also does. Different materials can either absorb, block, or cover-up the space, thus improving the sound quality of the room. If you go inside a movie theater you will usually see these types of materials such as drapes, acoustic paneling, and fabric-like materials. In sound design it is all about the balance between these different elements, which make the architecture all the better.