Acoustic Design in Concert Halls

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Jennifer Mallette History 546 2 August 2011 Acoustic Design in Concert Halls Acoustic Design in Concert Halls Concert Hall design has changed greatly since the first spaces of the 19th century. While new building materials such as reinforced concrete and plastics have made building structures like concert halls less expensive, they have also changed the way sound waves are reflected, absorbed, and diffused. New technology has helped the acoustic problems of most modern spaces of the 20th and 21st centuries and the new technology in acoustic design has given modern concert halls the near perfect acoustics of those of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Sound http://ericamacias.glogster.com/sound-waves http://ericamacias.glogster.com/sound-waves The first step in understanding how to design for sound is to understand what sound is. The Norton/ Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music explains that sound is “caused by vibration, which is communicated by the sound source to the air as fluctuations in pressure and then to the listener’s ear-drum. The faster the vibration, (or the greater its ‘frequency’) the higher the pitch. The greater the amplitude of the vibration, the louder the sound.”1 Acoustic Design Acoustics is the science of sound and hearing. “It treats the sonic qualities of rooms and buildings, and the transmission of sounds by the voice, musical instruments or electronic means.”2 “The study of the acoustics of buildings is immensely complicated because of the variety of ways in which sound is conveyed, reflected, diffused, absorbed etc. The design of buildings for performances has to account of such matters as the smooth and even representation of sound at all pitches in all parts of the building, the balance of clarity and blend and the directions in which reflected sound may impinge upon the audience. The use of

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