Aspects of the acoustical design and properties of Christchurch Town Hall,New Zealand

The Christchurch Town Hall (2650 seats) is the major hall in a complex which includes a 986 seat theatre. It was opened on 30 September 1972 and was designed primarily as a choral symphony hall. Reverberation time (125 Hz to 2 kHz) in excess of 2·2 seconds with the hall full is provided by a volume of 20 500 m³ and reflective surfaces. The basic design aim, provision of relatively strong early lateral reflections, is achieved by large interior oblique reflectors which hang free from the boundaries of the reverberant volume. The resulting early lateral energy and long R.T. gives the hall a combination of reverberance, envelopment and clarity. The paper gives an account of design aims and studies including a ray tracing computer program with an interactive graphics output. Measurements of T₆₀, T₁₅ and integrated early energy have been carried out in the hall. Echograms and other measured data are presented. Clarity has been measured by a speech intelligibility test with the Hall empty except for 40 participants. With T₆₀ at 500 Hz 2·7 seconds, the intelligibility was better than the Peutz criterion for public address systems.     

Über messungen des seitenschallanteils in verschiedenen sälen und in raummodellen

The significance of early lateral reflections with regard to subjective acoustical quality (especially ‘spaciousness’) in concert halls has been discussed in several papers over the last four years. In this paper some criteria for the lateral sound energy described in these publications are compared with each other, then a simple measuring system is presented for evaluating the fraction of lateral reflections in real rooms as well as in 1:50 scaled models. On the basis of some experimental results, the influence of room shape on the lateral sound in ratio is discussed. The distribution of side-wall reflections turns out to be most well-balanced in rectangular rooms. In contrast there are areas of deficient lateral sound energy in all the halls examined which have trapezoidal or other non-rectangular shapes.     

Predicted and experimental results of acoustic parameters in the new Symphony Hall in Pamplona, Spain

Two room acoustical simulation software have been used to predict the main acoustic parameters of a Symphony Hall in the planning stage, when only drawings were available. The modelled room is the Symphony Hall of the Conference Hall of Navarre, in Pamplona, Spain. Although the values of the calculation parameters (number of rays, reflection order, etc.) recommended by each software are slightly different, in this work the same values were used for both programs. Once the Hall was built, experimental results were obtained using the MLS-measurement technique. The values predicted and measured for several parameters defined in ISO 3382 at 9 receiver positions are compared. Even though the values predicted by both software are very similar for most of the acoustic parameters, there are notable differences at particular values, mainly when evaluating energy ratios. Different statistical corrections for late reflections between both programs seem to be the main reason for these differences. A more exhaustive knowledge of scattering coefficients is required to improve predictive accuracy. Important differences at 250 Hz frequency band were found between calculated and measured values probably due to the yet to be implemented seat dip effect in room simulation software. The comparison of calculated and measured impulse responses seems to be the first choice for the assessment of room simulation software. However, it should be kept in mind that its usability is also determined by many additional features. This work is not only a comparison of software dealing with the same object as well as equal input data but also shows the power of this kind of tool to predict the acoustic parameters of a room before its construction.     

Wall diffuser designs for acoustical renovation of small performing spaces

This paper investigates the material characteristics of diffusers for acoustical renovation of existing small performing spaces. Consideration is given to acoustical effects on sound fields through the practical cases of two performing halls: the Chamber Hall (450 seats) and the M-Theater (630 seats) in the Sejong Performing Arts Center, Seoul. The Chamber Hall was completely refurbished into a recital hall from its previous shape of a rectangular conference space. The saw-tooth shaped wall diffuser profile in the Chamber Hall was designed using glass-fiber reinforced concrete for mid-frequency sound diffusion. The M-Theater was renovated as a live and intimate space for dramatic performances with a design that included more seats on the upper floors and additional spaces above ceiling reflectors. The vertically-patterned diffuser profile with protruded cubic surfaces in the M-Theater was designed using glass-fiber reinforced gypsum for sound diffusion in the major speech frequency range. Designed diffuser profiles were evaluated for both halls by measurements of scattering and diffusion coefficients of the 1:10 scale model diffusers. The effects of diffusers in both halls were also investigated by covering the lateral walls close to the stages with reflective materials to control diffusive surfaces. As a result, spatial uniformity increased with diffusive wall profiles in both halls.     

Influence of absorption properties of materials on the accuracy of simulated acoustical measures in 1:10 scale model test

This study investigated the absorption characteristics of materials in a multi-purpose hall using computer models, 1:10 scale model and actual hall measurements of Gimhae Arts Hall (GAH), in order to predict and evaluate the acoustical characteristics. The elements of this scale model, such as reflecting walls, seats, audience, and absorption banners, were made with materials selected according to their absorption coefficients, measured in a 1:10 scale model reverberation chamber. After the real hall was completed, in situ acoustical measurements were conducted in the GAH and compared with those of the scale model hall. Comparison of these measurements showed that the delay time of the major reflections in the scale model hall was similar to that of the real hall. However, the reverberation time especially at low frequencies showed a difference between the scale model hall and the real hall measurements. The results of computer simulations for both scale model and actual hall showed that the absorption of seats and audience, the structural detail of the reflecting walls with different thickness and air spaces, and the duct facilities in the open-type ceiling are the major differences. It was confirmed that there are more complicated absorption characteristics in the scale model design of a multi-purpose hall than a concert hall.     

A simple method to detect audible echoes in room acoustical design

A simple method to detect audible echoes is proposed as an objective criterion for room acoustics. This method evaluates the perceptibility of sound reflections that are generated by an impulsive sound source and identifies from reflectograms harmful reflections perceived as echoes. Particularly with this method, the masking effect of reverberation is taken into consideration, which cannot be treated sufficiently by the existing objective criteria. The applicability to room acoustical design is verified by evaluating the impulse responses measured in real halls where audible echoes occurred. It is shown that the proposed method detects audible echoes at an accuracy of more than 90% and would be suitable for practical use.     

The design and construction of solid concentrators for ultrasonic energy

From theoretical and experimental considerations the influence of the concentrator mass on the operation of the magnetostrictive vibrator are considered with a view to the design and construction of an acoustical concentrator. The work is principally concerned with the mechanical force field appearing in the concentrator. From this analysis follows the selection of the material required for the concentrator which is programme tested on a computer. The calculated concentrator frequency is only approximate and to achieve optimum efficiency the system will require specific tuning.     

Evaluation of some transport coefficients for degenerated semiconductors

In this work the evaluation of the most important transport coefficients (mobility, thermopower, Hall coefficient factor, Lorentz number, magnetoresistance, constant of transversal Nernst-Ettingshausen effect) in the case of combined scattering is presented for strongly degenerated semiconductors. Some relations also were found for the exponent of the energy dependence on relaxation time for polar scattering in case of mobility, Hall coefficient factor and thermopower. By means of Bethe-Sommerfeld series mean values for the two most frequent cases of combined scattering were determined, those for the acoustical mode and ionized impurity scattering and the longitudinal optical mode and ionized impurity scattering.We would like to thank professor E. Klier for some valuable reminders for which we are obliged to him.     

Theoretical and Experimental Investigation of the Magnetic Field of a Strongly Magnetized Permanent Magnet

An analytical expression is obtained for the magnetic strength of a permanent magnet in the form of a rectangular parallelepiped uniformly magnetized at an angle to its lateral faces. The results from experimental measurements of the magnetic field strength of a permanent magnet in the form of a rectangular parallelepiped using a Hall sensor are presented and compared to those from analytical calculations.     

声纳导流罩吸声障板声学特性的研究

本文研究内容属于舰艇声兼容性技术研究的一部分。应用声学软件SYSNOISE计算了,声纳定向发射时某试验用声纳导流罩及尾部吸声障板的声场特性,同时进行相同工况的水下模型试验。计算结果与试验结果吻合良好,说明应用声学软件对声纳声场进行计算是一种可行的方法,有可能推广至其他的水下模型的声场计算。结果数据反映了吸声障板对声纳定向发射时声场的影响,为舰艇总体声纳导流罩内吸声障板的结构设计、声兼容设计提供依据。     

Computer model investigations on the balance between stage and pit sources in opera houses

The acoustical balance between the singer on the stage and the orchestra in the pit is typically found inside an opera house. The competition of the two sources is crucial, since in an opera the singer and the orchestra are performing at the same time. This topic of balance is receiving increasing attention in recent years, but several aspects are still to be clarified. The aim of this work is twofold: firstly the procedure for the acoustical qualification of the balance between the singer and the orchestra is investigated and secondly the means of controlling the balance at the design stage or during renovations is considered. For both tasks the study was conducted in a group of opera houses modelled within an acoustical CAD program. As regards the qualification of the balance this investigation compares the directional characteristics of two loudspeakers and of a dodecahedron omnidirectional loudspeaker in the emulation of a soprano during simulated room acoustics measurements. It is shown that, in order to emulate a soprano singer, the directional characteristics of the source on the stage are quite important. The control of balance was also studied and the work reserves a special emphasis to the case of historical opera houses. In fact, when such theatres are refurbished, the range of possible architectural interventions is often limited to the orchestra pit only, due to the heritage nature of the hall which prevents from any substantial change in the area of the forestage. For this reason it is important to investigate the effectiveness of such limited interventions in the pit, and this is done here by a detailed study of the effects on balance of some major changes of the orchestra pit only.     

Acoustical design of the Grieg Memorial Hall in Bergen

The Grieg Memorial Hall in Bergen, Norway, finished in 1978, is a multi-purpose hall primarily intended for concerts. To cater for other uses, it is equipped with a large stage and constructed in such a way that it can be converted to serve for theatre, opera, ballet, shows and congresses. The orchestra enclosure is demountable and a loudspeaker system for speech reinforcement can be lowered from the ceiling just in front of the stage opening. The shape of the hall was designed using a computer program mathematical model for three-dimensional sound ray tracing. The hall being fan shaped, sufficient lateral reflections are provided by large reflecting elements hung freely below the ceiling. The resulting distribution of reflected sound energy gives the hall a fine balance between reverberance, fullness of tone and clarity. Measurements of pulse response, reverberation time and speech intelligibility tests are presented.     

Subjective preference tests for sound fields in concert halls simulated by the aid of a computer

In the context of optimal acoustic design of concert halls, preference tests for simulated sound fields with various combinations of early discrete reflections and subsequent reverberation were conducted and the results compared with objective parameters. The results show that lateral early reflections which yield a small value of the interaural cross correlation give more preferred judgments than do non-lateral ones. The most preferred initial time delay (or scale factor for the dimensions of concert halls) can be determined by the long-time autocorrelation function of a music motif and by the total amplitude of both early reflections and the subsequent reverberation. As a comprehensive design concept, an “overall preference” for listeners is introduced here from the preference results.     

Radiation and reflection acoustical fields of an annular phased array

The characteristics of the radiation and reflection acoustical fields of an annular phased array are investigated. The effects of the element number, element radius, interelement spacing, centre frequency, focus position, and other parameters on the radiation acoustical field of the annular phased array is theoretically studied. In experiment, an annular transducer with 8 equal-area elements is designed and fabricated, and a series of experimental measurements are conducted. The radiation acoustical field and its reflection on a liquid-solid interface are theoretically and experimentally studied. The experimental result is in good agreement with the theoretical one.     

Engaging concert hall acoustics is made up of temporal envelope preserving reflections

Strong, exciting, and engaging sound is perceived in the best concert halls. Here, it is shown that wideband early reflections that preserve the temporal envelope of sound contribute to the clear and open acoustics with strong bass. Such reflections are fused with the direct sound due to the precedence effect. In contrast, reflections that distort the temporal envelope render the sound weak and muddy because they partially break down the precedence. The presented findings are based on the earlier psychoacoustics research, and confirmed by a perceptual evaluation with six simulated concert halls that have same monaural room acoustical parameter values according to ISO3382-1.     

Current and strain-induced spin polarization in InGaN/GaN superlattices

The lateral current-induced spin polarization in InGaN/GaN superlattices (SLs) without an applied magnetic field is reported. The fact that the sign of the nonequilibrium spin changes as the current reverses and is opposite for the two edges provides a clear signature for the spin Hall effect. In addition, it is discovered that the spin Hall effect can be strongly manipulated by the internal strains. A theoretical work has also been developed to understand the observed strain-induced spin polarization. Our result paves an alternative way for the generation of spin polarized current.     

An ultrasonic transducer array for velocity measurement in underwater vehicles

A correlation velocity log (CVL) is an ultrasonic navigation aid for marine applications, in which velocity is estimated using an acoustic transmitter and a receiver array. CVLs offer advantages over Doppler velocity logs (DVLs) in many autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) applications, since they can achieve high accuracy at low velocities even during hover manoeuvres. DVLs require narrow beam widths, whilst ideal CVL transmitters have wide beam widths. This gives CVLs the potential to use lower frequencies thus permitting operation in deeper water, reducing power requirements for the same depth, or allowing the use of smaller transducers. Moving patterns in the wavefronts across a 2D receiver array are detected by calculating correlation coefficients between bottom reflections from consecutive transmitted pulses, across all combinations of receiver pairings. The position of the peak correlation value, on a surface representing receiver-pairing separations, is proportional to the vessel's displacement between pulses. A CVL aimed primarily for AUVs has been developed. Its acoustical and signal processing design has been optimised through sea trials and computer modelling of the sound field. This computer model is also used to predict how the distribution of the correlation coefficients varies with distance from the peak position. Current work seeks to increase the resolution of the peak estimate using surface fitting methods. Numerical simulations suggest that peak estimation methods significantly improve system precision when compared with simply identifying the position of the maximum correlation coefficient in the dataset. The peak position may be estimated by fitting a quadratic model to the measured data using least squares or maximum likelihood estimation. Alternatively, radial basis functions and Gaussian processes successfully predict the peak position despite variation between individual correlation datasets. This paper summarises the CVL's main acoustical features and signal processing techniques and includes results of sea trials using the device.     

Acoustical remodeling of a large fan-type auditorium to enhance sound strength and spatial responsiveness for symphonic music

The Grand Theater in the Sejong Performing Arts Center in Seoul, Korea is a proscenium hall with 3022 seats. Originally built in 1978, the Grand Theater was remodeled in 2004 to provide variable reverberation time (RT) using a sound system. Recently, a second remodeling was scheduled to enhance the hall’s acoustic quality, especially its RT, sound strength (G) and binaural quality index (BQI = 1-IACCE3), based on architectural acoustic analysis. In the remodeling plan, the wall covering and chair materials were changed to produce longer RT and higher G. For the remodeling design, side balconies were added to the first and third floors to provide lateral reflections to the audience area. The orchestra shell and various ceiling/wall reflectors were planned to provide more early reflections to the audience area. To verify the design, the effects of these structures on the sound pressure levels and spatial parameters of early sound in the audience area were investigated by open-type 1:10 scale model measurement. In addition, the acoustical qualities of the remodeled hall were evaluated using computer simulations and 1:50 scale model measurement. The results show that G was improved by 5 dB and BQI by 0.24, whereas the occupied RT at mid-frequencies became variable from 1.47 to 2.24 s.     

The dip effect under integer quantized Hall conditions

In this work we investigate an unusual transport phenomenon observed in two-dimensional electron gas under integer quantum Hall effect conditions. Our calculations are based on the screening theory, using a semi-analytical model. The transport anomalies are dip and overshoot effects, where the Hall resistance decreases (or increases) unexpectedly at the quantized resistance plateaus intervals. We report on our numerical findings of the dip effect in the Hall resistance, considering GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures in which we investigated the effect under different experimental conditions. We show that, similar to overshoot, the amplitude of the dip effect is strongly influenced by the edge reconstruction due to electrostatics. It is observed that the steep potential variation close to the physical boundaries of the sample results in narrower incompressible strips, hence, the experimental observation of the dip effect is limited by the properties of these current carrying strips. By performing standard Hall resistance measurements on gate defined narrow samples, we demonstrate that the predictions of the screening theory is in well agreement with our experimental findings.     

Two-dimensional poroelastic acoustical foam shape design for absorption coefficient maximization by topology optimization method

Optimal shape design of a two-dimensional poroelastic acoustical foam is formulated as a topology optimization problem. For a poroelastic acoustical system consisting of an air region and a poroelastic foam region, two different physical regions are continuously changed in an iterative design process. To automatically account for the moving interfaces between two regions, we propose a new unified model to analyze the whole poroelastic acoustical foam system with one set of governing equations; Biot's equations are modified with a material property interpolation from a topology optimization method. With the unified analysis model, we carry out two-dimensional optimal shape design of a poroelastic acoustical foam by a gradient-based topology optimization setting. The specific objective is the maximization of the absorption coefficient in low and middle ranges of frequencies with different amounts of a poroelastic material. The performances of the obtained shapes are compared with those of well-known wedge shapes, and the improvement of absorption is physically interpreted.