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The Search for Excellence in Auditorium Acoustics

Article  in  Acoustics Australia / Australian Acoustical Society · April 2015

DOI: 10.1007/s40857-015-0012-9

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Acoust Aust (2015) 43:25–31
DOI 10.1007/s40857-015-0012-9

ORIGINAL PAPER

The Search for Excellence in Auditorium Acoustics

Mike Barron

Received: 22 December 2014 / Accepted: 20 February 2015 / Published online: 9 April 2015
© Australian Acoustical Society 2015

Abstract The scientific approach to room acoustics is now well over a hundred years old. Yet two concert halls from the
nineteenth century (the Musikvereinssaal, Vienna of 1870 and the Concertgebouw, Amsterdam of 1888) are still viewed as
among the best in the world, as is the first product of a scientific approach (Boston Symphony Hall, Massachusetts of 1900).
Has a century of research and building new auditoria failed to make any progress? One is reminded of the situation with
violins, modern violin makers fight to compete with the reputation of Stradivarius’ violins built 300 years ago. With auditorium
acoustics, the search has been long, with bursts of activity at certain times often in response to new experimental techniques.
Considerable progress has been made but the search is not over. This article hopes to elaborate on the challenges involved.

Keywords Auditorium acoustics · Concert halls · Stage acoustics · Opera houses

1 Introduction the hall is rectangular, which had by then already achieved

Any study of room acoustics includes the remarkable work
by Wallace Sabine. Consider his position: he had to edu-
cate himself (no sensible understanding of sound in enclosed
spaces existed), he took on a problem that all perceptive peo-
ple were aware of, but the scientific minds of the day had
avoided, he had to rely on human ears as a receiving device
and the space he had been asked to improve had more than
one acoustic problem. The initial page of his first publica-
tion in 1900, titled “Reverberation”, provides a clear, frank
account of his predicament. And 3 years after first becoming
involved in acoustics and before his first publication, Sabine
was asked to consult on the new Boston concert hall! His
new reverberation time theory resolved the question of the
appropriate height of the ceiling; in other respects he sensi-
bly relied closely on known precedents. The result has been
an acoustical triumph but in retrospect one should acknowl-
edge that Sabine had two pieces of good luck. The plan of
M. Barron (B)
Fleming & Barron, Combe Royal Cottage, Bathwick Hill,
Bath BA2 6EQ, England
e-mail: m.barron@flemingbarron.co.uk
a good acoustic reputation. Secondly the architectural style
of the time involved the use of highly decorated walls and
ceiling, which we now appreciate as scattering treatments
that promote a diffuse sound field. As well as investigating
sound absorption, integral to the study of sound in rooms,
Sabine also initiated investigation into sound insulation. His
acoustic work stopped once he became involved in work in
the Great War and he died prematurely in 1919.
It is interesting to note that many earlier halls now revered
for their acoustics had ceilings that were higher than required
for visual and other reasons; there seems little doubt that
their designers had realised this. Designers following Sabine
used his theorem to determine auditorium volume, but there
was no guidance on the appropriate shape for auditoria. The
arrival of the modern movement in architecture was a par-
ticularly unfortunate development for acoustics. All aspects
of earlier design became anathema, no rectangular spaces
any more and surface decoration was definitely unacceptable.
The inter-war years did not witness many new auditoria and
those that were built tended not to gain good reputations. A
common mistake in times past was to assume that the archi-
tectural form of a good auditorium was independent of its
function. The commonest auditorium type in the ‘20s and

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‘30s was cinemas, for which the fan shape plan has much to
offer; it accommodates audiences in the smallest area within
constraints of angle of view and maximum distance. Several
fan shaped concert halls were constructed during this period
and it took a while for their disappointing acoustics to be
recognised.
The story of auditorium acoustics in the twentieth cen-
tury neatly divides into two halves. The century started with
a major breakthrough and the first quantitative measure for
room acoustics. The concept of reverberation time (RT) grad-
ually travelled the world and developments in electronics
allowed it to be measured precisely. Theoretically it was well
established with a refinement now known as the Eyring for-
mula. And the concept was applied to many of the halls built
before 1950, mostly successfully in terms of predicted rever-
beration time. It was however observed that several halls
had shorter reverberation times than predicted, a problem
resolved by Beranek in 1960, who realised that the Sabine
equation was valid but that the absorption figures for seating
and people were too small (presented with revisions in [5]).
He proposed treating the audience on an area basis rather than
per seat. The short reverberation times were a consequence
of improving seating standards (i.e. floor area per seat). The
1951 Royal Festival Hall, London, was a classic example of
the RT problem that has endured, because the hall was built
with too small a volume.
By 1950 there was a general understanding that there
was more to discover; the appropriate RT was not a guar-
antee of good acoustics. At the time reverberation time was
the only measurable quantity with significance for listen-
ers. A combination of inspired research in various countries
and the demand for new auditoria, linked initially in many
cases to war damage, created an exciting period in audito-
rium acoustics for the next 30 years. Many more details on
auditorium acoustics are available in [6] and [3].
2 Research
Reverberation time concerns the late part of the impulse
response, while the direct sound was well understood (or so
we thought, see seat-dip effect below). For good direct sound,
the virtue of raked seating had been discovered in ancient
Greece; remarkably they managed to build for audiences of
14,000 and above. Enclosing an auditorium results in audi-
ence sizes that are considerably smaller. Seating rakes can
be much smaller than those used in antiquity; conveniently,
good visual sightlines correspond to good sound transmis-
sion.
Listening is a fully subjective experience so understanding
what is important requires subjective experiments. Prefer-
ably we would simulate the aural situation in an auditorium.
In the 1950s, this could be done in an anechoic chamber with
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Acoust Aust (2015) 43:25–31
an array of loudspeakers around a single listener, the loud-
speaker in front carries the direct sound, early reflections are
created with a tape delay system feeding the signals into loud-
speakers in appropriate directions. Reverberation signals can
be derived from a reverberation chamber or a two dimen-
sional equivalent, a reverberation plate. Subjective experi-
ments in anechoic chambers were begun in 1950 in Ger-
many (initially in Göttingen, [22]). The first outcome came
from Haas [13] working with speech looking into the role
of early reflections. It proved to be very valuable for sound
engineers to know that short delayed versions of speech are
combined by our hearing with the direct sound, allowing
major improvements in intelligibility with speech reinforce-
ment systems. It was subsequently discovered that the 50 ms
early energy fraction was a reasonable measure for speech
intelligibility. This measure was subsequently modified for
music to an 80 ms early-to-late index (in dB) for musical
clarity [21].
Many measures were proposed in subsequent years, but
only the ones that have endured will be mentioned here.
Reverberation time (RT) refers to later sound but can the
later decay be heard with continuous music? In 1965 it was
proposed by [2] that an earlier section of the decay might
be more relevant for music listening. The measure emerging
from this suggestion is the early decay time (EDT) measured
over the first 10 dB of the decay, but presented similarly to
the RT, so with a linear decay, EDT = RT.
Two years later in 1967, Harold Marshall, while con-
sidering entries to a design competition for a concert hall,
realised that achieving a suitable reverberation time involved
no consideration of the shape of the concert hall. Architec-
tural form is indeed significant for acoustics. He subsequently
proposed that early lateral reflections were important, con-
tributing to an impression of broadening of the apparent size
of the orchestra [16]. Laboratory experiments confirmed that
spatial responsiveness, as he called it, was indeed a crucial
component of good acoustics, that could be measured by
the early lateral energy fraction [4] or the interaural cross-
correlation coefficient (IACC), discussed at length by [1].
The design consequences are that no seating should be too
far from a surface providing a lateral reflection, with fan-
shape plan bad, narrow rectangular hall good, reverse-splay
even better. Marshall’s ideas resulted in his lateral directed
reflection sequence halls, such as that in Christchurch, New
Zealand of 1972 [17].
But a shadow hung over auditorium acoustics consultancy
at this time, especially in the U.S A. Philharmonic Hall in
New York had opened in 1962 amid highly critical reviews in
the press for its disappointing acoustics. The Bolt, Beranek
and Newman design included a large array of reflectors sus-
pended from the ceiling. Investigating their reflection prop-
erties, a phenomenon independent of the suspended reflec-
tors became apparent which had not been observed before:
Acoust Aust (2015) 43:25–31
namely that sound travelling over seating (occupied or unoc-
cupied) was severely attenuated in the frequency region
around 100–200Hz. This behaviour is now generally known
as the seat-dip effect [23]. It was the misfortune of the design-
ers that their array did not reflect at this frequency either.
Philharmonic Hall had several other faults, principally a pos-
sible subdivided acoustic space, as well as a lack of lateral
reflections. Several attempts to improve its acoustics were
made, until in 1976 when the auditorium was demolished and
replaced by Avery Fisher Hall named after its benefactor.
Acoustic design was clearly not a superficial exercise. A
response to the disaster of Philharmonic Hall could have been
to rely on precedents, yet there was a lot of experimentation
during the 1970s and 1980s. Some succeeded, while many
did not.
Returning to the world of research, new measurable quan-
tities are welcome but which are the important ones? A cru-
cial conceptual development was confirmed by Hawkes and
Douglas in 1971 [14]: that we were dealing with a multi-
dimensional situation. Statistical techniques such as factor
analysis enable experimental results to be analysed to dis-
cover the important dimensions. The development of the
dummy head, with outer ears and microphones in the ‘ear
canals’, provided a valuable means to make recordings in
individual seats in concert halls that could be replayed to
listeners. They would have the same experience as they
would have received at the recording location. Two major
studies were conducted in Göttingen [24] and Berlin [20]
in Germany replaying dummy head recordings to listeners
who had to judge what they heard. The experimental sys-
tems enabled one to switch instantaneously from one con-
cert hall to another. Based on their results, one can construct
a consensus view that four qualities are paramount: clar-
ity, a sense of reverberation, spatial impression and loud-
ness. Corresponding objective quantities are: the early-to-late
sound index, the early decay time, the early lateral energy
fraction and sound level with a calibrated sound source
(known as Strength). Each of these quantities varies with
seat location, contrary to RT which is usually independent of
position.
On the subjective front, one further comment is necessary
on the question of preference. In fact the analogy with appre-
ciation of food and wine is relevant here [15]. It is likely that
most perceptive listeners can judge clarity, sense of reverber-
ation etc. but that individuals have their own preferences. For
instance, experiments have shown that some listeners want
clarity above all else, whereas others want a rich reverbera-
tion. This variety of preference of course is a complicating
feature for subjective investigations.
The first three objective quantities have already been men-
tioned, Strength was a new discovery. It had previously not
been considered because the variation of sound levels mea-
sured in dB is rather small. Yet listeners’ sensitivity was
27
found to be much greater than suspected, with the smallest
detectable change around 1 dB. Concert halls with too many
seats become too quiet, the Royal Albert Hall in London with
over 5000 seats being the classic example.
These four quantities can be measured or predicted by
acoustic scale models or computer simulation models. At this
point, we had a series of subjective qualities and objective
quantities to specify acoustic quality in concert halls. Cer-
tainly it constituted a major step beyond just dealing with
the sense of reverberation, as measured by the reverberation
time. Several publications have tried to establish whether this
multi-dimensional model adequately describes the concert
hall experience.
Reverberation time and the four ‘new’ quantities were
defined and specified in ISO 3382:1997. Since 1997, several
additional measures have been proposed, but only the late
lateral level, linked to subjective ‘envelopment’, has been
added [7].
Most of the progress in auditorium research has been made
in Europe or North America. Two useful contributions for
auditoria from Australia by chance both relate to those enig-
matic issues of the state of diffusion and application of scat-
tering treatment. Davy [9] has proposed a valuable measure
for diffuseness based on the standard deviation of measured
reverberation time. And Haan with Fricke [12] found a good
positive correlation between subjective acoustical quality and
the area of diffusing surface in halls.
Before considering the experiences in recent actual con-
cert halls, modelling of sound fields and the question of scat-
tering at room surfaces will be looked at.
3 Auditorium Modelling
Acoustic scale modelling dates back to 1936, but had been lit-
tle used before the 1960s as a design aid. Large scales were
employed such as 1:8 and 1:10; scale modelling involves
shifting up the frequency range by the scale factor. These
models can be used for objective testing, generating num-
bers of quantities mentioned above for instance. Alternatively
they can be used for subjective testing by playing speeded-up
music through the model and slowing it down again for listen-
ing tests. Digital processing has greatly improved the ease of
both objective and subjective testing. A major complication
of scale model testing is air absorption, which increases with
increasing frequency. It can be compensated by using dried
air or nitrogen; alternatively for objective measurements air
absorption data can be used to correct impulse responses.
Smaller modelling scales such as 1:50 have also been used
for objective modelling, without the expense of large models
and big spaces to accommodate them.
Computer modelling used as its starting point an array of
‘sound rays’, each ray was followed until it became too quiet,
123
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by for instance hitting the audience area. However sound rays
are only truly representative at high frequencies. Improved
methods were gradually developed, using beams rather than
rays for example. While the first programs assumed that all
surfaces were flat producing specular reflections, many sur-
faces in actual auditoria are not flat and therefore introduce
some scattering of sound. Progress in this case depended
on quantifying scattering with the proposal for a scattering
coefficient (also mentioned below). Reliable programs now
include the behaviour created by scattering surfaces. A fur-
ther phenomenon that should be included is diffraction effects
upon reflection from finite dimension surfaces; this has also
been partially implemented in some computer models.
Computer modelling is attractive as an aid to design due
to its low cost and quick implementation. But the user needs
to be confident that the program correctly represents real
acoustic behaviour. Computer or scale modelling are also
valuable research aids, which allow basic questions to be
investigated, such as where is the optimum location for scat-
tering treatment in an auditorium.
4 Scattering on Wall and Ceiling Surfaces
Concert halls of the nineteenth century, several of which have
good acoustic reputations, were true to the architectural style
of their time with elaborate decoration on the walls and ceil-
ing. Typical examples of this decoration include window-like
surrounds, niches containing statues and coffered ceilings.
Unknown to the designers of these halls was the fact that they
were working with acoustically scattering surfaces beneficial
to sound quality. The modern movement in architecture after
the First World War meant a return to plane surfaces and in
some cases acoustic problems. Scattering surfaces are valu-
able in acoustic spaces but what is the degree of scattering
produced by a particular surface? Schroeder in 1979 [25]
proposed a series of mathematical designs with predictable
scattering, the best known of these is the quadratic residue
diffuser (QRD). This was first used in a concert hall in 1983
in the Michael Fowler Centre in Wellington, New Zealand
[18]. Dealing with more general scattering surfaces however,
both a scattering and a diffusion coefficient have now been
defined, which can be measured in laboratory conditions. The
scattering coefficient is used in computer simulation models.
5 Development of the Concert Hall After 1900
Prior to 1950, there had been two popular plan shapes for
concert halls: the rectangular plan and the theatre form. The
rectangular form was well-judged for its acoustics but con-
sidered architecturally retrograde following the arrival of the
Modern Movement. The theatre form, with many balconies,
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Acoust Aust (2015) 43:25–31
was less successful; likewise the fan-shaped plan had a poor
reputation. In the inter-war years, few new concert halls were
built. The Salle Pleyel in Paris is a good example of a noble
failure. The acoustic consultant, Gustave Lyon, decided that
the first reflection was paramount. For the Salle Pleyel he
designed a parabolic ceiling in long section to focus the ceil-
ing reflection onto audience. When the hall opened in 1927,
a reviewer recorded that the hall offered intelligible speech
to an audience of 3000. This was certainly an impressive
achievement, but a directed sound hall like this does not have
acoustics suitable for music. The hall has since undergone
numerous modifications.
When one wishes to emulate a hall with good acoustics,
one is presented with the question of what design character-
istic is crucial for those good acoustics. One possibility is to
have highly profiled treatment on all room surfaces to scatter
sound on reflection and create a diffuse sound field. This was
tried in the Beethovenhalle in Bonn (1959) and De Doelen
Concert Hall, Rotterdam of 1966. The Rotterdam hall has a
longer reverberation time and is more widely respected for
its acoustics. Blanket scattering treatment has been rarely
employed since.
While New York’s Philharmonic Hall was taxing the
acoustic establishment in the States, Berlin’s Phiharmonie
from 1963 was altogether a more radical and impressive
work of architecture, which posed many new demands on its
consultant, Prof. Lothar Cremer. The architect had proposed
that instead of the musicians and audience facing each other
somewhat in opposition, could not inspiration be drawn from
the situation of a musician playing in the street surrounded by
listeners? Cremer aware of the directivity of musical instru-
ments, particularly the singing voice, pressed for the orches-
tra platform to be moved towards one end. But he also realised
that early reflections are necessary; reflecting surfaces can
be created by subdividing the audience into terraces raised
relative to one another. Thus was born the vineyard terrace
hall. The acoustics are good but not of the best. At the time,
the merits of early lateral reflections had not been acknowl-
edged, some audience locations benefit from reflections from
the side, some do not.
Marshall’s discovery of the merits of lateral reflections led
to his innovative design for the new concert hall in the Town
Hall in Christchurch, New Zealand of 1972. This hall has
suspended reflectors above the balcony to supply the lateral
reflections. The same principle was applied to the Michael
Fowler Centre concert hall in Wellington (1983); as already
mentioned this hall included the first use of QRDs in a con-
cert hall, used for the suspended reflectors. These two lateral
directed reflection sequence halls offer exciting acoustics.
Contemporary with the Christchurch hall is the concert
hall in the Sydney Opera House of 1973. It is probably
fair to say that the constraints of having to fit a concert
hall within a prescribed shell involved too many acoustic
Acoust Aust (2015) 43:25–31
Fig. 1 Perth Concert Hall, WA—an example of a classic shoebox
design with a good acoustic reputation
compromises. On the other hand, also in 1973, the city of
Perth, Western Australia, chose a conventional solution: the
rectangular Perth Concert Hall, Fig. 1.
In the early ‘80s, Bolt, Beranek and Newman were respon-
sible for four major concert halls: in San Francisco, Bal-
timore, Toronto and Melbourne. They were predominantly
the product of a single acoustic consultant, Ted Schultz,
and shared many features. Their plan forms are reminiscent
of large theatre plans, with widths at the stage end closely
linked to that of the orchestra platform. Two substantial bal-
conies span between the large widths at the rear. Convex
and other highly profiled wall surfaces offer horizontal scat-
tering. Hamer Hall in the Melbourne Arts Centre of 1982
shared the disappointing reputations of these halls, which
have since undergone significant modifications to improve
their acoustics.
The other major consultant in the States at this time was
Russell Johnson of Artec Consultants. His early halls were
heavily profiled to enhance early lateral reflections, until
in the mid-‘80s he made a definitive shift to parallel-sided
halls. The early results of this shift were the McDermott
Concert Hall, Dallas (1989) and the Birmingham Symphony
Hall, England (1991). Both have been well received. They
also share two interesting novelties with very quiet back-
ground noise levels and reverberation chambers surrounding
the auditoria.
Acoustic consultants had often allowed themselves to be
over-ruled by architects. Yet poor acoustics in a completed
hall is often resistant to much improvement. A concert hall is
for listening to music so the acoustics should be paramount
and need to take precedence over the architecture, which may
anyway be strongly influenced by design fashion. Increasing
the status of the acoustician within the design team was over-
due. Acoustic consultants also needed to take more respon-
sibility for their advice and engage in less experimentation.
Russell Johnson played a significant part here; he sometimes
made himself unpopular by refusing to compromise, but the
29
larger acoustical community has benefitted from this transi-
tion.
Since around 1990, two concert hall forms have domi-
nated: the parallel-sided hall and the vineyard terrace hall.
As well as the Dallas and Birmingham halls, other signifi-
cant parallel-sided halls since the mid-1980s are the Konz-
erthaus in Berlin (1986), halls in The Hague (1987), Tangle-
wood, Massachusetts (1994), Seattle (1998), Lucerne (1998),
Tokyo (2000) and Gateshead, England (2004). Though fewer
in number, the following recent terraced halls have been com-
pleted: Sapporo, Japan (1997), Belfast (1997), the Disney
Hall, Los Angeles (2003), Copenhagen (2009) and Helsinki
(2011). An interesting hybrid has been built in Manchester,
England: the Bridgewater Hall of 1996 is parallel-sided
towards the stage end with a terraced arrangement of seating
at the rear.
But among all these various concert hall shapes, what is
the guiding secret for good acoustics? The reverberation time
needs to be around 2 s, but this results in a large auditorium
volume and a problem for early reflections. The large volume
pushes the room surfaces away from audience, so that care-
ful attention is needed to introduce surfaces able to provide
early reflections, with a significant number arriving at the
audience from the side. Large areas of uninterrupted seating,
as in a football stadium, are not acceptable. In the parallel-
sided hall the width is restricted to maintain sufficient early
reflections. In a terraced hall, very thorough design is neces-
sary to achieve uniformly good acoustic results.
6 Variable Acoustics
A balanced sound is obviously necessary. For listeners, a
crucial balance is between perceived clarity and reverbera-
tion. With recordings, one can get near the optimum balance
by microphone placement etc. But this is more difficult to
produce throughout an auditorium. Some consultants have
sought to enhance the sense of reverberation; one technique
has been the use of reverberation chambers, as already men-
tioned in the Dallas and Birmingham halls. For this, the main
auditorium is surrounded by empty chambers that are cou-
pled by openings to the auditorium, openings which can be
closed or opened. The result is to produce an extended decay
of sound, audible when the music stops. It is probably rea-
sonable to say that these chambers have had mixed success.
Reverberation chambers are an example of variable
acoustics. In most recent medium-size concert halls, vari-
able acoustics is a built-in component, offering quite large
changes in reverberation time. The demand for this often
derives from the need to have a long reverberation time for
acoustic instruments (as used in standard classical music),
while also being able to accommodate amplified instruments,
which require short reverberation times. Amplification is fre-
123
30
quently used for folk, world music and jazz. The most com-
mon technique to produce a reverberation time change is to
introduce retractable sound absorbing drapes or banners; the
areas required are large however, as can be easily predicted
by the Sabine reverberation equation.
The use of electronics to increase reverberation time dates
from the late 1960s. The first system was developed for the
Royal Festival Hall, London, to overcome the deficiency in
the reverberation time. Several alternative (and more reli-
able) systems now exist. They can have a particular role in
multi-purpose halls, which can be built with smaller volumes
with the electronic system extending the reverberation time
for acoustic performances. But musicians are often wary of
complicated electronic enhancement!
7 New Research for Listeners in Concert Halls
By 1990 a consensus view had been established that the
most important subjective dimensions were clarity, a sense of
reverberation, spatial impression and loudness. As explained
above, objective measures corresponding to each of these
qualities had been proposed and soon after these were
enshrined in an ISO standard. This constituted a major step
in the quest for optimum concert acoustics. While attending
to these qualities and avoiding a few pitfalls such as echoes
good acoustics are often achieved, but they do not guarantee
excellence. The search continues and removing one of the
constraints so far in research is a valuable way to proceed.
Research to establish the important characteristics of the
best acoustics can either be conducted at actual concerts or
in laboratories using simulations of the concert sound field.
No research method is perfect, using questionnaires at actual
concerts is complicated by the influence of the musical per-
formance and visual conditions (though that stimulus also
warrants study). Simulations in anechoic chambers as begun
in the 1960s represented the orchestra with only a single or
stereo set of loudspeakers. Using dummy head recordings
involves recording via a ‘head’ with different outer ears to
those of the listener. The latest research in Finland directed
by Tapio Lokki [19] addresses the source problem by creat-
ing a ‘loudspeaker orchestra’. His work ‘goes back to square
one’ in terms of reassessing what matters and what does not.
Recordings are made in an anechoic chamber of sin-
gle musicians playing their instrument’s part while listen-
ing through headphones relaying a piano reduction to them
and with a screen showing a conductor beating time. These
synchronised recordings are then played into an array of
loudspeakers on the stages of actual concert halls, with one
loudspeaker for each instrumental group. Recordings at indi-
vidual listener positions are made with a 3-D microphone
array and reproduced in a listening room using 24 chan-
nels/loudspeakers.
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Acoust Aust (2015) 43:25–31
The results of these Finnish studies are extensive and in
some cases await publication. Many earlier findings have
been confirmed, though results suggest that working with
wider frequency ranges may be desirable. On the question of
overall preference, a prominent concern by listeners has been
the quality of proximity or intimacy. The possible importance
of intimacy dates back to the early 1960s but obvious objec-
tive correlates have been elusive. Lokki has evidence that it is
related to binaural loudness (lateral reflections good) and the
presence of high frequencies. We can look forward to more
results from this research.
8 Stage Acoustics
One further aspect requiring attention in auditoria is the
acoustical situation for the performers, who need appropri-
ate supportive conditions to perform at their best. This ques-
tion was only first addressed in the mid-1980s, principally
by Gade [10] and [11]. He had the luxury of two adjacent
anechoic chambers; by placing a musician in each and link-
ing them electronically, he could investigate the conditions
for good ensemble. In simple terms, his conclusion was that
reflected energy within 100 ms of the direct sound should
exceed a certain level; his proposed measure is called Sup-
port.
In recent research at the University of Bath, Dammerud
[8] looked specifically at the state of affairs for musicians in
a symphony orchestra. It was soon realised that the acoustic
situation on stage for a full orchestra was different from that
of a small chamber group. For a symphony orchestra both
the direct sound and floor reflections between musicians are
often obscured by other players. It was found that the support
measure did not correlate with satisfaction of performers.
Two major conclusions of this work were that the priority
for musicians was to hear their fellow performers and that
this was not helped by a low reflector over the stage. The
basic situation regarding hearing distant colleagues is one of
masking by closer players; an overhead reflector does not
reduce the masking but can just increase the sound level on
stage, which performers may dislike. A narrow stage with
a significant height above it was found to be the preferred
condition.
9 Opera Houses
Forty or so years ago, many people might have predicted that
opera was a doomed, outdated art form patronised only by
the rich. In fact, while the number of new houses is small,
opera has survived in rude health despite the very high pro-
duction costs. In addition, new audiences are now able to
access recordings and live relays from actual performances.
Acoust Aust (2015) 43:25–31
The principal new opera houses are the Dresden Staatsoper
(rebuilt in 1985), the Opéra Bastille, Paris of 1989, Glynde-
bourne Opera House 1993, Guangzhou Opera House 2010
and three new houses in Scandinavia: Gothenburg 1994,
Copenhagen 2004 and Oslo 2008.
In the case of reverberation time, there are differences in
taste. Many of the old houses have short reverberation times,
particularly in Italy the home of opera. A short reverberation
time favours the sung text at the expense of the orchestral
sound, which is valuable for audiences listening to operas in
their own tongue. The text becomes less of an issue in foreign
language performances, which nowadays are usually helped
by surtitles. The Dresden Staatsoper, destroyed in the war,
was rebuilt with a 1.8 s reverberation time, which gives it
a richer acoustic character. Longer reverberation times have
been used by the Scandinavians for their new opera houses.
The other acoustic concern important for opera is the bal-
ance between the singers and the orchestra, the orchestra
often drowning the singers. To overcome this, careful design
of surfaces, particularly around the proscenium arch, is nec-
essary to enhance the singers’ sound as much as possible.
10 Conclusions
The rather hit-and-miss days of concert hall design prior to
the early 1980s are now a thing of the past for competent
consultants. The important characteristics for good acoustics
are now much better understood, the ability to test designs
before construction now exist and the status of the acoustician
relative to the architect is much enhanced. For these reasons,
there is now much greater confidence in acoustic design, with
a reasonable expectation of good acoustics in new halls. In
recent years the price of success has been more conservative
design with greater reliance on precedents. Nevertheless the
search goes on, more remains to be discovered in the pursuit
of ‘excellent’ acoustics.
An interesting concert hall opened in January 2015 in
Paris, their new Philharmonie. The design of this hall with
Harold Marshall as guiding consultant explores the possibil-
ity of an auditorium enclosure surrounded by a larger volume
linked by significant openings. This addresses the issue of
clarity without undermining reverberance.
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