Ecophon Acoustic Bulletin

Attended the IOA conference “Futures in Acoustics: Today’s research – Tomorrow’s careers” a couple of weeks ago. Prof. Mike Barron (University of Bath) lectured on ‘The development of concert hall design – a 111 year experience’.

Inspiring lecture addressing the scientific progress of Auditorium acoustics from 1900 to present time:
- shape of concert halls
- measures for music auditoria
- scale models
- ...
were some of the topics considered.

Two things I particularly remember: importance of sound levels and that changes of only about 1 dB can be perceived.

Something to take into consideration when planning the acoustics for more "common" rooms?

Posted by Pierre Chigot at 12:57 PM | Permalink

Nordic requirements and recommendations for acoustic conditions in buildings is a review document (in Swedish)

It provides a snapshot of the situation in the begenning of the 2000'es in the Nordic countries and reflects the large efforts put since then to create and improve standards for building performance. A large part of the documents quoted in the document are outdated or can be found in a newer version.
At this date, it is possible to express room acoustics requirements for most relevant buildings (i.e. offices, educational premises, health-care premises, hotels and dwelllings) in the Nordic countries.

Since the document was compiled, following documents addressing sound requirements have been created:

Denmark
Vejledning om lydforhold i undervisnings- og daginstitutionsbyggeri, Erhvervs- og Byggestyrelsen, 10.05.2004

Finland
SFS 5907SFS 5907 - Acoustic Classification of Buildings
Read more about it.

Norway
Norwegian Standard NS 8175 Acoustic conditions in Buildings – sound classification of various types of buildings”, previously mentioned in Acoustic Bulletin

Sweden
SS 25267:2004 Acoustics - Sound classification of spaces in buildings - Dwellings
SS SS 025268:2001 Acoustics - Sound classification of spaces in buildings - Institutional premises, rooms for education, preschools and leisure-time centres, rooms for office work and hotels (under revision)

Posted by Pierre Chigot at 1:19 PM | Permalink

Promenade 'around the cochlea is a collective resource hosted by the University of Montpellier in France. Impressive pictures and lots of illustrations.

Must be seen!

The site presents also a list of other relevant sites in the field of audiology

Posted by Pierre Chigot at 4:34 PM | Permalink

Classrooms should be designed for modern teaching styles. In a study supported by the Oticon foundation published 2002, a research team from New Zealand looks at the acoustic implications of new teaching styles, where interaction between children is encouraged besides more traditional teaching.

More and more learning is done in small groups and a high emphasis is put on incidental learning, defined as what children learn from each other through gathering information casually. This asks for classrooms that are at least as much designed to maintain low ambient speech levels as to transmit the teacher’s speech from the blackboard to the pupils’ positions.

The typical, traditional situation of the static teacher is standing at the blackboard and talking uninterrupted to the class correponds to only 12% of the time. Most of the time, he/she using the whole classroom, where sound pressure level reduction is an important parameter.
“Matwork” means that the teacher is everywhere “on the mat” (floor, carpet) throughout the classroom. This implies a short distance teacher to listener pupil, with a large proportion of direct sound to the listener and high signal-to-noise ratio.
At the same time, most other pupils will be involved in individual work and group work, for which reduction of sound pressure level and prevention of cocktail party effect is the critical issue.

Six-page summary of the main research findings.

Full research report

Posted by Pierre Chigot at 9:15 AM | Permalink