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I read the room acoustics article this week. I was interested in the title of this article because room acoustics is a good part of live sound and it is also something that I have not really gained a whole lot of knowledge with so far.

The article explains more of creating your own venue acoustics than how to help out the sounds at a venue that you may be touring to. Regardless, it was still interesting reading about how panels in a room can change sounds. It does state that at first clapping and observing the natural reverb of the room is a good way to start. I know I have been taught this and gone over a bit in many classes, but I have yet to really apply it. If the echo is longer than one second, then the intelligibility of the system is going to be affected. This is easy to understand, but what makes it hard for me to comprehend is what has to be done for each different type of venue whether it is indoor or outdoor or a large area or more of an architectural space. A tip that I accumulated from this article is the start by plotting out your system on paper for a venue.  By mapping out the speakers’ horns dispersion, it is easier to find out the reverberant angels. Usually stuff like this is difficult for me to tackle because I can not figure out where to start, but now I have an idea of where.  Obviously cone filtering and phase cancelation will occur, but luckily with everything plotted out on paper it is must easier to figure out what is happening with the speakers’ sounds. I have noticed in almost every sound room at this school that the walls have some sort of silly panels hanging off walls and/or ceilings. The article explains further that panels can be placed in a room to help reduce comb filtering so they absorb more sound than bounce it off. Like I mentioned in a previous blog, it would really help get my mind wrap around this topic if different venues were available for us to listen to and do some room acoustics ear training. In the mean time, I can just focus on the different panels in rooms and get an idea from the positioning and distances from the loudspeakers.

While reading, I thought back to the venue back home I always go to. It is an outdoor pavilion but the covered area has three silly tee-pee like cones popping out of the top and one of each side (picture below if my description is terrible). I assume a dome cover would make a strange sound that bounces all over, but these cones must provide tunnels for sound keeping it more in control so it is more pleasing to the audience underneath (correct me if I am wrong).  Also our football stadium in downtown Houston has a retractable roof that gets opened when the sun disappears. I never really thought about it, but I am sure the announcer’s voice through the speakers all over the arena change.