ABSTRACT
It has taken several years to evolve a methodology to resolve the concert hall problem. Much of this progress derives from techniques developed by experimental psychologists. Beranek (1962) was one of the first to list a series of 18 important subjective attributes: such qualities as warmth, liveness, intimacy, brilliance and ensemble. But how are these to be rated to provide an overall acoustic quality judgement? Beranek derived a linear additive system, which is essentially one-dimensional but thus too limiting. Figure 3.1(a) shows a diagrammatic representation of three conditions, in which C is twice as different from A as is B. But if we need to represent A, B and C which are equally different from each other but in different respects, then a two-dimensional diagram is needed, Figure 3.1(b). The two-dimensional data (b) can be forced into one dimension (a), but with some loss of information.
