ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with reverberation from a more elementary point of view in that it considers the energy balance between the energy supplied by the sound source and that absorbed by the boundary. Furthermore, some extensions and generalizations are described, including sound decay in enclosures with imperfect sound field diffuseness. The chapter considers the sound particles to be short sound pulses with a broad spectrum propagating along sound ray paths. Their exact shape is not important, but they all must have the same power spectrum. The chapter discusses circumstances on which the diffuseness of a sound field depends. Strictly speaking, a real sound field cannot be completely diffuse, otherwise there would be no net energy flow within the enclosure. In a real room, however, the inevitable wall losses ‘attract’ a continuous energy flow originating from the sound source.
