ABSTRACT
Acoustically the situation for chamber music halls proves to be less critical than in the fullsize concert hall. The risks of acoustic disaster are smaller, though many challenges remain. More than in symphonic music, one needs to be able to hear the individual musical lines. One should also hear a response from the room, but not such that it reduces clarity. The loudness of music has to be maintained, bearing in mind that a string quartet produces only one hundredth of the sound power of a full orchestra (Meyer, 1990). The number of musicians performing in a particular hall will also often vary, at the extremes from the soloist to the chamber orchestra of 25 musicians or more.
