ABSTRACT
Room acoustic measures provide information about how sound behaves inside a room, how the sound is distributed, and about the influence of size, shape, surface materials, and so on. This chapter presents a general set of rules that can be looked at to find the starting point for the achievement of “good” acoustics. The reverberation time is the single most important parameter regarding the room acoustics in general. In general, the crucial point is how the reverberation time varies with frequency. Depending on the application, the reverberation time as a starting point should have the same value at all frequencies. Requirements regarding an appropriate sound distribution are normally related to larger rooms, like auditoriums, concert halls, and so on. However, in smaller rooms, this requirement can be related to frequencies in the modal region. Early reflections in the small room may affect the perceived frequency response in the listening position, typically in the midrange.
