14 November 2010

How to determine the reverberation time of a room


The Dayton Audio USB OmniMic comes with a USB cable, software, a mic clip and carrying case to allow installers to accurate measure their audio installations, and it is available from Parts Express. Extracted from: www.cepro.com

Reverberation time of a room depends on the volume of the room and the rate at which the sound energy is absorbed by the wall surfaces and the objects in the room. In a typical room (without bare wall), the reverberation time is thus proportional to the ratio of volume to surface. By definition, the reverberation time is the time required for the sound level to decrease by 60 dB (hence the abbreviation RT60).
In 1922, a man named Wallace Sabine (pioneer in the study of room acoustics) came up with the following formula to calculate reverberation time:
RT60 = k(V/Sa)
  • k is a constant that equals 0.161 when the units of measurement are expressed in meters and 0.049 when units are expressed in feet.
  • Sa is the total surface absorption of a room expressed in sabins. It is a sum of all the surface areas in the room multiplied by their respective absorption coefficients. The absorption coefficients express the absorption factor of materials at given frequencies.
  • V is the volume of the room.

2 comments:

EffectsPedalsHQ said...

This tutorial is great! Has really helped! You should do some more :)

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