So at this point I'd like to talk a

little bit about 3D room acoustics and

reverberant sound.
So, when we talked about, the duct it's,
it's pretty easy to visualize the, the
standing waves.
As you go to three dimensions, you
basically, it's the superposition, if you
will, of the standing waves that
correspond to each the x, y, and z
dimensions.
and you could see how, with three
dimensions, you're going to have many,
many standing waves in that space.
in room acoustics, we frequently talk
about two components of, of sound.
it turns out there are so many standing
waves, so many modes in a room that they,
they overlap and it becomes so dense, we
call it high modal density.
and what happens is, is that we tend to,
to describe room acoustics.
From a statistical energy perspective, as
opposed to talking about it specifically
from from the modal characteristic.
So, you can think about the modes at very
low frequency.
But as soon as you get up to higher
frequency, you know, past the first you
know, few modes of the room.
As soon as you the, there will be so many
modes that you really can't, you can't
really think about the response from that
perspective.
so acousticians tend to talk about the
direct sound and the reverberant sound in
a given room.
And I've sketched here a couple of
loudspeakers that are kind of placed out
from the corner and away from the walls
of the room.
And I've sketched it a person here with
ears on each side.
And then the green line, I show the sound
due to the direct path okay.
And all of the blue lines here represent
sound wave propagation due to
reflections.
off the boundaries and surfaces in the
room.
And the point I'm getting at is is that,
you know, when the sound wave is first
launched, it's, it's launched as you
know, we, we, we'll talk about radiation
from loudspeakers.
But basically, it's going to be launched
like this and so you know, it's going to
hit the walls off the enclosure.
And it's going to bounce around in the
room, basically, until it dies out.

and it gets absorbed with time.

But the listener is actually going to be
able to hear first any given sound that
comes off this loudspeaker.
and this loudspeaker will be heard first
by the listener due to the direct path.
But then as the sound continues to
propagate from the direct path you're
going to have these contributions from
the reverbrant path coming you know to
the ear.
And so there's something called the
radius of reverberation.
And as a listener, you know, I could move
back and forth.
Between from the speakers to the wall.
If I started out here, really close in
the plane of the speakers, maybe in this
area, and I start moving back.
At the point where the sound pressure
level due to the direct contribution, the
green line that we saw here.
Is equal to the sound pressure level due
to the, reverberant path.
All of the, sound that's bouncing, and
reflecting off the walls.
When those two are equal, we are at the,
point that's called the radius of
reverberation.
So, you can imagine, you know?
As you get closer to the speakers, you
hear less of the room acoustics.
And as you move further away from the
speakers, you hear more of the room
acoustics.
So, in fact, the room itself influences
the experience that you have.
And you've probably witnessed that
whether you've listened to music in your
home, sitting on a sofa.
Or you've listened out in a a live venue
outside.
Or perhaps you've been in a in a bar or a
concert hall, someplace that you know,
with, with a rigid-wall enclosures.
It depends on how much absorptive
material, but, you know, acousticians
tend to describe rooms as either live
being that they have lots of reverberant
energy.
Or a dead room would be one that absorbs
sound pretty quickly.
And it turns out that there's the this
Sabine Frankler, Franklin-Jaeger Theory
of Room Acoustics.
and basically it's, it's It's based upon
the statistical energy-based approach of,
of measuring the decay of sound in a
room.
And so for any given listener in a room

or if you were to place a microphone in

the room.
Then the sound pressure level is going to
decay and t60 is defined to be the time
required for the sound to decay by 60 dB.
And that's something we're interested in
because at that point the direct sound is
going to dominate what you hear.
as opposed to that portion of the decayed
sound so if you would clap your hands in
a room you will be able to hear this.
This expression is six times the natural
log of 10 times the, 4 times the volume
of the of the room.
And then C is the speed of sound, and A
is the equivalent area of an open window
so that sound could escape.
typically, basically, it's a way of
measuring the amount of damping that's in
a room.
So, you know, if you were to put sofas,
and drapes, and carpet, and things in a
room.
It would basically there'd be some co,
there's be some constant that would
represent an equivalent area of an open
window that corresponded to that for
sound absorption.
Now this is a pretty good point to go
back to one more demonstration from our
colleagues web page at Penn State.
And in particular, he has a demonstration
of reverberation in a small room.
And I thought it would be interesting
because what he did is he's taken a room
that's empty and then he's actually
placed carpet in the same room.
So let's listen to the reverbent
characteristics of the room.
So here's the empty room [SOUND].
And here's [SOUND] the carpeted room.
You can hear how much more quickly the
sound pressure level dissipates.
If you you can hear him speaking.
>> I am standing in a very reverberant
room.
>> Okay.
And then with carpet.
>> I am now standing in the same room,
now, the carpet has been.
>> All right, so, you know, again, feel
free to explore the website.
it's a, it's you know, a very effective
demonstration.
He actually gives the Sabine equation for
estimating the the t60, the re-, the
reverberation time required for the
response to decay by 60 db here.
and talks about how you would calculate
absorption coefficients and such for

rooms.
and here you can kind of see a difference
in the measured reverberation time.
the red curve being for the empty room,
and the black curve for a room with
carpet on the floor.
and so the effect of the carpet's just
reduced the reverberant characteristics
of the room.
So, this expression can be used to to
calculate this rever, the, the amount of
decay.
And it's it's a useful expression and,
and this is one of the keys in, in, in
room acoustics.
And, and it's typ-, traditionally applied
by acousticians.