Home Tweakers' Asylum

Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ.

On achieving "live" sounding music in the Listening Room

The Holy Grail in audio is the re-production of "live" sound in the Listening Room but is seldom achieved. A major key to achieving "live" sound is the proper reverberation time of the Listening Room. Reverberation time of the room is dependent upon the absorbtion of sound in the room. A reverbation time of 0.54 seconds from 125 Hz. thru 4 K Hertz is a very good reverberation time to produce music and speech that sounds "live". How to achieve this ? Enter the "Sabine Equation". The Sabine Equation determines the units of sound absorbtion of a room and is given in "Sabins", or units of absorbtion. The Sabine Equation is RT60 = 0.049 x V/Sa where :

RT60 = Reverberation Time in seconds.

V = Volume of the room in cu. Ft.

S = Total Surface Area of the room in sq. ft.

a = Average Absorbtion coeficient of room
surfaces.

Sa = Total absorbtion of the room in Sabins
(units of absorbtion).

Total Sabins of a room = the sum total of the various absorbant surfaces of the room including walls, ceiling, and floor. Then, armed with a table of various materials' Sabins, you can calculate the reverberation time of the room and add Sabins as required to achieve the proper reverberation time. A voluminous table of Sabin equivalents can be found in the index of Master Handbook of Acoustics, 4th ed. by F. Alton Everest publ. by McGraw Hill and is available from Amazon.com (cover price is $39.95, I got my copy for $24.95 dlvrd.) It is a huge paperback tome of 815 7-1/2" x 9-1/4" pages and explains in detail with, copious diagrams and graphs, etc., all you'll probably ever need to know about acoustics. It is also a great DIY source. Its' value to the audio enthusiast cannot be over estimated IMHO.

Happy Listening !




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Topic - On achieving "live" sounding music in the Listening Room - pkell44 06:07:33 09/22/05 (14)


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