The Effect of the Acoustics of Sound Control Rooms on the Perceived Acoustics of a Live Concert Hall Recording

Abstract: - Live recordings of music and speech in concert halls have acoustical properties, such as reverberation, definition, clarity and spaciousness. Sound engineers play back these recordings through loudspeakers in sound control rooms for audio CD or film. The acoustical properties of these rooms influence the perceived acoustics of the live recording. To find the practical impact of a sound control room on the acoustical parameter values of a concert hall, combinations of concert hall impulse responses and sound control room impulse responses have been investigated using convolution techniques. It can be concluded that the ITU-recommendations used for sound control room design are sufficient for reverberation and speech intelligibility judgement of concert hall recordings. Clarity judgement needs a very high decay rate, while judgement of spaciousness can only be done by headphone.