 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: ~ jerry
Date: 2003-04-04 17:25
As many of you know, I am an architect.
I am working on a high school project. We have practice rooms in the music department. The floor of the room is carpet. The ceiling is a typical acoustical tile that you might see in any commercial building.
The project manager wants to use acoustic wall panels, floor to ceiling, on each of the four walls.
I as project architect, suggest that this is too much and that the person practicing will not "hear" the response he/she is expecting from the musical instrument.
Any shade tree opinions out there?
~ jerry
Of course, we could hire an acoustical engineer but they want to be paid.
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Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2003-04-04 18:33
Although I'm not an acoustician by any means, I did master's work in underwater acoustics and am an amateur recordist by hobby (mainly open-reel tape recordings of live concerts) so I have a bit of background in the world of sound. I'd venture the opinion that your proposed practice space will, as you surmise, be acoustically quite "dead", which is great for not bothering the neighbors but does indeed make for an unrealistic perceived sound compared to typical concert spaces. HOWEVER, it's not necessarily a bad thing to practice MOST OF THE TIME in a dead space, as it permits the player to hear technical details and unwanted mechanical and breathing noises which might otherwise be lost or 'smeared' in a live environment such as a typical concert hall --- as long as occasionally the musician can practice in a more concert-like live environment to develop aspects such as tone and dynamics which would be hard to perfect in a very dead practice room. To my knowledge, practice rooms in public places (such as schools) are usually and probably ought to be made acoustically dead, to minimize cross-interference with neighboring players and other residents of the building.
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Author: Herb Huey
Date: 2003-04-04 21:00
I have a similar background to David, I did Masters work in woodwind acoustics.
As the project architect, you should determine the desires of both the music dept adminstration and the musicians. David is correct that such a room would be acoustically dead. This may be desirable to the music dept administration. I would like to point out that a typical 8' x 8' practice room with acoustic wall panels would feel claustrophobic to many of the musicians. Personally, I would like a more reflective room.
The link to the LA Philharmonic shows the need for a mixture of practice room types. Perhaps a combination of acoustically dead, reflective rooms and adjustable rooms would be desirable.
Herb
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Author: Synonymous Botch
Date: 2003-04-05 00:44
I wonder if hanging some pegboard over the deading side wall panels would provide some measure of 'return' to the player in the room?
It sounds as if the primary design goal is to keep sound IN, so whatever you do interior to the dampening layer should be acceptable.
Pegboard is generally made of masonite (or some paperboard composite) and would be an inexpensive application...
You want SOME reverb, or the room will feel immediate-close and dull.
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Author: joevacc
Date: 2003-04-05 04:11
One thing you might want to consider is avoiding any parallel surfaces. That could cause standing waves. Here is a couple of links that could keep you busy for a while.
http://www.physicsclassroom.com/mmedia/waves/swf.html
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/sound/soucon.html
Walking around a room clapping your hands and using your voice to excite the air in that room might help. If your hear the reflected sounds coming back distorted or choppy, you may have a problem. A few well-placed acoustic tiles may do the trick.
Good luck,
-=[Joe Vacc]=-
Disclaimer... Although I have worked professionally as a sound engineer and technician for over 15 years I am definitely not an acoustician.
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Author: JMcAulay
Date: 2003-04-05 04:44
Having worked in, set up, and designed various successful radio studios, I have also worked in and with some studios that were awful. Here are a few suggestions:
1) Do use movable draperies if it's at all practical, so that the room can have adjustable liveness. The draperies should be of material that will interrupt the flow of sound waves, not necessarily stop the movement. This is because to reverberate, sound will have to pass through the draperies twice. Wool is a great material (although costly), and some synthetics will do the job. Plastic sheeting is out (no shower curtains). If it's needed, sound isolation of the room can be done inside the walls, so the room need not be dead. A live room can be just as isolated as one that's totally dead, if it's done properly.
2) If your rooms will be sound-isolated (a great idea), remember that you are trying to isolate the room from the outside, but an even bigger problem might be isolating the outside from the room. For example, if the room is located next to a larger room in which a band is rehearsing, the poor individual trying to practice might have a room so dead he can't hear himself well, yet be able to hear the band. VERY distracting. At the same time, he may be making insufficient noise for the band to hear him at all. On the other hand, enough isolation can become costly, perhaps involving a dead area between the band room and the practice room that is unused for anything but small storage. Remember also that air ducts can transport sound very well.
3) Deaden the ceiling. Hung sound- absorbing material does quite well enough. Celotex is one brand name. The kind with the holes in it will absorb better.
4) If the room is live at all, do not make it a cube. It should not even have any two dimensions the same. You do not want reflections between surfaces in more than one dimension to have the same period, even if those reflections are attenuated.
5) Sound absorbing materials can be cheap or expensive., At the low end, egg flats rubber-cemented to almost any surface will usually work well enough, while acoustic plaster is pretty much the other end of the cost spectrum. .
6) Check the current edition of the National Association of Broadcasters Engineering Handbook. It will probably have some excellent suggestions that will be useful, especially those regarding small rooms. (Announce booths can be much smaller than you would want.) Talk to the engineering department at a nearby radio or TV station. They might have a copy. (If the station has no engineering department, they probably won't have the book, either.)
Good luck on the design efforts.
Regards,
John
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Author: msloss
Date: 2003-04-07 12:53
Listen to the kids play -- if they are awful, go for a sealed anechoic chamber. OK, maybe I jest.
All good recommendations. We've tackled the issue of practice-room acoustics before, and there was a wide spread of opinion about the value of practicing in unflattering spaces. Net-net, my own opinion is that a practice space should be revealing, but not a torture chamber. The instrument excites the air in the room, and an important part of practice is learning how to control the acoustic space around you. If you dampen every surface, you will get no meaningful return of sound and you will not be able to manage the environment or assess the quality of your own sound without a tape recorder.
The room should be designed (as mentioned above) to prevent comb filtering or a build-up of certain frequencies and suckouts in others, but at the same time have a little bit of a reverberant quality. Avoid parallel surfaces and use a variety of different surface materials. Check around the school A/V department and see if you can find a sweep-tone generator and a sound meter (or get a copy of Stereophiles Test CD3 which has sweeps on it). You can get a very quick sense of where the bumps and dents in the response curve are and take steps to even them out.
Engineers, architects and contractors know this, but for others who are reading these posts and thinking about their own practice rooms take note: There are a lot of different materials available to manage acoustics, but learn from the night club fire in Rhode Island -- use material that is specifically designed for the chosen application and be sure it is up to fire code! Peg board, cheap eggcrate foam, and department store curtains are trouble looking for a place to happen.
Check out www.rpginc.com for a lot of good information.
Best of luck with the project.
Mark
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Author: Ken Shaw ★2017
Date: 2003-04-07 14:58
I was at Oberlin when they built the new conservatory, including a three-floor practice room building. The had acoustical paneling on the ceiling and cloth covering on the walls. About half the rooms were only 6' square, and some had upright pianos in them. Talk about claustrophobic.
The theory at the time was that you wanted a dead room, both because it was more "analytical" about your sound and because if you could sound good there, you could sound good anywhere.
I ended up going into the larger rooms whenever I could. It was just too discouraging and cramped otherwise. I used the small rooms maybe 1/3 of the time, but none of them came close to the old conservatory, with large rooms and lots of wood and plaster. They were a perfect balance of resonance and clarity.
Getting away from the acoustics question, the lighting in the Oberlin practice building was from hanging globes. They finally replaced them after violinists kept breaking bows. Go with recessed lighting.
Noisy ventilation is also a problem. With a dead room and a constant swoosh, it sucks the sound right out of you and leaves you quickly discouraged.
Best regards.
Ken Shaw
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