AKUTEK

29/05/2024

Stage Acoustics and Orchestra Acoustics are research fields with still many questions to be answered. In an incredibly complex sound field - what do musicians hear? New update today: Dry-to-Room level balance, presentation of some recent results.
https://www.akutek.info/research_files/stage_acoustics.htm

27/05/2024

Sound levels in symphony orchestra musicians. Paper and BNAM-2024 presentation published on www.akutek.info today.

31/10/2023

Two Ears. Music was composed by composers with two ears, to be listened to in concert halls by people with two ears, so concert halls better be designed for the purpose. New paper published on akutek.info today.
(Lithograph by Jules Chéret 1896)

25/10/2023

Master Thesis by Simen Helbæk Kjølberg posted on www.akutek.info today.

04/10/2023

New Geffen Hall:
Leif Ove Andsnes and NY Philharmonic rehearsing Beethoven piano concerto «Emperor» to be performed the coming nights.
Many beautiful moments.
The hall is definitely improved, acoustically.
Curious to hear if there is less mid and high in occupied condition tomorrow. The unoccupied hall sounds a bit over-reverberant from 250Hz and up, reducing transparency where there’s a lot of music going on. Ideally, more bass would be preferred.
First spectrum is average from 1st movement, second is from orchestra intro to 2nd.
Full string section sounds warm with just sufficient bass. Maybe the orchestra just needs more time to learn to relax in improved conditions with heavier wood lining (see pictures).
Source Broadening is present. Woodwinds may benefit from occupied seats tomorrow, who knows. More envelopment than in the Avery Fisher version, but a reverb centroid even further out in the hall would be appreciated for seats in rear half of stalls.
Different seats and sections could have different conditions, but acoustics seems evenly distributed, which is good.
No echo, no background noise, very much appreciated.
Binaural analysis will follow in coming weeks, and so will a report from the full concert tomorrow. Stay tuned.

18/09/2023

Did you miss the presentation at Forum Acusticum? You can see the slides here.https://www.akutek.info/Presentations/MS_dry-17instruments_pres.pdf

01/08/2023

New paper posted today, on www.akutek.info : SOUND LEVELS AT MUSICIANS' EARS FROM CLASSICAL INSTRUMENTS DURING SOLITARY PRACTICE.

28/04/2023

New article posted today:
Acoustical conditions of Finnish Concert Spaces, by H Möller et al

independent center for search and free sharing of information and knowledge in the field of room acoustics, music acoustics, speech acoustics, perception and their interrelation

15/04/2023

ChatGPT on concert halls and acoustics. Do you agree?

«There are many concert halls around the world that are renowned for their excellent acoustics for classical music, and the choice of the "best" hall can be subjective and depend on personal preferences. However, some of the most famous and highly regarded concert halls for classical music include:

1 Musikverein in Vienna, Austria
2 Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Netherlands
3 Symphony Hall in Boston, United States
4 Suntory Hall in Tokyo, Japan
5 Berlin Philharmonic in Berlin, Germany
6 Royal Albert Hall in London, United Kingdom
7 Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, United States
8 Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, Germany
9 Tchaikovsky Concert Hall in Moscow, Russia
10 National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, China

All of these concert halls have been praised for their acoustics by world-renowned conductors, musicians, and music critics, and have hosted countless classical music performances over the years.»

27/03/2023

Have you been there yet? New York and Munich have got new symphony halls with high expectations to their acoustics. If you have attended a concert there yet, please submit your rating of their acoustics in the Akutek Concert Hall Survey. Or if you know someone who has, we'd be thankful for you sharing the link below.
https://no.surveymonkey.com/r/MMFMZ5W

08/03/2023

Quadrants in Frequency and Space. Though borders are not sharp limits, the quadrants have significantly different room acoustical aspects.
Note that the limits (dashed lines) are defined by one single room acoustical property - the absorption area (A).
When the model overlap criterion is set to n=3, fc equals the Schröder Frequency.
The wavy border of the colored regions is to indicate that the critical distance between source and receiver is frequency dependent (there is no such thing as a one-to-one mapping of a frequency response onto the floor of a given room).

07/02/2023

Latest update in the Binaural Project. Distribution map over IACC-Level pairs from nearly 1 million samples (100ms windows), a total of 98500 seconds of symphonic music in concert halls in Europe and USA. Maximum likelihood: 0.30 at 65dB.
More: https://www.akutek.info/binaural_project_files/results.htm