Acoustics and beyond

This phenomena occurs when you have surfaces arranged to face each other with low acoustic absorption. When these surfaces are far enough apart, the sound of each reflection becomes audible, forming this strange, layered effect that is usually seen as undesirable when designing acoustic spaces

The video through this link shows that, while the man is speaking, the reflections culminate in a reverb-like effect to the listener, but when the man claps (an impulse) an echo is perceived.

The first reflection after the impulse must arrive more than 1/15 of a second after the wavefront of the impulse for there to be a perceived echo, and given that the speed of sound in air is around 343 metres per second, the space in this hall must have reflective surfaces facing each other with at least 17m of distance in between.

I set this blog up over a year ago to begin keeping interesting pieces of information on Acoustics, Engineering and Audio, but at the time my academic exposure to these subjects was very limited.