After centuries of guesswork, architects have a high-tech way to hear the acoustics of buildings they haven't yet built. [New York Times: Technology] 'For a demonstration recently, Neill Woodger, a principal at Arup Acoustics who led the development of the SoundLab, projected a slide of the Concertgebouw, the famed Amsterdam hall, on a screen. At a prearranged signal to his assistant, Alban Bassuet, a recording of Handel's "Water Music" came over the speakers. The music had been recorded in an anechoic chamber, a "dry" room free of sound reflections. Then, through a mathematical process called convolution, the computers in the SoundLab combined the music with the "acoustic signature" of the Concertgebouw, derived from a three-dimensional computer model that had been calibrated with recordings made in the actual hall with a special four-track microphone.
For a visitor sitting at the center of the room, it felt like entering a palpable sphere of sound. The acoustical "halo" of the Concertgebouw was distinct, as if this little soundproof room itself had radically shifted dimension. A few bars of Handel later, the slide on the screen changed to the Musikvereinsaal in Vienna. The acoustics followed, forming an otherwise impossible duet of two of the world's greatest concert halls. The room felt as if it had opened up, as if the ceiling had lifted.'
|
|
