The Sound Book: The Science of the Sonic Wonders of the World Read Online Free PDF Page A

of a theater. On many television programs where people with lousy voices attempt to sing, as soon as the person hits the first note you can hear the audio engineers slathering on reverberation to rescue the sound.
    Reverberation is not the only important feature of a good auditorium. The most infamous concert hall failure is probably the original Philharmonic Hall at Lincoln Center in New York, which opened in 1962 (and was later rebuilt as Avery Fisher Hall). Acoustician Mike Barron describes it as “the most publicized acoustic disaster of the twentieth century.” 10 Influential music critic Harold C. Schonberg was particularly vocal, describing the hall as a “great big, yellow, $16,000,000 lemon.” 11 Acoustic expert Chris Jaffe described how Schonberg “had a field day writing article after article on the acoustics of the hall as a sort of All My Children –type soap opera.” 12 Ironically, the acoustic consultant for the hall was Leo Beranek, possibly the most influential architectural acoustician of the twentieth century, and also the only person famous enough to be pursued by groupies at acoustics conferences. I remember my first meeting with Leo over breakfast at a conference when I was a young academic. It was a brilliant chance to talk about my research into concert hall acoustics with this superstar. Unfortunately, he greeted me with a question about why I had been measuring echoes from duck calls (see Chapter 4).
    According to Beranek, late alterations to the design doomed Philharmonic Hall. The original concept called for a simple shoe box shape similar to Boston’s Symphony Hall. But some thought there were not enough seats in the proposed auditorium. Several New York newspapers campaigned to have the capacity increased, and Beranek says the committee overseeing the building “caved in.” 13 The new design changed the shapes of the balconies and sidewalls, and called for a raft of reflectors above the audience. When the hall opened, critics complained that there was too much treble and not enough bass, and musicians struggled to hear each other, making it difficult for the orchestra to blend its sound. Looking back with current scientific knowledge, Beranek now claims that without these alterations, “we would have been the toasts of New York.” 14
    Room shape plays an enormous role in the quality of concert halls. Sound reflections heard from the side are very important because the acoustic waves at our two ears are different. It takes longer for reflections from each side to reach the farthest ear; in addition, that ear is in an acoustic shadow and thus picks up fewer high frequencies because that sound does not easily bend around the head. These two cues signal to the brain that music is not just coming from the stage, but also from room reflections. Because of side reflections, we feel enveloped by the music rather than perceiving the sound as coming from the performers on a distant stage. These reflections also make the orchestra appear physically wider than it is—an effect called source broadening , which listeners tend to like. 15 Boston’s Symphony Hall achieves this effect through the narrow shoe box shape, which offers plenty of side reflections. The scientific understanding of side reflections has inspired new designs and shapes for halls. Near my home in Manchester, England, the Hallé orchestra plays in the Bridgewater Hall, built in the 1990s. The back half of the audience is divided into blocks with walls between in a pattern called vineyard terracing . The partitions separating the audience areas have been carefully angled to create reflections arriving from the side.
    Reverberation is all about striking a balance between too little (like being outdoors) and too much. Composer and musician Brian Eno explained the consequences of excess reverberation in the Royal Albert Hall before it was modified:
    It was awful, any piece of music which