Pulse Technique Applied to Acoustical Testing

The lack of validity of the diffusion assumption makes it desirable to search for further means of assessing the acoustical properties of a room rather than a criterion based solely upon reverberation time. A pulse technique is devised to study transient sound in a room. An electroacoustic system was constructed for generating sound pulses in a room and for receiving and recording the pulses after transmission to various points in the room. Acoustical testing also included the determination of the absorption coefficient of a wall and the tracing of a sound path in a room. A pulse statistical analysis was made to give the root-mean-square deviations of the pulse transient response from the exponential steady state decay based on the known reverberation time. It is concluded that for the lecture room tested arms deviation less than 0.50 represents good acoustical conditions for speech.