Although modern
purpose-built venues exist, live music
is often played in rooms that were not
designed for it. The room is sometimes a
major obstacle to good sound, and
although a touring band or PA company
may not be able to do much about
the room itself, substantial improvements
in sound can sometimes be achieved by
optimal speaker placement.
Any sound in an
acoustically reflective space (all
rooms - barring anechoic chambers - are
acoustically reflective spaces) will
also produce a certain amount of
reflected sound. The level, frequency
and duration of reflections will be
determined by the surfaces, size and
shape of the actual room involved.
While the level of an
initial sound will be affected by a
listener's distance from it (reducing by
6dB for every doubling of distance), the
level of reflected sound in a room is
relatively constant throughout the room.
The graph below illustrates this effect.
While the initial
sound may be coherent, reflected sound
is affected both by the properties of
reflective surfaces (not all frequencies
are reflected equally), and by
destructive interference (resulting from
multiple reflections of the initial
sound). Thus reflected sound is
generally much less coherent.
The point at which
reflected sound is equal in level to the
direct sound is known as the critical
distance.
Beyond the critical
distance, intelligibility is invariably
poor.
In choosing and
placing speakers, our aims are:
1. Keep reflected sound to a minimum (keep it
off the walls and other surfaces). By
reducing the level of reflected sound,
we increase the critical distance, and
add to the area in which the original
sound is intelligible.
2. Get as much direct sound to the audience as
possible. Speakers should be placed
so that any audience member has a direct
sight line to a speaker.
3. Get the level and tone as constant as possible
throughout the audience. Both overall
level and frequency content can affect
intelligibility. We don't want the lead
vocalist uncomfortably loud near the
stage and impossible to hear or
understand near the back wall.
4. Keep direct and reflected sound away from
microphones. If you don't, you make
your system more prone to feedback.
|