Quote:
bpape wrote:
 Sorry - but RT60 is still very useful in small room acoustics. You're correct that it's not a true reverberant field. However, it's still a useful way to calculate relative target decay curves. RT30 can also be used if preferred. The point is that no matter what method you use, broadband decay time must still be considered and balanced.
Bryan |
Respectfully...
The ETC would be a much more useful and illustrative tool to determine the amplitude, source, and subsequent isolation and remediation of specular reflections as well as to determine the effective degree of remediative diffusive (or absorptive) treatment than a measurement that does not accurately address either.
Simply generating a number that fails to isolate any of the real factors (or behaviors) remains an abstraction that contributes little to isolating and addressing any of the real concerns upon which one should be focusing.
Such a statistical value for an RT60 or an RT30 fail to identify and isolate any specular reflections that are the source of the degradation in intelligibility that are predominate in a small acoustical space. Likewise, such calculations fail to assist in the practical identification, treatment and/or verification of effective remediation for room modes as well - rendering their practical usefulness of questionable value.
Rather it is the practical identification and effective treatment of the room modes and specular reflections that enable a greater 'well-behaved' semi-reverberant decay 'tail'. And to the degree that one can effectively address this, the finite acoustic energy available in the acoustical space can be most advantageously utilized.
A statistical abstraction that fails to provide for the practical identification of such phenomena is of limited value except as a point of discussion over a beer. ;-)