acoustics

/euh kooh"stiks/, n.

1. (used with a sing. v.) Physics. the branch of physics that deals with sound and sound waves.

2. (used with a pl. v.) the qualities or characteristics of a room, auditorium, stadium, etc., that determine the audibility or fidelity of sounds in it.

[1675-85; see ACOUSTIC, -ICS]

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Science of production, control, transmission, reception, and effects of sound.

Its principal branches are architectural, environmental, musical, and engineering acoustics, and ultrasonics. Environmental acoustics focuses on controlling noise produced by aircraft engines, factories, construction machinery, and general traffic. Musical acoustics deals with the design and use of musical instruments and how musical sounds affect listeners. Engineering acoustics concerns sound recording and reproduction systems. Ultrasonics deals with ultrasonic waves, which have frequencies above the audible range, and their applications in industry and medicine.

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▪ physics

Introduction

      the science concerned with the production, control, transmission, reception, and effects of sound. The term is derived from the Greek akoustos, meaning “hearing.”

      Beginning with its origins in the study of mechanical vibrations and the radiation of these vibrations through mechanical waves, acoustics has had important applications in almost every area of life. It has been fundamental to many developments in the arts—some of which, especially in the area of musical scales and instruments, took place after long experimentation by artists and were only much later explained as theory by scientists. For example, much of what is now known about architectural acoustics was actually learned by trial and error over centuries of experience and was only recently formalized into a science.

      Other applications of acoustic technology are in the study of geologic, atmospheric, and underwater phenomena. Psychoacoustics, the study of the physical effects of sound on biological systems, has been of interest since Pythagoras first heard the sounds of vibrating strings and of hammers hitting anvils in the 6th century BC, but the application of modern ultrasonic technology has only recently provided some of the most exciting developments in medicine. Even today, research continues into many aspects of the fundamental physical processes involved in waves and sound and into possible applications of these processes in modern life.

      Sound waves follow physical principles that can be applied to the study of all waves; these principles are discussed thoroughly in the article mechanics of solids (mechanics). The article ear (senses) explains in detail the physiological process of hearing—that is, receiving certain wave vibrations and interpreting them as sound.

Early experimentation

      The origin of the science of acoustics is generally attributed to the Greek philosopher Pythagoras (6th century BC), whose experiments on the properties of vibrating strings that produce pleasing musical intervals were of such merit that they led to a tuning system that bears his name. Aristotle (4th century BC) correctly suggested that a sound wave propagates in air through motion of the air—a hypothesis based more on philosophy than on experimental physics; however, he also incorrectly suggested that high frequencies propagate faster than low frequencies—an error that persisted for many centuries. Vitruvius, a Roman architectural engineer of the 1st century BC, determined the correct mechanism for the transmission of sound waves, and he contributed substantially to the acoustic design of theatres. In the 6th century AD, the Roman philosopher Boethius (Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus) documented several ideas relating science to music, including a suggestion that the human perception of pitch is related to the physical property of frequency.

      The modern study of waves and acoustics is said to have originated with Galileo Galilei (Galileo) (1564–1642), who elevated to the level of science the study of vibrations and the correlation between pitch and frequency of the sound source. His interest in sound was inspired in part by his father, who was a mathematician, musician, and composer of some repute. Following Galileo's foundation work, progress in acoustics came relatively rapidly. The French mathematician Marin Mersenne (Mersenne, Marin) studied the vibration of stretched strings; the results of these studies were summarized in the three Mersenne's laws. Mersenne's Harmonicorum Libri (1636) provided the basis for modern musical acoustics. Later in the century Robert Hooke (Hooke, Robert), an English physicist, first produced a sound wave of known frequency, using a rotating cog wheel as a measuring device. Further developed in the 19th century by the French physicist Félix Savart, and now commonly called Savart's disk, this device is often used today for demonstrations during physics lectures. In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, detailed studies of the relationship between frequency and pitch and of waves in stretched strings were carried out by the French physicist Joseph Sauveur, who provided a legacy of acoustic terms used to this day and first suggested the name acoustics for the study of sound.

      One of the most interesting controversies in the history of acoustics involves the famous and often misinterpreted “bell-in-vacuum” experiment, which has become a staple of contemporary physics lecture demonstrations. In this experiment the air is pumped out of a jar in which a ringing bell is located; as air is pumped out, the sound of the bell diminishes until it becomes inaudible. As late as the 17th century many philosophers and scientists believed that sound propagated via invisible particles originating at the source of the sound and moving through space to affect the ear of the observer. The concept of sound as a wave directly challenged this view, but it was not established experimentally until the first bell-in-vacuum experiment was performed by Athanasius Kircher (Kircher, Athanasius), a German scholar, who described it in his book Musurgia Universalis (1650). Even after pumping the air out of the jar, Kircher could still hear the bell, so he concluded incorrectly that air was not required to transmit sound. In fact, Kircher's jar was not entirely free of air, probably because of inadequacy in his vacuum (vacuum technology) pump. By 1660 the Anglo-Irish scientist Robert Boyle (Boyle, Robert) had improved vacuum technology to the point where he could observe sound intensity decreasing virtually to zero as air was pumped out. Boyle then came to the correct conclusion that a medium such as air is required for transmission of sound waves. Although this conclusion is correct, as an explanation for the results of the bell-in-vacuum experiment it is misleading. Even with the mechanical pumps of today, the amount of air remaining in a vacuum jar is more than sufficient to transmit a sound wave. The real reason for a decrease in sound level upon pumping air out of the jar is that the bell is unable to transmit the sound vibrations efficiently to the less dense air remaining, and that air is likewise unable to transmit the sound efficiently to the glass jar. Thus, the real problem is one of an impedance (acoustic impedance) mismatch between the air and the denser solid materials—and not the lack of a medium such as air, as is generally presented in textbooks. Nevertheless, despite the confusion regarding this experiment, it did aid in establishing sound as a wave rather than as particles.

Measuring the speed of sound

      Once it was recognized that sound is in fact a wave, measurement of the speed of sound became a serious goal. In the 17th century, the French scientist and philosopher Pierre Gassendi (Gassendi, Pierre) made the earliest known attempt at measuring the speed of sound in air. Assuming correctly that the speed of light is effectively infinite compared with the speed of sound, Gassendi measured the time difference between spotting the flash of a gun and hearing its report over a long distance on a still day. Although the value he obtained was too high—about 478.4 metres per second (1,569.6 feet per second)—he correctly concluded that the speed of sound is independent of frequency. In the 1650s, Italian physicists Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (Borelli, Giovanni Alfonso) and Vincenzo Viviani obtained the much better value of 350 metres per second using the same technique. Their compatriot G.L. Bianconi demonstrated in 1740 that the speed of sound in air increases with temperature. The earliest precise experimental value for the speed of sound, obtained at the Academy of Sciences (Sciences, Academy of) in Paris in 1738, was 332 metres per second—incredibly close to the presently accepted value, considering the rudimentary nature of the measuring tools of the day. A more recent value for the speed of sound, 331.45 metres per second (1,087.4 feet per second), was obtained in 1942; it was amended in 1986 to 331.29 metres per second at 0° C (1,086.9 feet per second at 32° F).

      The speed of sound in water was first measured by Daniel Colladon, a Swiss physicist, in 1826. Strangely enough, his primary interest was not in measuring the speed of sound in water but in calculating water's compressibility—a theoretical relationship between the speed of sound in a material and the material's compressibility having been established previously. Colladon came up with a speed of 1,435 metres per second at 8° C; the presently accepted value interpolated at that temperature is about 1,439 metres per second.

      Two approaches were employed to determine the velocity of sound in solids. In 1808 Jean-Baptiste Biot (Biot, Jean-Baptiste), a French physicist, conducted direct measurements of the speed of sound in 1,000 metres of iron pipe by comparing it with the speed of sound in air. A better measurement had earlier been carried out by a German, Ernst Florenz Friedrich Chladni, using analysis of the nodal pattern in standing-wave vibrations in long rods.

Modern advances

      Simultaneous with these early studies in acoustics, theoreticians were developing the mathematical theory of waves required for the development of modern physics, including acoustics. In the early 18th century, the English mathematician Brook Taylor (Taylor, Brook) developed a mathematical theory of vibrating strings that agreed with previous experimental observations, but he was not able to deal with vibrating systems in general without the proper mathematical base. This was provided by Isaac Newton (Newton, Sir Isaac) of England and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm) of Germany, who, in pursuing other interests, independently developed the theory of calculus, which in turn allowed the derivation of the general wave equation by the French mathematician and scientist Jean Le Rond d'Alembert (Alembert, Jean Le Rond d') in the 1740s. The Swiss mathematicians Daniel Bernoulli (Bernoulli, Daniel) and Leonhard Euler (Euler, Leonhard), as well as the Italian-French mathematician Joseph-Louis Lagrange (Lagrange, Joseph-Louis, comte de l'Empire), further applied the new equations of calculus to waves in strings and in the air. In the 19th century, Siméon-Denis Poisson (Poisson, Siméon-Denis) of France extended these developments to stretched membranes, and the German mathematician Rudolf Friedrich Alfred Clebsch completed Poisson's earlier studies. A German experimental physicist, August Kundt (Kundt, August), developed a number of important techniques for investigating properties of sound waves. These included the Kundt's tube, discussed below.

      One of the most important developments in the 19th century involved the theory of vibrating plates. In addition to his work on the speed of sound in metals, Chladni had earlier introduced a technique of observing standing-wave patterns on vibrating plates by sprinkling sand onto the plates—a demonstration commonly used today. Perhaps the most significant step in the theoretical explanation of these vibrations was provided in 1816 by the French mathematician Sophie Germain (Germain, Sophie), whose explanation was of such elegance and sophistication that errors in her treatment of the problem were not recognized until some 35 years later, by the German physicist Gustav Robert Kirchhoff.

      The analysis of a complex periodic wave into its spectral components was theoretically established early in the 19th century by Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Fourier (Fourier, Joseph, Baron) of France and is now commonly referred to as the Fourier theorem. The German physicist Georg Simon Ohm (Ohm, Georg Simon) first suggested that the ear is sensitive to these spectral components; his idea that the ear is sensitive to the amplitudes but not the phases of the harmonics of a complex tone is known as Ohm's law of hearing (distinguishing it from the more famous Ohm's law of electrical resistance).

      Hermann von Helmholtz (Helmholtz, Hermann von) made substantial contributions to understanding the mechanisms of hearing and to the psychophysics of sound and music. His book On the Sensations of Tone As a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music (1863) is one of the classics of acoustics. In addition, he constructed a set of resonators (resonator), covering much of the audio spectrum, which were used in the spectral analysis of musical tones. The Prussian physicist Karl Rudolph Koenig, an extremely clever and creative experimenter, designed many of the instruments used for research in hearing and music, including a frequency standard and the manometric flame. The flame-tube device, used to render standing sound waves “visible,” is still one of the most fascinating of physics classroom demonstrations. The English physical scientist John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh (Rayleigh, John William Strutt, 3rd Baron), carried out an enormous variety of acoustic research; much of it was included in his two-volume treatise, The Theory of Sound, publication of which in 1877–78 is now thought to mark the beginning of modern acoustics. Much of Rayleigh's work is still directly quoted in contemporary physics textbooks.

      The study of ultrasonics was initiated by the American scientist John LeConte, who in the 1850s developed a technique for observing the existence of ultrasonic waves with a gas flame. This technique was later used by the British physicist John Tyndall (Tyndall, John) for the detailed study of the properties of sound waves. The piezoelectric (piezoelectricity) effect, a primary means of producing and sensing ultrasonic waves, was discovered by the French physical chemist Pierre Curie (Curie, Pierre) and his brother Jacques in 1880. Applications of ultrasonics, however, were not possible until the development in the early 20th century of the electronic oscillator and amplifier, which were used to drive the piezoelectric element.

      Among 20th-century innovators were the American physicist Wallace Sabine (Sabine, Wallace Clement), considered to be the originator of modern architectural acoustics, and the Hungarian-born American physicist Georg von Békésy (Békésy, Georg von), who carried out experimentation on the ear and hearing and validated the commonly accepted place theory of hearing first suggested by Helmholtz. Békésy's book Experiments in Hearing, published in 1960, is the magnum opus of the modern theory of the ear.

Amplifying, recording, and reproducing

      The earliest known attempt to amplify a sound wave was made by Athanasius Kircher (Kircher, Athanasius), of “bell-in-vacuum” fame; Kircher designed a parabolic horn that could be used either as a hearing aid or as a voice amplifier. The amplification of body sounds became an important goal, and the first stethoscope was invented by a French physician, René Laënnec (Laënnec, René-Théophile-Hyacinthe), in the early 19th century.

      Attempts to record and reproduce sound waves (sound recording) originated with the invention in 1857 of a mechanical sound-recording device called the phonautograph by Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville. The first device that could actually record and play back sounds was developed by the American inventor Thomas Alva Edison (Edison, Thomas Alva) in 1877. Edison's phonograph employed grooves of varying depth in a cylindrical sheet of foil, but a spiral groove on a flat rotating disk was introduced a decade later by the German-born American inventor Emil Berliner (Berliner, Emil) in an invention he called the gramophone. Much significant progress in recording and reproduction techniques was made during the first half of the 20th century, with the development of high-quality electromechanical transducers and linear electronic circuits. The most important improvement on the standard phonograph record in the second half of the century was the compact disc, which employed digital techniques developed in mid-century that substantially reduced noise and increased the fidelity and durability of the recording.

Architectural acoustics (acoustics, architectural)

Reverberation time

      Although architectural acoustics has been an integral part of the design of structures for at least 2,000 years, the subject was only placed on a firm scientific basis at the beginning of the 20th century by Wallace Sabine (Sabine, Wallace Clement). Sabine pointed out that the most important quantity in determining the acoustic suitability of a room for a particular use is its reverberation time, and he provided a scientific basis by which the reverberation time can be determined or predicted.

      When a source creates a sound wave in a room or auditorium, observers hear not only the sound wave propagating directly from the source but also the myriad reflections from the walls (wall), floor, and ceiling. These latter form the reflected wave, or reverberant sound. After the source ceases, the reverberant sound can be heard for some time as it grows softer. The time required, after the sound source ceases, for the absolute intensity to drop by a factor of 10⁶—or, equivalently, the time for the intensity level to drop by 60 decibels—is defined as the reverberation time (RT, sometimes referred to as RT₆₀). Sabine recognized that the reverberation time of an auditorium is related to the volume of the auditorium and to the ability of the walls, ceiling, floor, and contents of the room to absorb sound. Using these assumptions, he set forth the empirical relationship through which the reverberation time could be determined: RT = ^0.05V/_A, where RT is the reverberation time in seconds, V is the volume of the room in cubic feet, and A is the total sound absorption of the room, measured by the unit sabin. The sabin is the absorption equivalent to one square foot of perfectly absorbing surface—for example, a one-square-foot hole in a wall or five square feet of surface that absorbs 20 percent of the sound striking it.

       Absorption coefficients of common materials at several frequenciesBoth the design and the analysis of room acoustics begin with this equation. Using the equation and the absorption coefficients of the materials from which the walls are to be constructed, an approximation can be obtained for the way in which the room will function acoustically. Absorbers and reflectors, or some combination of the two, can then be used to modify the reverberation time and its frequency dependence, thereby achieving the most desirable characteristics for specific uses. Representative absorption coefficients—showing the fraction of the wave, as a function of frequency, that is absorbed when a sound hits various materials—are given in the Table (Absorption coefficients of common materials at several frequencies). The absorption from all the surfaces in the room are added together to obtain the total absorption (A).

      While there is no exact value of reverberation time that can be called ideal, there is a range of values deemed to be appropriate for each application. These vary with the size of the room, but the averages can be calculated and indicated by lines on a graph. The need for clarity in understanding speech dictates that rooms used for talking must have a reasonably short reverberation time. On the other hand, the full sound desirable in the performance of music (musical performance) of the Romantic era, such as Wagner operas or Mahler symphonies, requires a long reverberation time. Obtaining a clarity suitable for the light, rapid passages of Bach or Mozart requires an intermediate value of reverberation time. For playing back recordings on an audio system, the reverberation time should be short, so as not to create confusion with the reverberation time of the music in the hall where it was recorded.

Acoustic criteria

      Many of the acoustic characteristics of rooms and auditoriums can be directly attributed to specific physically measurable properties. Because the music critic or performing artist uses a different vocabulary to describe these characteristics than does the physicist, it is helpful to survey some of the more important features of acoustics and correlate the two sets of descriptions.

      “Liveness” refers directly to reverberation time. A live room has a long reverberation time and a dead room a short reverberation time. “Intimacy” refers to the feeling that listeners have of being physically close to the performing group. A room is generally judged intimate when the first reverberant sound reaches the listener within about 20 milliseconds of the direct sound. This condition is met easily in a small room, but it can also be achieved in large halls by the use of orchestral shells that partially enclose the performers. Another example is a canopy placed above a speaker in a large room such as a cathedral: this leads to both a strong and a quick first reverberation and thus to a sense of intimacy with the person speaking.

      The amplitude of the reverberant sound relative to the direct sound is referred to as fullness. Clarity, the opposite of fullness, is achieved by reducing the amplitude of the reverberant sound. Fullness generally implies a long reverberation time, while clarity implies a shorter reverberation time. A fuller sound is generally required of Romantic music or performances by larger groups, while more clarity would be desirable in the performance of rapid passages from Bach or Mozart or in speech.

      “Warmth” and “brilliance” refer to the reverberation time at low frequencies relative to that at higher frequencies. Above about 500 hertz, the reverberation time should be the same for all frequencies. But at low frequencies an increase in the reverberation time creates a warm sound, while, if the reverberation time increased less at low frequencies, the room would be characterized as more brilliant.

      “Texture” refers to the time interval between the arrival of the direct sound and the arrival of the first few reverberations. To obtain good texture, it is necessary that the first five reflections arrive at the observer within about 60 milliseconds of the direct sound. An important corollary to this requirement is that the intensity of the reverberations should decrease monotonically; there should be no unusually large late reflections.

      “Blend” refers to the mixing of sounds from all the performers and their uniform distribution to the listeners. To achieve proper blend it is often necessary to place a collection of reflectors on the stage that distribute the sound randomly to all points in the audience.

      Although the above features of auditorium acoustics apply to listeners, the idea of ensemble applies primarily to performers. In order to perform coherently, members of the ensemble must be able to hear one another. Reverberant sound cannot be heard by the members of an orchestra, for example, if the stage is too wide, has too high a ceiling, or has too much sound absorption on its sides.

Acoustic problems

      Certain acoustic problems often result from improper design or from construction limitations. If large echoes are to be avoided, focusing of the sound wave must be avoided. Smooth, curved reflecting surfaces such as domes and curved walls act as focusing elements, creating large echoes and leading to bad texture. Improper blend results if sound from one part of the ensemble is focused to one section of the audience. In addition, parallel walls in an auditorium reflect sound back and forth, creating a rapid, repetitive pulsing of sound known as flutter echo and even leading to destructive interference of the sound wave. Resonances at certain frequencies should also be avoided by use of oblique walls.

      Acoustic shadows, regions in which some frequency regions of sound are attenuated, can be caused by diffraction effects as the sound wave passes around large pillars and corners or underneath a low balcony. Large reflectors called clouds, suspended over the performers, can be of such a size as to reflect certain frequency regions while allowing others to pass, thus affecting the mixture of the sound.

      External noise can be a serious problem for halls in urban areas or near airports or highways. One technique often used for avoiding external noise is to construct the auditorium as a smaller room within a larger room. Noise from air blowers or other mechanical vibrations can be reduced using techniques involving impedance and by isolating air handlers.

      Good acoustic design must take account of all these possible problems while emphasizing the desired acoustic features. One of the problems in a large auditorium involves simply delivering an adequate amount of sound to the rear of the hall. The intensity of a spherical sound wave decreases in intensity at a rate of six decibels for each factor of two increase in distance from the source, as shown above. If the auditorium is flat, a hemispherical wave will result. Absorption of the diffracted wave by the floor or audience near the bottom of the hemisphere will result in even greater absorption, so that the resulting intensity level will fall off at twice the theoretical rate, at about 12 decibels for each factor of two in distance. Because of this absorption, the floors of an auditorium are generally sloped upward toward the rear.

Richard E. Berg

Additional Reading

General works

Comprehensive discussions of the propagation and perception of sound, many containing sections on the ear, on sound recording and reproduction, and on architectural acoustics, are offered in the following books, which require almost no mathematical background: John Backus, The Acoustical Foundations of Music, 2nd ed. (1977); Murray Campbell and Clive Greated, The Musician's Guide to Acoustics (1987); John R. Pierce, The Science of Musical Sound, rev. ed. (1992); Michael J. Moravcsik, Musical Sound: An Introduction to the Physics of Music (1987); and Ian Johnston, Measured Tones: The Interplay of Physics and Music (1989). Books requiring an elementary understanding of mathematics include Harvey E. White and Donald H. White, Physics and Music: The Science of Musical Sound (1980); Richard E. Berg and David G. Stork, The Physics of Sound (1982), with separate sections demanding considerable knowledge of musical notation and instruments; William J. Strong and George R. Plitnik, Music, Speech, High-Fidelity, 2nd ed. (1983); John S. Rigden, Physics and the Sound of Music, 2nd ed. (1985); and Donald E. Hall, Musical Acoustics, 2nd ed. (1991). A somewhat higher level of mathematics is needed for the comprehensive Arthur H. Benade, Fundamentals of Musical Acoustics (1976, reissued 1990), a relatively sophisticated classic in the field; and Thomas D. Rossing, The Science of Sound, 2nd ed. (1990), covering virtually every area of acoustics.Important advanced texts include the following classics: Leo L. Beranek, Acoustics (1954, reissued 1986); R. Bruce Lindsay, Mechanical Radiation (1960); and Harry F. Olson, Music, Physics, and Engineering, 2nd ed. (1967). More recent advanced comprehensive studies are Allan D. Pierce, Acoustics: An Introduction to Its Physical Principles and Applications (1981, reissued 1989); F.B. Stumpf, Analytical Acoustics (1980); Lawrence E. Kinsler et al., Fundamentals of Acoustics, 3rd ed. (1982); Donald E. Hall, Basic Acoustics (1987); and S.N. Sen, Acoustics, Waves and Oscillations (1990). Thomas D. Rossing (ed.), Musical Acoustics (1988); and Carleen Maley Hutchins (ed.), The Physics of Music: Readings from Scientific American (1978), are collections of articles.Contemporary research in areas related to sound and its application is covered in periodicals: see The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America (monthly); Acustica (monthly); Journal of Sound and Vibration (biweekly); and Soviet Physics: Acoustics (bimonthly).

History of acoustics

John William Strutt (Baron Rayleigh), The Theory of Sound, 2nd ed., rev. and enlarged, 2 vol. (1894–96, reissued 1945), remains a most important historical authority on nearly all aspects of theoretical acoustics. Herman L.F. Helmholtz, On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music, 2nd English ed. (1885, reprinted 1954; originally published in German, 4th German ed., 1877), is the historical magnum opus in the field of psychoacoustics. Excellent collections of papers of historical interest include R. Bruce Lindsay (ed.), Acoustics: Historical and Philosophical Development (1973), and Physical Acoustics (1974); and Stephen G. Brush (ed.), History of Physics: Selected Reprints (1988).

Architectural acoustics

An important survey of the subject is found in Wallace C. Sabine, Collected Papers on Acoustics (1964). Leo L. Beranek (ed.), Noise and Vibration Control, rev. ed. (1988), contains excellent sections applying to concert halls; and Leo L. Beranek, Music, Acoustics & Architecture (1962, reprinted 1979), discusses more than 50 existing concert halls, relating physical properties of sound waves in auditoriums to their subjective effects. Eighty-seven concert halls are surveyed in the illustrated work by Richard H. Talaske, Ewart A. Wetherill, and William J. Cavanaugh (eds.), Halls for Music Performance: Two Decades of Experience, 1962–1982 (1982). Lothar Cremer and Helmut A. Müller, Principles and Applications of Room Acoustics, 2 vol. (1982; originally published in German, 2nd ed., 1976–78), is a detailed and advanced treatment.Richard E. Berg

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