Acoustics in rock and pop music halls

The existing body of literature regarding the acoustic design of concert halls has focused almost exclusively on classical music, although there are many more performances of rhythmic music, including rock and pop. Objective measurements were made of the acoustics of twenty rock music venues in Denmark and a questionnaire was used in a subjective assessment of those venues with professional rock musicians and sound engineers.

Correlations between the objective and subjective results lead, among others, to a recommendation for reverberation time as a function of hall volume. Since the bass frequency sounds are typically highly amplified, they play an important role in the subjective ratings and the 63-Hz-band must be included in objective measurements and recommendations.