Acoustic optimization of a music practice classroom

Music practice classrooms are essential built spaces needed in order to accommodate students, belonging to a music sector from a specific faculty, in their teaching activity. The main objective of a music practice classroom is to establish a proper sound communication between students and teacher. Unfortunately in most of the faculties with musical profile, a current problem faced by students is the lack of adequate musical practice classrooms. Most of the rooms practice conditions do not ensure an optimal acoustic comfort, their sound performance being inadequate for music education facilities. More often the existing practice classrooms are expected to be too reverberant in order to ensure an intelligible environment for the occupant. This paper presents an acoustic study made in one of the existing practice classrooms of The Faculty of Orthodox Theology from Alba-Iulia. Various methods of determining the reverberation time are discussed in the paper. Acoustic measurements of reverberation time were developed according to the existing norms. Also empirical formulae were used in the reverberation time calculation. The obtained results were compared with the admissible limits provided by the current legislation. In order to fit the obtained values of the reverberation time between the admissible limits some acoustic solutions were proposed. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.