Room Acoustics

VegasGeorge

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Playing inside a room is optimal. That being said, not all rooms are equally optimal. I think the idea behind playing inside is to make the most of reflected sound. Oh, I know that recording studios and concert halls seem to be all about sound dampening. They have lots of egg crate baffles or other sound absorbing elements to create as acoustically "dead" a space as possible. I've never quite understood that, especially in the case of the concert hall.

My choice for playing is a fairly "live" room. I like hard surfaces that bounce the sound back. Not so much as to be echoey, but enough to sound open and alive. If I clap my hands, and hear a 2nd clap, that's too much. But, if my one clap lingers just a bit before it's gone, that's just right. If I clap, and hear an immediate cut off of sound, then silence, that's too "dead" for me.

Off course, playing outside can be improved by a bandshell, or similar backstop that offers reflected sound. But, it's never as good as well balanced, live, room.
 
Actually, concert halls are not acoustically dead spaces. Direct & reflected sound is carefully considered in the design of the side & ceiling panels.

Big factor is sound absorption of the audience - major difference when playing in a large empty room vs. same room filled with people.
 
Rooms intended for un amplified music or speach usually have a longer reverberation time of a little more than 1 second, so you can better hear stuff. For amplified music I believe they aim for closer to 0,5-0,8 second. Just remembering from introductionary university course, I am a structural, not a sound engineer.

When playing at home, I also prefer to play in a slightly bigger, more reverberant room than the basement I use when my wife is in the living room. Makes it easier to hear myself. And if recording myself, while I know you can add reverb in post - I am not good enough to do it well, so I prefer to record the sound the way I like it.
 
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Studios are usually tuned instead of dampened. Absorption panels suck up frequencies that would otherwise build up and become exaggerated. A byproduct of the balance is a less lively room, but that's not the goal in my understanding. This is why there are "drum rooms" in studios specifically to create an ambience that complements the drums. It's often better when you can capture some room sound with the source. The Sound City documentary talks a lot about the drum room and is a fun watch.

FWIW, I like playing outside and would never let the space dictate my enjoyment of the music I'm playing.

Interesting:

 
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When I Play at home, I sit by a wall with 3-4 ukuleles hanging on it. I think they sort of reflect and/or amplify the sound and, to me, it sounds pretty good.
wall (2).jpg
 
When I Play at home, I sit by a wall with 3-4 ukuleles hanging on it. I think they sort of reflect and/or amplify the sound and, to me, it sounds pretty good.
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It's interesting when I do that, the hanging tenors often softly ring in sympathy to the strum I am playing. Single notes don't happen unless I put my uke right near the hanging uke.

It was quite annoying when trying to tune my uke at our club meetings. All of those other ukes would influence my Snark tuner and throw off the readings. Even though Snark specifically says in its ads that since it worked off of vibrations in the neck it wasn't affected by other nearby instruments.

If you have a tiled bathroom, go inside and play with the door closed. One of the reasons we sound so good singing in the shower.

Often when doing the post for a commercial I was involved with, they would "sweeten" the audio with a touch of reverb and/or chorus to make the voice(s) sound a little more full or give a singer a bit more presence.
 
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One of the thrills of live, unamplified performance is listening to a room and using what you hear to inform your performance. Some spaces are more conducive than others to certain musics.
 
When I Play at home, I sit by a wall with 3-4 ukuleles hanging on it. I think they sort of reflect and/or amplify the sound and, to me, it sounds pretty good.
View attachment 133965

This effect annoys me immensely in my basement. The ukes on the wall resonates with the one I play. And the walls themselves have a thin shell on them that mives a bit with the sound, makes the overall sound a bit boxy.
 
When I Play at home, I sit by a wall with 3-4 ukuleles hanging on it. I think they sort of reflect and/or amplify the sound and, to me, it sounds pretty good.
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Upon coming to the end of @VegasGeorge's first post, I reflexively clapped right here in my early-hours living room, to note the effect. The ukulele in my lap reverberated, and I laughed. :D

By the time I came to your post, I'm all, "Yes, I can see how this would be."

(No deep conclusions, just me amusing myself over here....)

~ S.
 
I don't notice this too much on ukulele. When I play in public I usually play into a microphone or plug into a sound system. I've come to prefer using a mic over the last few years.
There is one room in my home where I notice a slight difference when practicing.
I worked for years as a trumpeter and a dead room was a challenge. I tended to work harder just to hear myself as opposed to a live room.
 
Yes, I know from years of concert hall experience that audiences soak up (deaden) the sound. On stage, you usually have a hard surface floor, and some hard surface backstops, or even some hard surface over hangs. But, in all the concert halls I've seen that were acoustically engineered, there are strategically placed baffles and no hard surfaces in the audience area. I've always puzzled about why the sound is better on stage with hard surfaces, but in the audience with baffles. It "baffles" me. :confused: Another baffling thing is practice rooms. In all the schools I've attended, practice rooms are totally wrapped with baffles of one type or another. They are dead, dead, dead! I hated playing in those places. I know the basic idea is to isolate the sound so it won't bother other players. But it seems some thought could be given to making the sound better inside the room for the person using it.
 
I just started back as a music volunteer at the children's hospital. Instrumental music only, no singing. They have a music space cordoned off in the first floor lobby. Unfortunately, it's in a corner, kind of under the stairs. The lobby is very large, open, with lots of people coming & going. Background noise is an issue. I'm plugging into my Roland AC-33 amp which helps. I'm back this afternoon to play, and I'll work on my positioning & amp volume to see if I can improve things. I need to find someone to listen to my playing and give me feedback on the sound. To me, I can't hear myself very well.

But hey.....I'm playing in public, for the kids, families, and staff.... so it's all good.
 
I just started back as a music volunteer at the children's hospital. Instrumental music only, no singing. They have a music space cordoned off in the first floor lobby. Unfortunately, it's in a corner, kind of under the stairs. The lobby is very large, open, with lots of people coming & going. Background noise is an issue. I'm plugging into my Roland AC-33 amp which helps. I'm back this afternoon to play, and I'll work on my positioning & amp volume to see if I can improve things. I need to find someone to listen to my playing and give me feedback on the sound. To me, I can't hear myself very well.

But hey.....I'm playing in public, for the kids, families, and staff.... so it's all good.

Doesn't the ac33 have a looper built in? If you can record yourself, you could unplug and have a listen yourself to see how it sounds. Try to get the amp off the ground - at least chair height, though ear-height would be better.
 
Doesn't the ac33 have a looper built in? If you can record yourself, you could unplug and have a listen yourself to see how it sounds. Try to get the amp off the ground - at least chair height, though ear-height would be better.

Thanks Brad. There is a bench in the music area that I could sit the amp on. I'll try that next time. With all the ambient noise in the lobby, I have a hard time hearing myself, even through the amp. I need to ask people who stop to listen to me about the sound. I don't want to be super loud & annoying, but too soft to be heard makes playing kind of pointless.
 
This effect annoys me immensely in my basement. The ukes on the wall resonates with the one I play. And the walls themselves have a thin shell on them that mives a bit with the sound, makes the overall sound a bit boxy.

I've been experiencing almost the same problems with my basement, and that's why I've done a renovation of it, which helped a lot. As I remember, here is a resource of a company ( here a website: https://csgrenovation.ca/our-services/basement-renovations/ ), that helped me in hiring renovation professionals for that job to be done. I was pretty surprised how fast they have accomplished that renovation process in my house.
 
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