Subjective Assessment of Concert Halls: a Common Vocabulary for Music Lovers and Acousticians

Abstract

In recent years we have interviewed members of the audience after musical performances and asked them to evaluate the acoustics of the concert halls. A group of ‘music lovers’ (with a high level of musical training and experience) and ‘acousticians’ (with a wide knowledge of the physical characteristics of sound transmission) also attended each performance and answered the same questions as the general public. This group thereby served as a control group when evaluating surveys of the general public. In this paper, the results obtained when analyzing these control group surveys are presented. This analysis shows that a common vocabulary exists between music lovers and acousticians when rating a hall, although the grouping of the questions for each factor depends on the training of the respondents.