Simulação computacional para avaliação da qualidade acústica do auditório da escola de música da UFRN

Abstract

In a room used mainly for musical presentations, the intelligibility levels of musical information and other acoustic aspects allow the analysis of the quality of the sounds received by the listeners and, consequently, allows an evaluation of room's acoustic characteristics. This analysis is performed by the evaluation of objective parameters, which can be obtained by measurement and computational simulation techniques. With the advancement of technology and the development of research related to architectural acoustics over the years, several software for evaluating acoustic room quality were developed, making them essential tools for predicting the behavior of sound in different types of halls. The aim of this study is to evaluate, through computer measurement and simulation, parameters that are able to represent the acoustic behavior of the Onofre Lopes Auditorium (AOL) of the School of Music of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte (EMUFRN), in order to propose general guidelines to optimize its acoustic characteristics. These room's acoustic parameters were obtained by measuring it impulse response. Through the construction of a threedimensional digital model of the auditorium, the acoustic characteristics of the materials that covers its internal surfaces, as well electroacoustic characteristics of the sound sources present in this space were modeled with the aid of computer simulation software. After the validation of the model, by comparing Reverberation Time (RT) results obtained in the measurements and simulations, the acoustic parameters Early Decay Time (EDT), Clarity (C80), Definition (D50), Center Time (Ts) and Speech Transmission Index (STI) were simulated and evaluated according to the values recommended in the literature. As a result of this research, the values collected in the measurements and simulations pointed out that the AOL is a space that has inadequate acoustic characteristics to speech and may be considered inefficient when used for music. Thus, some acoustic conditioning guidelines were simulated to improve the acoustic temporal response to the use of the auditorium as a multipurpose hall.