Acoustics of performance buildings in Hispania: The Roman theatre and amphitheatre of Segobriga, Spain

Abstract

In Roman times, Segobriga (Cuenca) was the capital of the Celtiberia region. The specular gypsum of its mines, used as glass in windows, was exported across the whole Roman Empire through the port of Carthago Nova (Cartagena), which made Segobriga a major centre of commerce with the Mediterranean. The construction of the two performance buildings took place outside the urban wall of the city and must have begun in the time of Tiberius; they were inaugurated around 79 AD under Vespasian. The Roman theatre has one of the best conserved cavea in Hispania, although it lacks a scaenae frons. In the amphitheatre, only its southern cavea has been restored to accommodate the audience. In this work, experimental results and analyses are presented of impulse responses and of the values of the monaural and binaural acoustic parameters recorded in situ in these two performance buildings of this imperial city of Hispania. These results correspond to the source-receiver combinations of three positions of the sound source, in the places where the natural sources are located in each building with multiple positions of the microphones. Analyses of the room impulse response signals in the two venues are carried out, as is a study of focalization in the amphitheatre together with a comparison of the acoustics of the two sites in terms of temporal, energy, and spatial acoustic parameters. These buildings feature as study cases of a wider research project that aims to evaluate and revalue the acoustics of the principal Roman theatres of Spain.