Abstract
The Christchurch Town Hall (2650 seats) is the major hall in a complex which includes a 986 seat theater. It was opened on 30 September 1972 and was designed primarily as a choral symphony hall. Reverberation time (125 Hz–2 Khz) in excess of 2.2 s with the hall full is provided by a volume of 20 500 m3 and reflective surfaces. The basic design aim, audibility of early lateral reflections is achieved by large interior oblique reflectors which hang free from the boundaries of the reverberant volume. The resulting early lateral energy and long RT gives the hall a combination of reverberance, envelopment, and clarity. The paper gives an account of design aims and studies including a ray‐tracing computer program with an interactive graphics output. Measurements of T60, T15, integrated early energy and binaural cross correlation have been carried out in the hall. Echograms and other measured data will be presented. Clarity has been measured by a speech intelligibility test with the hall empty except for 40 participants. With T60−2.7 s. at 500 Hz the intelligibility was better than the Peutz criterion for public address systems.
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