Incremental use of FFT as a solution for low BT-product reverberation time measurements

Abstract

The limitations in performance of band-pass filters to accurately process rapid decaying signals in lower frequency bands is an obstacle for some measurements within building acoustics. For instance, it would be beneficial to be able to accurately measure reverberation times down to the 20 Hz one-third octave band for impact sound in timber buildings. Here, it is tested whether calculations with FFT with small incremental steps may be a way to achieve discrete frequency time signals with faster performance than traditional band-pass filters. The tests show that incremental FFT gives accurate estimations of the reverberation time corresponding down to 0.1 s at 20 Hz with a spectral resolution of 2 Hz. Using the one-third octave limits it is possible to form approximate one-third octave band results. It is seen that accurate estimations of reverberation time are achievable for BT⩾0.5 (T=0.1 seconds for the 20 Hz one-third octave band) and possibly even lower, if the dynamic range in the interrupted noise signal is sufficient. The higher one-third octave results show to work as well. A disadvantage with the method is that during short reverberation times (0.1 s) there is a severe spectral leakage to the side bands. Also, the method requires higher dynamic range decay signals compared to band-pass filtered signals. If a one-third octave resolution is requested, a dynamic range of 50 dB or greater is preferable. With a coarse resolution of e.g., 10 Hz and having no averaging into one-third octave bands, it is possible to measure short reverberation times (0.1 s) with signals having close to the same dynamic range used in classical band-pass filtered reverberation time measurements.