Room Acoustic Quality Indicator and a Cost-Effective Measurement Solution

Abstract

At present, most classrooms have not fully considered their acoustic characteristics during the design and construction. Some classrooms have poor acoustic environment quality, which has an adverse influence on students’ listening experience. This paper proposes an acoustic quality indicator to describe the acoustic characteristics in a classroom and gives a complete set of methods to calculate the reverberation time and the proposed acoustic quality indicator. On this basis, a cost-effective and use-friendly acoustic quality evaluation system is developed. Through the proposed system, the classroom reverberation time and the classroom acoustic quality indicator can be conveniently and effectively measured. Also, the system is evaluated in three typical classrooms, validating the effectiveness of the proposed system. The proposed solution provides a convenient and low-cost technical means for the evaluation of classroom acoustic quality, and has a broad prospect for promotion and application.