The Acoustics of the Royal Festival Hall, London

Abstract

The Royal Festival Hall was opened in London in May, 1951. This paper describes in some detail its acoustical design, the test concerts held in it before the opening, the objective measurements made in it, and the comments about its acoustics that have been made during the first eighteen months since its opening. These comments show that the “definition” is excellent, but that for some types of music more “fullness of tone” would be desirable. It is concluded that the reverberation time is the only objective measurement which, at the present stage of development, is of practical use. Its value in the Royal Festival Hall when full is 1.5 seconds (at 500 cps), which is 0.2 second shorter than the optimum value given by Knudsen and Harris for a hall of this size. It seems probable that the “fullness” would be adequate if the reverberation time could be lengthened to 1.7 seconds or somewhat longer.