Toward an open room acoustics measurement system. II. Software

Abstract

Measurements of objective room acoustical parameters via computer-aided acquisition of impulse responses have become standard practice in the acoustics community, and the number of dedicated computer programs for performing this task has multiplied over the past years. Notwithstanding this significant advance, two problematical areas remain, both of which can be linked to the closed and stand-alone nature of most applications. First, it is very difficult to track discrepancies between the results given by various programs down to individual elements or algorithms. Second, the closed nature of most of the programs inhibits the definition and refinement of new acoustical criteria which take account of our increasing understanding of human perception. To address these problems, and in order to foster more research into the correspondence between the objective description and the subjective evaluation of room acoustical quality, the authors feel that measurement programs will have to become more open, allowing the user to check individual algorithms and define new criteria in a straightforward manner. An outline of such an open, modular, measurement program, using the Matlab environment, will be given.