Physical acoustics

General acoustical principles

Modes and associated vibration patterns

The behaviour of prominent vibrational modes

Coupled systems and energy transfer

Nonlinear coupling between modes

Radiation

 ‐non‐point sources: speaker cones

Instrumental acoustics

Excitatory and modulatory gestures

Means of controlling modes separately

Acoustic instrument families

Woodwinds

Brass

String instruments

 ‐stick‐slip, bow noise

Membrane instruments

Rigid percussion

 ‐hinged/clamped edges

Voice and speech

Electro‐acoustic instruments

The role of the performer

Room acoustics

Reflections and ray acoustics

 ‐ray vs. wave based analyses: reflections and modal analysis
 ‐clear reflections from large flat surfaces ⇒ suitable for open air simple geometries and rectangular spaces

Room modes and modal analysis

 ‐room modes: irregular room shapes even these out—they do not disappear but attain a statistical evened out quality
 ‐rectangular rooms are very bad
 ‐psychoacoustics of rapidly fluctuating system functions vs. comb responses

Diffraction, dispersion and reverberation

 ‐(Speech) intelligibility
 ‐Moorer statistical analysis for large spaces
 ‐modal analysis for smaller spaces
 ‐surface detail disperses strongly (book shelves!)
 ‐sufficient detail makes wave effects dominate ⇒ combinatorial explosion of room modes ⇒ justifies statistical approaches

Absorption and acoustical treatment

 ‐surface detail and soft surfaces absorb high to mid frequencies
 ‐bass is difficult to absorb ⇒ bass traps
 ‐link to room correction part?

Near‐field acoustics

 ‐near‐field effects
 ‐reactive sound fields