Effect of design and renovation on the speech conditions in university classrooms

摘要

The acoustical characteristics of new and renovated university classrooms have been determined. Details of each design or renovation were related to the results, in order to determine how various new-design and renovation features relate to acoustical quality. Since he quality of verbal communication was the focus, room-average speech intelligibility was used as the quality measure. Speech intelligibility is affected by two main factors - the speech-signal to background-noise level difference and the reverberation. The resutls show that some designs and renovations were effective, but others were not. They have put too much emphasis on adding sound absorption to control reverberation, at the expense of lower speech levels, particularly at the backs of rooms. Future design must prioritize: 1) limiting background noise; 2) promoting high speech levels; and, 3) controlling reverberation.