Speaker
Description
Successful rooms for orchestral and chamber music allow the musicians to balance their own playing as part of the full ensemble. Work by Marshall in 1978 inspired Gade to propose measures in 1989 that addressed these two factors. Recent work in this field has verified that both the early and late room response have a significant effect on what musicians hear and can respond to while playing.Tuning a 7,500m3 orchestral rehearsal studio in Brisbane in late 2025 provided an opportunity to analyse the subjective impressions of 70 musicians with repertoire ranging from a Shostakovich symphony to a wind quintet and a string music quartet.The early reflection strength and late room response were independently varied by changing the height and orientation of an existing large array of overstage reflectors and varying the extent of operable absorption banners.This paper describes the creation of a loosely coupled reverberant volume in the upper part of the room following the design theory of reflection sequence halls.This was activated by directing some of the early energy from the reflectors. Subjective responses and objective data have been analysed to provide insight into preferred conditions.