If your school, performing arts center, museum, concert hall or event venue has an auditorium, you&#;re probably more concerned with acoustics than most people &#; and rightfully so. In an auditorium, acoustics are extremely important.
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Even if you recognize the importance of acoustics, that doesn&#;t mean you know how to achieve them in an auditorium. Auditorium acoustics can be complicated to understand, but we can break them down into seven main factors that influence the sounds in this type of space.
An auditorium is an important gathering place for everything from routine announcements to special performances. What all these occasions have in common is that you want the students or attendees to hear what&#;s coming from the stage clearly. You don&#;t want that important lecture on bullying or that vocal solo a student has practiced to sound unclear or too quiet.
You can pay attention to other aspects of your auditorium, like the quality of the seats, decor and lighting, which are all important. However, you should never neglect one of the most critical aspects of your auditorium: the sound. Whether you&#;re building a new auditorium or renovating an existing one, acoustics should be a central focus in your design. Even if you&#;re not taking on a full-scale renovation, you can still make improvements with acoustic treatments for your auditorium.
Effective auditorium design should address the following goals:
As we&#;ll see, there are many factors that affect your auditorium&#;s acoustics. Acoustics can be complex, but when you find the right design, you&#;ll enjoy better quality lectures and performances for your students and guests. The investment in improving your auditorium&#;s acoustics is well worth it.
There are several aspects of an auditorium that impact the acoustics you experience in the space. All these factors combine to create a unique acoustic landscape for every auditorium. You can draw on an understanding of these factors to account for acoustics during the design and building stage, or you can address problems in an existing auditorium and use acoustic treatments to remedy them.
In any room, size has an important influence on acoustics. Size includes the length, width and height of the room. Larger and smaller auditoriums come with their own acoustical advantages.
For instance, a small room generally won&#;t allow music to ring out at richly as it will in a large room. When it comes to volume, you&#;ll have an easier time getting the whole audience to hear clearly in a small room, while a larger auditorium can pose some volume challenges. This is why you need the other aspects of a large room to contribute to good acoustics and why you need a quality sound system.
Another concern related to auditorium size is reverberation, which we&#;ll discuss more below. Larger rooms can cause longer reverberation times, which can become excessive. Smaller rooms can cause shorter reverberation times that may seem too short, making the room feel acoustically &#;dead.&#;
Like size, the shape of your auditorium will play an important role in determining the acoustics. This is why it&#;s feasible to have a computer program that can reconstruct a room&#;s geometry based solely on the input of one sound emission. Auditoriums come in many different shapes, though you won&#;t see some shapes as often because they&#;ve proven to be poor for acoustics.
Generally, you want to avoid square rooms or narrow, rectangular rooms since the parallel walls can cause sound waves to bounce back and forth continuously &#; creating undesirable reverberations that muddy the overall sound clarity. This is why many auditoriums have more of a fan shape. Some auditoriums also feature curved walls, which help diffuse sound. In addition to the general shape of a room, other architectural features like the ceiling pitch and structures in the room will affect the way sound waves behave in the space.
Some architects specialize in building spaces with the right shape to achieve the appropriate acoustics for performances or lectures. If your auditorium is already built, you may not be able to alter the shape, but you can find other ways to improve your acoustics.
A common problem in auditoriums is reverberation, which occurs when sound waves bounce off surfaces and congregate. If you&#;ve ever attended a lecture where the speaker&#;s voice echoed and made it difficult to understand what they were saying, you&#;ve experienced the issue of excessive reverberation. Some level of reverberation is a good thing, especially when it comes to musical performances, since otherwise the room will feel acoustically dead.
In a general-purpose auditorium where you want speech to sound clear and music to sound rich and full, the ideal reverberation time &#; the time it takes a sound to die away &#; is around 1.5 seconds to 2.5 seconds.
For most auditoriums, the reverberation time will be too long unless there are sound-absorbing materials throughout the room. This includes acoustic panels, upholstered chairs, curtains and other soft, porous surfaces. If your auditorium is full of surfaces that are hard and nonporous, like windows or wood floors, these materials will reflect sound waves and contribute to higher levels of reverberation.
If your auditorium includes an orchestra pit and any balconies, these features can affect the acoustics in the room. Balconies can be a helpful way to include more seating in a room without lengthening the room to the point where attendees in the back have trouble hearing. The shape and size of a balcony and the materials it includes all affect the way sound waves behave in the room.
Orchestra pits also affect the structure and acoustics of an auditorium. Installing soundproof curtains around an orchestra pit can help a conductor control the sound levels that emerge from the pit.
The inside of an orchestra pit also has acoustics to consider. You want musicians in the pit to be able to hear themselves and hear others clearly. In surveys regarding opera halls, most of the issues people cited with orchestra pits had to do with acoustics, so it is important to design orchestra pits strategically for the acoustics to be ideal.
Many auditoriums, especially those in schools and universities, are used for a variety of purposes. This presents a challenge acoustically since the ideal acoustics for speech are not the same as the ideal acoustics for music. This is because speech should have a shorter reverberation time than music. You can continue to make distinctions beyond speech and music. For example, the ideal acoustics for a cappella choral music are not the same as the ideal acoustics for rock music.
You may be dissatisfied with the acoustics of your auditorium because you&#;re using it primarily for speeches when that same auditorium would be excellent for a musical. This is part of what makes acoustic design a complicated subject, and it&#;s why acoustics experts approach every space as a unique project with its own challenges and solutions.
If your auditorium is primarily used for a certain type of event or performance, you should factor this into your acoustic design. If you want to create a space that offers good acoustics for a range of uses, an acoustic engineer can help you achieve that.
It&#;s also important to consider the spaces outside an auditorium and how they can affect acoustics within the auditorium. If there are other activities, conversations or footsteps outside that are audible inside the auditorium, this will interfere with the sounds you want the students or audience to hear.
Doors can be a point where outside noises are let in. Solid-core doors with higher sound transmission control (STC) ratings will do a much better job of blocking outside noises than hollow-core doors with lower STC ratings.
Some auditoriums use buffer zones to help prevent noise from getting into the auditorium. These are areas that lie between your auditorium and other rooms used for other purposes, such as classrooms, restrooms or dressing rooms. These areas, which can take the form of hallways or foyers, provide a blanket of space around your auditorium that should be relatively free of noise and activity during a performance.
Even if you have soundproof doors and buffer zones to keep out noise from the outside, that doesn&#;t mean the auditorium will sound completely silent when empty. All rooms have ongoing noises from HVAC equipment and even plumbing pipes running in the background. In most situations, we hear these as white noise, and it&#;s not much of a bother. These sorts of background noises may not pose a problem in an auditorium if they are very quiet. However, if the air conditioning comes on and is noisy, it will interfere with the quality of a performance on your stage and may make it harder to understand a speaker.
Fortunately, there are solutions you can employ to eliminate these problems. Duct liners and mufflers can help absorb sound from your HVAC system so it doesn&#;t bleed into your auditorium. You can also choose HVAC systems that are quieter than others. With the right design, you won&#;t have to sacrifice comfort, and you also won&#;t have to sacrifice sound quality in your auditorium.
If you&#;re dealing with an existing auditorium that has some acoustical shortcomings, you can improve the situation through acoustic treatments. Acoustic treatments for auditoriums are products you can install to address acoustic problems and improve the sound in your facility without the need to renovate your space.
There are many possible solutions out there, so it&#;s best to have acoustics professionals, such as our team at Illuminated Integrations, conduct a custom analysis of your auditorium. This way, they can accurately diagnose the challenges that are having a negative effect on your auditorium&#;s acoustics. Properly understanding the problems in a space allows professionals to develop a solution that is completely customized for your auditorium.
It&#;s especially helpful when you can work with a team like Illuminated Integrations. We understand the ins and outs of acoustic design and audio systems and can ensure your sound system and the room acoustics work in cooperation to produce a great sound from the front row to the back.
For most auditoriums, an acoustics expert will likely recommend solutions to help absorb, diffuse and block sound. An example of an absorption product is auditorium acoustic panels. These panels can look attractive hanging on your auditorium walls and will help absorb the energy of sound waves so they don&#;t reflect and reverberate. Some products can even target specific frequencies. Since lower frequencies have particularly long, powerful sound waves, you may need bass traps to absorb them at the corners of the auditorium.
Ceiling design for auditoriums will sometimes feature another type of sound-absorbing treatment: ceiling clouds. These are essentially acoustic panels that hang horizontally from the ceiling and help absorb sound waves that travel up. Especially when your auditorium has a high ceiling, you may need ceiling clouds to help prevent the cavernous sound that can result from this ceiling structure.
Diffusion products are designed to disperse sound waves rather than absorb them, so the sound waves don&#;t reverberate between parallel walls. Diffusion panels have a three-dimensional look, unlike acoustic panels. You may have seen diffusion panels before and thought they were a creative piece of decor in a theater since they have an artistic look.
Blocking sound may involve creating buffer zones, installing more soundproof doors or even providing better insulation for the room. The idea is to eliminate noises from outside so the audience in the auditorium only hears the lecture or performance they came for.
At Illuminated Integrations, we offer a full range of turnkey audio, video and lighting (AVL) solutions for our customers. This includes consulting on auditorium acoustics and delivering an acoustic design or treatments that are tailored to your auditorium. We can also create high-quality rigging designs for auditorium stages.
We know how important acoustics are in an auditorium. We have the expertise to help you identify problems and deliver solutions to fix them so you can achieve the fantastic acoustics you&#;re after. That next school play, guest lecture, dance recital, talent show or concert will sound clear and acoustically rich to delight your guests.
For more information or to speak to an expert, contact us today.
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A lot of engineering goes into the design of auditoriums. A part of that complexity is designing a usable and comfortable space to accommodate the needs of the audience and the performers. Lighting, seating, and trash can accessibility are all important factors in maintaining a safe and comfortable auditorium. TrashCans Unlimited offers an extensive selection of auditorium trash cans, and we&#;re here to discuss typical uses and designs for auditoriums, as well as the trash cans that fulfill their unique needs.
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An auditorium is a room designed to host a range of audio and/or visual performances and their audiences. They can be found in entertainment venues, schools, community halls, and theaters. They may be used for rehearsals, presentations, performing arts productions, or as a learning space.
An auditorium may be designed for a playhouse with stages for dramatic performances, a concert hall with orchestras for musical performances, or a theater house consisting of screens to watch movies or presentations.
Forms of auditoriums include:
Auditoriums come in many shapes and sizes, but designs typically consist of three main components:
The main seating area is where the bulk of the audience sits. Standard estimates are based around guidelines of approximately 18 sq. ft per person. This allows for aisle ways, sound and light control areas, and entryways that trap the light when late-comers arrive. Viewing angles are critical components of seating layouts; every seat should have a great one. Acoustical control is a science, and the use of 3D computer models is essential to develop the optimum &#;sound environment&#; when designing a seating area.
The stage should be sized to accommodate the largest group expected to be featured. Assume that the typical stage is 30-35 feet deep with a proscenium opening of 40-50 feet wide, and up to 30 feet tall. The side stage should be at least half the size of the proscenium opening on each side. Ideally, access to the stage is handicap accessible. That can be accomplished by the construction of side aprons on the same level as the &#;cross-aisle.&#;
If the auditorium is where the heart and soul are, the support spaces are where the bones and guts of the operation are. This includes the front end which consists of the ticket booth, entrance vestibules, lobby, coat check, retail, and recessions. The front end support spaces make use of attractive or discreet designer trash cans in auditorium lobbies, and under counter trash cans for auditorium staff.
The backend consists of storage rooms, dressing rooms, a &#;green room&#; which can double as rehearsal and instructional space, set construction areas, and equipment rooms. Computer-controlled stage rigging and LED theatrical lighting have become standards in most performance venues, so making sure that room for their storage and operation are part of your design will ensure that your theater is up to modern standards. The backend support spaces benefit from commercial grade trash cans, or trash cans with wheels for maximum flexibility. The support spaces are where a lot of action goes down and they need to be kept clean and tidy, which is why benefit from having large and durable indoor commercial trash cans and recycling bins.
The overall design of the auditorium is determined by the audience size and form of stage, which are both determined by the type of performance.
Dimensions can get tricky, but a good rule of thumb is arranging the size of the auditorium around the type of performance and the number of audience members you plan to seat:
Whether the floor is sloped or level is an important part of auditorium seating design. Many auditoriums use raked seating, which is positioned on an upwards slope away from the stage, in order to give the audience a better view than if the seats were all on the same level.
When designing a floor space for a theater, consider:
Auditoriums with steeper ascending seating gives each audience member a better view of the stage. Steeper seating also creates a greater sense of drama, with the seats in front sloping away to reveal the action unfolding on stage.
When it comes to seminars and audience participation, like one could expect in college lecture halls or business conferences, shallowly ascending seating is considered superior to steeper options because it puts everyone closer to being on the same level to allow for easier communication. This kind of intimacy is not ideal for the drama that concert halls or playhouses call for.
Auditoriums with shallow ascending seating typically have audiences that bring beverages or snacks with them, and paper to take notes. This means shallow ascending seating auditoriums frequently benefit from having multiple recycling bins and trash cans, that are strategically placed by all doors, because audience members need a convenient place to dispose of their items.
With sightlines, you want an unobstructed view between your audience and the speaker or presentation on stage. Consider viewing angles from the most extremely positioned seats in the theater to ensure maximum viewing quality.
Auditoriums should aim for &#;every other row sightline&#; which means that the view of a patron in one row should have a completely unobstructed view of the stage over the head of patrons in seats at least two rows in front of them.
Ensure that the extreme seats have a viewpoint that includes three-quarters of the stage and the wall behind the stage. With auditoriums that frequently have dance performances, the audience expects to see the dancers&#; feet, no matter what row they&#;re in. If the auditorium is for other types of performance, this might not be as important.
When designing the seating for your auditorium or theater, these are the cardinal rules to achieve an optimal balance between three principles:
Seat width is the gap between the final seat in the row and the stairs, as well as the distance between each audience member in a row. Seats should snugly fit in all gaps.
The clearance between each row of seats is critically important to both audience safety and comfort, as well as the seating capacity and profitability of an auditorium.
Additional regulations to remember are ADA-compliant seats, which are designed for people with restricted mobility and are usually located closest to the aisle. ADA-compliant seats are legally required to feature flip-up or side-open end arms (for easier access), and they always feature the ADA seat mark.
The minimum widths for a wheelchair space are:
The minimum depths for a wheelchair space are:
In addition to auditorium seating, there are many guidelines for how to accommodate all guests in all parts of the building, including ticketing practices, which can be found on the websites for National Endowment for the ArtsOffice of Accessibility, and the National Association Of Theatre Owners.
In the world of auditorium design, there are three main styles of seating arrangements, multiple aisle, continental, and wide fan. Variations of the three main forms accommodate different stages.
Multiple aisle seating is a more formal setup, suitable for lecture halls and business conferences. Seat count can vary, typically you want a maximum of 14-16 chairs per row.
Continental seating is a good use of space and is the preferred choice for open space auditoriums and amphitheaters. Having all seats turned toward and arranged in a concave shape toward the central arena increases intimacy between performer and audience.
Wide fan auditoriums bring the audience up close and personal, but limits the usage of a stage to mostly speech-related activity.
A horseshoe auditorium is popular in many entertainment venues in combination with a proscenium stage. It was common in Baroque theater design for ballet, masques, and opera performances, and is still popular in theaters and auditoriums today, including the Auditorium Building in Chicago.
Beyond the three main categories of auditorium seating design, other seating arrangements are variants of the main three categories to accommodate the stage and surrounding space. One of the most dramatic variants of auditorium design is the vineyard seating, which surrounds an arena stage style. Vineyard seating is popular in concert halls, like the Berlin Philharmonic.
The style of stage in an auditorium is determined by the type of performance, which in conjunction, determines the seating arrangement.
A central stage surrounded by the audience on all sides, these styles of stage are some of the best for sightlines. An example of an arena stage in an auditorium is the Glenn Hughes Penthouse Theatre in Seattle Washington, which was the first theater-in-the-round venue built in the US.
Typically used for open space theaters, the ¾ arena stage is frequently paired with a continental seating arrangement. These stages closely resemble amphitheaters and thrust stages, and are useful for musical concerts and plays, as it offers great sight and aural clarity to the audience.
These styles of stage utilize space effectively and are an excellent choice for lecture halls and film presentations. The seating arrangement is usually multiple aisles, ideal for small spaces. However, this is not the most intimate method of staging, so not as great for performances that require that level of intimacy.
A proscenium stage resembles an end stage, with the addition of the proscenium arch through which the audience views the performance. The audience directly faces the stage and views only one side of the scene. Often, a stage may extend in front of the proscenium arch which offers additional playing area to the actors. This area is referred to as the apron. Underneath and in front of the apron is sometimes an orchestra pit which is used by musicians during musicals and operas.
A stage that &#;thrusts'' the performers into the audience for a greater sense of intimacy and drama, which is achieved by seating the audience on three sides of the stage. Usually thrust stages are in a square performance area, surrounded by raked seating.
Black box theaters are usually created in &#;found&#; or converted spaces, with big empty boxes painted black to create an auditorium-like space. Neither the stage nor the seating is fixed, so the theater can be altered to meet the whims of the director.
The audience is on two sides of the stage, facing towards each other. This style of theater is usually in a &#;found&#; or converted space. Some of these stages require the performers to be staged in profile to the audience so it doesn't become uncomfortable. A non-theatrical form of the profile stage is a basketball arena, if no one is seated behind the hoops. Smaller auditoriums such as these benefit from smaller and low-profile auditorium trash cans that don&#;t take up much space.
Designing and auditorium can be complicated, but TrashCans Unlimited makes sourcing high quality and attractive auditorium trash cans is easy. Hopefully, this gives you a sense of how auditoriums are planned and layed out. No matter the design of the auditorium, we have the trash can to fill its needs&#; whether it&#;s auditorium recycling bins or commercial indoor trash cans. Get in touch, and start your order today!
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