Why are concert halls often designed as round or curved auditoriums?

Answer 1

hi erin
Simply to improve the way travels throughout the room.

The Sound of Music in halls (acoustics or reverberation) will be altered due to the timing of echoes within the hall and the rate at which they decay away. Echoes with a long delay are generally undesirable and confusing to the ear, so large sheets of hard material (baffle boards) are suspended within the hall and used to reflect sound (make echoes) at short delay times from the stage, rather than allowing the sound to travel as far as the walls or ceiling to create echoes at long delay times. Baffle boards may also be curved in order to disperse echoes to make them less obvious to the ear. Soft absorbent materials are used to prevent echoes from distant parts of the hall which might otherwise create echoes with long delay times. The soft furnishings of seating, carpeting and even the people in the audience will absorb sound and reduce echoes. The essential quality of a concert hall is called the "reverberation characteristic" which is a measure of the timing of the echoes and the rate at which they die away. In a concert hall, a certain amount of reverberation is desirable and pleasing to the ear, while in a recording studio reverberation is prevented as much as possible. Concert halls are regarded generally as having "lively" acoustics while recording studios are regarded as having "dead" acoustics.

Answer 2

The reason is simple:

The sound waves coming from the instruments would get reflected by the walls and because a concert hall is mostly really big it would take some time for the sound waves to travel to the wall and back to your ear.

If that happens you would hear echoes of the instrument because you hear two sounds, one being the sound waves directly traveling to your ear and the other being the ones reflected by the walls.

If you put soft material or really odd shaped, pointed materials on the walls these reflections will get broken and wont return to your ear. Thus you will just hear the pure sound of the instrument.

Answer 3

1.Repeated reflections of sound from wall combine to build up a continuous sound which causes persistence of sound called as reverberation.

2.Concert halls and Auditoriums are considered as acoustically poor.

3.Due to their round shape the sound reaches each and every part of hall without getting repeated.

4.Therefore,Concert halls are often designed as round or curved auditoriums.

Answer 4

It improves the acoustics by reflecting and focusing sound from the stage towards the audience.