Comparison between measured and calculated parameters for the acoustical characterization of small classrooms

This paper presents a comparison between measured and calculated acoustical parameters in eight high school classrooms. The mid frequency unoccupied and occupied reverberation times and the 1 kHz sound propagation (SP) of the reverberant and total speech levels in occupied classrooms were compared with analytical and numerical predictions. The ODEON 6.5 code and the Sabine formula gave the most accurate results for reverberation time in the empty classrooms with overall relative differences of 8.1% and 9.7%, respectively. With students present, the Eyring and Sabine formulas and Hodgson’s empirical model resulted to be the most accurate with relative differences of 11.1%, 13.2% and 13.6%, respectively. The reverberant speech levels decrease with increasing distance from the source at rates varying from −1.21 to −2.62 dB/distance doubling, and the Hodgson model fits the slope values quite well. The best predictions of the SP of the reverberant and total speech levels are shown, in order of accuracy, for the ODEON code, the Barron and Lee theory and the classical diffuse field theory. Lower rms errors were found when the measured total acoustic absorptions were used. The lowest rms error of 1.4 dB for the SP of the total speech level were found for both the ODEON code and the Barron and Lee theory.