TOWN HALL ACOUSTICS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1221, 1 September 1911, Page 4

TOWN HALL ACOUSTICS.

EXPERIMENTS TO J3E MADE. Somo people have expressed surprise at tho small amount (.052) allocated by tho City Council for the improvement of the acoustics of the Town Hall. Mr. W. H. Morton (City Engineer), who is to undertake the work, states that this ajnount represents what he fancies it will cost to experiment in various ways to try and arrive at tho best result.'

"It is a most difficult matter to deal •t i!'' ' 10 "I' vo had to do with it before, and would sooner do a dozen miles of wood-blocking than tackle the job. The chief difficulty is this—that under certain conditions a hall might be perfect acoustically and very bad under others. Look at our own Town Hall, when it is full up, one could not wish for a better hall, but- half empty there was a perceptible echo. What I ivant to try and do is to absorb the sound so as to prevent the echo without interfering with the good acoustics of the hall when full, and this can onlv be done by experimenting, for 110 two halls aro alike. 1 believe tho trouble lies in the back wall. Tho sound hits the ceiling first, then the back wall, and rebounds into the body of the hall, so I intend to try the effcct of hanging curtains in the panels of tho back wall to see if they will absorb tho sound." The absolute bareness of everything in tho Town Hall is conducive to echo. Mr. Morton believes that the echo would not be so bad if tho seats in tho gallery wero upholstered, there would bo something absorbent to cat up the sound instead of tho plain wood-seated Austrian- chairs. Tho idea is well worth considering from tho standpoint,,of comfort alone. It should be noted that tho acoustics'were quite good on the occasion of the Sava.lo Club's "ladies' night," when the hall was filled bolow, and was canopied with streamers.