Design and implementation of a listening room in accordance with the ITU-R BS 1116-1 standard

At JOANNEUM RESEARCH (Graz/Austria) a listening room in accordance with the ITU-R BS 1116-1 standard has been built which fulfils the standard ITU-R BS 1116-1 for the assessment of audio systems. It has been designed and simulated with CATT acoustics and then been measured to document its room acoustic characteristics. In the design stage the room ́s geometry was implemented in the commercially available software CATT Acoustic®. The calibration of the simulation was then accomplished with values obtained by a thorough measurement of the empty target room by employing the commercially available software WinMLS. Afterwards, the optimization process could be started. The chosen standard, however, primarily defines the reverberation time of a listening room. Thus the virtual room was equipped in order to attenuate the sound field in accordance with the standard’s requirements. The approach yielded quite good reverberation time results. During and after the room ́s building process detailed measurements were done. The results show, that the real room acoustics fit very well with the previous simulations. For low frequencies the performance is even better. All measured results are within the tolerance of the relevant standard ITU-R BS 1116-1.