Multi-positional Acoustic Measurements for Auralization of St Margaret’s Church, York, UK

A common approach for studying the acoustic behaviour of a space is to measure the impulse re- sponses across different receiver positions, and report the average values of the acoustic parameters obtained. Since the variations of the reverberation time values across the different measured posi- tions are minimal, this approach is considered suitable for describing the acoustics of the space and for acoustic design purposes. For auralization purposes, however, the average values cannot repre- sent the listeners auditory experience at a specific position in the space as significant differences are observed for EDT and Clarity parameters across the measured positions. For this study, impulse response measurements based on the Exponential-Swept Sine Method have been made in the his- toric site of St Margaret’s Church, York, UK. The church has been acoustically modified to create a multi-functional space acoustically suitable for a variety of events, from conferences to classical and early music recitals. For an appropriate coverage of the space, 26 receiver positions were used and variations in the orientation of the sound source were additionally applied for the in-situ acoustic measurements. The auralization results have been analysed in objective terms by studying the values of the acoustic parameters T30, EDT and C80. This paper highlights the importance of studying the frequency-dependent acoustic behaviour at each individual position in order to obtain reliable auralization results, rather than using spatial averaging. A novel way to represent the data across different measured positions, using acoustic floor maps, is also introduced. This provides information on the variations across both frequency bands and position.