AUD110.2: Acoustic Investigaton Blog

Acoustic Investigation Blog: Bathroom

Introduction

The purpose of this investigation is to analyse a space and its acoustics in order to better understand its sonic characteristics and come to a decision on whether or not it is a suitable recording space. The method being used in this space are three claps that will be recorded and analysed.

The Room

The room I chose to analyse was my bathroom at home. It has a shower, bathtub, vanity with an inbuilt sink, a mirror and a window. The show has a glass screen and door and the room is tiled to half way up the wall, the rest being painted.

The room’s dimensions are as follows:

Bathroom:

Length (Entrance to back wall): 2.0m

Width (Bathtub wall to Shower Screen): 2.65m

Height (Floor to Ceiling): 2.4m

Shower:

Length (Entrance wall to back wall): 1.4m

Width (Shower Screen to wall): 0.86m

Figure 1 (Sink and Mirror):

Figure 2 (Bathtub and Window):

Figure 3 (Shower):

Figure 4 (Entrance Wall):

The Claps

The three claps were recorded using my iPhone 6s Plus microphone in different parts of the bathroom.

The First Clap:

The first clap was recorded from beside the sink on the vanity.

The clap’s tail dies around 1 second after the initial clap is recorded.

The Second Clap

The second clap was recorded from inside the shower with the glass door closed.

The second clap’s tail dies down after around a second after it was initially recorded.

The Third Clap

The third clap was recorded from beside the bathtub.

The tail of the third clap died after roughly a second of the initial clap being recorded.

Sonic Characteristics

Overall, it takes roughly a second for the sound energies to become inaudible. The frequencies of the claps all take around the same amount of time to become inaudible. The claps do not sound the same at each 3 points in the room. The second clap (recorded in the shower with glass door closed) sounds softer than the other two claps. The sound characteristics of the room may make it harder for the listener to localise sound. This is because of the tiled walls and floor making it easy for the sound waves to bounce around the room.

Overall, the sound of the room was perceived to have a lot of reverb and to carry a lot of sound. This is because of all the hard surfaces in the room (tiles on the walls and floor, glass in the shower and mirror, porcelain making the sink and bathtub). These hard surfaces bounce sound off them instead of absorbing them like a softer surface would (eg. A bed, rugs, curtains, etc).

The levels of background noise in the room is low, and it is not audible in the recordings. Using a sound pressure level meter downloaded on the iPhone used to record the claps, the dBSPL of the room is measured to be at 52.6 dBA. It is composed of mainly low frequencies. The room isn’t very effective at isolating sound from outside because there has been no sound proofing measures put in place to so such. If someone was to speak outside of the bathroom door, whoever is inside would be able to hear and understand what they were saying. The same could be said for sound being contained in the room.

The current sound levels of the room are well below unsafe listening levels. If you were to listen to something above 80-85 dB for more than 8 hours a day then the listener would be at risk of damaging their ears.

Recording Space

Overall, this space wouldn’t be very suited for recording. This is because the room is not very sound proof and there is a high chance that if there was activity going on outside the room, it would be able to be heard in the recording. The space also isn’t very practical for instruments due to its size and contents within (sink, bathtub, and shower). If there had to be a recording done in this room, it might work well for a vocalist who wanted a lot of reverb/echo in their recording.

Conclusion

What I have learnt during this assignment was how to use a dBSPL meter correctly, how to measure the SPL of a room and how to determine whether or not it is a suitable room for recording using certain criteria. What I would do differently next time is hire out a proper dBSPL meter to measure my sound with.