Martial Arts

A room with hard, bare walls, no furniture and no drapes, echoes. To hear well in a room or auditorium it may seem that the walls should not absorb any sound. This would lead to echoing. A room, especially a large room with an excess of sound absorbing materials such as large soft drapes and soft and stuffed furniture, may have a quality referred to as dead. Too much absorption results in too low an intensity. Both these types of rooms are called poor acoustics. A balance must be therefore obtained. When the sound source is switched on, the intensity slowly builds up; when it is switched off, the intensity drops slowly. The prolongation of sound inside a room or hall even after the source producing the sound is turned off is called reverberation.