AES Fall Convention 2022

This paper looks at how the principles used in the development of the Walker criterion[1] for room mode distribution can be expanded to provide a new criterion for both rectangular and non-rectangular spaces. Walker[1] utilized a Quality Index (QI) based on mean squared mode spacing. The Quality Index can be applied to both rectangular and non-rectangular rooms. However, larger rooms naturally have a larger number of modes and therefore a naturally higher QI. For the QI to be useful in assessing the suitability of non-rectangular room shapes of a given, fixed volume, a relationship between QI and room volume needs to be established to remove the dependence of QI on the room volume.
This paper shows how this relationship can be established by calculating the Quality Index of a number of rectangular rooms, and observing how the QI changes as the room is scaled in size. A criterion that can be used to separate rooms with acceptable’ modal distribution rooms from ‘non-acceptable’ rooms is proposed. The proposed performance criterion is applicable to both rectangular and non-rectangular rooms.