There are many facets that influence the quality of a musical theatre production. The visual appeal is created from the décor, costumes and lighting, whereas the plot, pace, and relationship a listener develops with the characters are fundamental to the performance quality. However, one often overlooked factor is the impact of sound quality. The perception of sound quality is subjective but is greatly impacted by the environment in which the listener finds themselves. If the projection of the music is underwhelming in depth and expression, or the balance of the dynamics and timbre are badly mixed, this can jeopardise the production’s success, regardless of the quality of the composition or the visual aspects. The production budget for a musical performance can be prohibitive. As a result, prerecorded music is often used as an alternative substitute to live musicians. However, the subjective authenticity of a musical may be jeopardized by the exclusion of live musicians and create additional challenges and performance limitations. One such challenge is the environment in which music will be played. Recorded music is usually created in a single format such as compact disc or for broadcasting, and the cost of recording be can just as expensive as a live performance, especially on large scale works. Time and budget constraints may impact the sound quality. In addition to this, the varying acoustic properties of potential venues may emphasise sonic gaps and flaws contributing to a listener’s negative perception of the sound quality, resulting in a compromised experience of the performance as a whole. This mixed method dissertation offers a systematic explanation to potentially resolve these challenges and limitations by conceptualising established knowledge of sound, audio and acoustics to formulate a framework for adaptive sound. These concepts are put into practice by creating a specifically designed audio recording that is experimented with in multiple theatre scenarios to successfully achieve optimal adaptation of the sound for the theatre environment. / Dissertation (MMus)--University of Pretoria, 2019. / Music / MMus / Unrestricted

A method of measuring angular dependence of acoustic transmission through supercritical plates in air is discussed. The coincidence effect occurs in a supercritical plate when the component of the acoustic wave number parallel to the plate matches the bending wave number in the plate. The transmission of sound is a maximum at the angle where this trace wave number matching occurs. The theory of the coincidence effect is well-defined for unbounded thin plates using plane-wave excitation. However, experimental results for finite plates are known to diverge from theory, especially near grazing angles. An experimental setup has been developed in order to observe the coincidence effect using continuous-wave excitation and phased-array methods. Experimental results through a 0.5 mm thick aluminum bar exhibit strong maxima at the predicted coincidence angles, showing that coincidence is observable using continuous waves. Also, transmission near grazing angles is seen to diverge from infinite plate theory. Further work is suggested to improve the measurement setup and explore the source of the divergence.

No description available.

Active control of sound transmission through an elastic plate placed between two reverberation chambers is studied experimentally. Active acoustic control is performed using piezoelectric sensors and actuators bonded to the plate. The control technique uses an adaptive control algorithm. Results are presented for harmonic excitation provided by a speaker in the source chamber at two resonant frequencies of the plate. Influence of different types of error sensors, varied actuator locations, and varied speaker locations are studied. Compared to microphone sensors in the receiving chamber, piezoelectric sensors are shown to be effective in reducing sound transmission through the plate. Average reduction of sound pressure level (SPL) on the order of 20 dB or 13 dB are achieved when the plate vibrates at mode (3,1) or (3,3). Microphone sensor locations are shown to influence the controlled sound field, those located where the direct sound field is dominant result in larger SPL reductions. SPL reductions are caused by two mechanisms: modal reduction and modal restructuring, and the dominance of either is shown to depend on actuator locations. When the sound field is non-diffuse, speaker locations influence the SPL and the SPL reduction by changing the plate's structural response. Also included in this work, previously developed one-dimensional (I-D) modal sensor theory for beams is used to develop modal sensors for a clamped plate. Two I-D modal sensors are applied to a fully clamped plate and each shown to observe a particular subset of plate vibration modes. Previous work developed the theory for two-dimensional (2-D) modal sensors for simply-supported plates. A necessary and sufficient condition for the spatial functions of 2-D modal sensors are developed for plates with arbitrary boundary conditions. / Master of Science

Through the use of multiple-input/single-output (MISO) modeling, the propagation paths of sound within a reciprocating refrigeration compressor have been investigated and ranked. By investigating the nature of sound propagation within reciprocating compressors, it is hoped that compressor manufacturers can effectively formulate strategies for compressor sound reduction. From experimental data of compressor far-field sound output, suspension spring forces, and internal pressure fluctuations, a MISO model has been developed. From this model, the importance of the suspension system to the compressor far-field sound spectrum has been identified. In the frequency range above 800 Hz, forces passing through the suspension system appear to be the dominant contributor to shell excitation and sound radiation. Based upon this finding, it is recommended that modified suspension systems be considered as an avenue for compressor sound reduction efforts in the future. / Master of Science

Thesis (D.Tech.: Electronic Engineering)-Dept. of Electronic Engineering, Durban University of Technology, 2007 vii, 150 leaves / Detecting and minimising distortion in audio signals is an important aspect of sound engineering. Distortion of a signal passing through an audio system may be caused by a number of factors and it is necessary to detect these effects for optimal sound. The problem is of interest to users and operators of high quality audio equipment and transmission facilities. The objective of this thesis was the development of techniques for the blind identification of distortion in a high quality audio signal using digital signal processing techniques. The techniques developed are based on digital signal processing techniques and statistical analysis of a recorded audio signal, which is treated as a random, non-stationary signal.

published_or_final_version / Speech and Hearing Sciences / Master / Master of Science in Audiology

A deterministic approach based on a modal expansion and modal receptance method has been developed to evaluate the airborne sound insulation of aircraft panels with stringer and ring frame attachments. Furthermore, this method was extended to predict the noise radiation of stiffening panel subjected to TBL excitation. This approach integrates with the fast and accurate methods in evaluating the modal excitation terms and modal radiation efficiency. Based on these advantages, the effects of the curvature, overpressure, stringers, ring frames, hydrodynamic coincidence, composite structures and structural dissipation on the acoustical properties of a typical aircraft panel are able to be investigated efficiently. Theoretic predictions were compared with laboratory measurements conducted on both model structures and aircraft panels. It was found that a small curvature may result in significant deterioration of the sound transmission loss at frequencies of interest. Unlike a flat uniform panel, the theoretical prediction for curved panels from the infinite model can not provide good agreement with the measurement close to and well below the ring frequency. However, in this frequency range, the finite model has been proved to be applicable For the large curved airplane panels studied here, it was found that the ring frames have little influence on sound transmission loss in the frequency range of interest. However the stringers may have considerable influence on sound transmission loss. The stringer improves this for a curved panel around the ring frequency, but it may result in a potential deterioration of the sound transmission loss above the ring frequency. In this study it is evident that the sound transmission loss of the composite skin attached with composite stringers is lower than that of the metallic panel attached with metallic stringers. At frequencies higher than the corresponding ring frequency of the curved panel, both experiment and theoretical prediction reveal that the overpressure at the concave side tends to reduce the sound transmission loss at the rate of about 0.5dB /10000 Pa. While at lower frequencies, say well below the ring frequency, the overpressure may increase or reduce sound transmission loss of a finite panel, depending on the shift of the resonant frequencies resulting from the overpressure. For TBL excitation, numerical investigation reveals that the panel with the ring frames behaves more like a sub-panel between two frames. Below 500Hz, the ring frames slightly enhance the sound radiation while dramatically increasing it around 1.3kHz. The TBL forcing field excites the same vibration lever for the panel with and without ring frame attachments, but the modes excited for the panel with ring frames radiate more sound. Unlike the ring frames, the stringers increase sound radiation below 1kHz. Above 1kHz, the sub-panels between two bays respond independently and the stringer effects is therefore not obvious. / <p>QC 20100908</p>

The use of sandwich structures in automobile body panels is investigated in this thesis. The applications on vehicles such as trains, aeroplanes and automobiles, advantages, isadvantages and modelling of sandwich structures are discussed and studies about static, vibrational and acoustic benefits of sandwich structures by several authors are presented. The floor, luggage, firewall and rear wheel panels in sheet metal form is replaced with panel made from sandwich materials in order to reduce the weight obtained by a trial and error based optimization method by keeping the same bending stiffness performance. In addition to these, the use of sandwich structures over free layer surface damping treatments glued on floor panel to decrease the vibration levels and air-borne noise inside the cabin is investigated. It has been proven that, the same vibration performance of both flat beam and floor panel can be obtained using sandwich structures instead of free layer surface damping treatments with a less weight addition. Furthermore, the damping effect of sandwich structures on sound transmission loss of complex shaped panels like floor panel is investigated. A 2D flat and curved panel representing the floor panel of FIAT Car model are analysed in a very large frequency range. Four different loss factors are applied on these panels and it is seen that, until it reaches damping controlled region, damping has a very little effect on TL of flat panels but has an obvious damping effect on TL of curved panels. However in that region, damping has an increasing effect on TL of both flat and curved panels.

No description available.