She's a violinist and uses the room to practice in.
Which brings up the question: Is the ideal sound reproduction room different from the ideal room to play (live music) in? Sound-wise, anyway.
What's an ideal room to play live music in?
Oh definitely different. And an ideal room to play live music varies depending on the instrumentation. For instance, an a cappella vocal ensemble might sound beautifully in a cathedral, but it would be way too muddy/unclear for a large orchestra for instance. Some concert halls have panels all over the walls that can be closed upon themselves, or left open, depending on the liveliness desired for the instrumentation.
A huge factor, at least for live acoustical performance, is the absorption of human bodies and their clothing. If you are preparing/rehearsing in a certain empty hall, and expect a lot of people, you must prepare for how much deader the sound will be.
This is a quote from Everest's Master Handbook of Acoustics, in a different discussion I was involved with.
Sound Absorption by People
People absorb sound too. Just how much of this is due to absorption by flesh and how much by hair and clothing has yet to be reported. The important things is that the people making up an audience account for a significant part of the sound absorption of the room. It also makes an acoustical difference whether one or ten people are in a small monitoring room. The problem is how to rate human absorption and how to involve it in calculations. The usual method of multiplying a human absorption coefficient by the area of a human has its problems. The easy way is to determine the absorption units (sabins) a human presents at each frequency and add them to the sabins of the carpet, drapes, and other absorbers in the room at each frequency.
The person who quoted the above stated that humans absorb in the range of 1 kHz to 4 kHz at 5 to 7 sabins per person (clothed
).
The CTO of Audyssey said:
However...the amount is not huge and in a movie theater it is negligible compared to the other absorptive treatments that dominate. In a concert hall it is VERY noticeable. We have measurements from Symphony Hall full and empty and also other halls in Dallas and Miami. Beranek's book on Concert and Opera Halls has data from all over the world. The differences in RT60 between full and empty halls can be dramatic (almost 1 sec).
In a home theater it is also a very small effect and the negative implications of having people in the room during measurements (noise and body reflections) are too big to justify taking measurements that way.
Lastly, Kal Rubinson told me that the acoustics of the Met Opera House are said to have been superior in the olden days with the greater display of decolletage (cleavage).
So, make sure to tell your wife to dress properly for best acoustics.
In the end, I would try to have panels that can be easily moved about/removed to increase the liveliness for practice. If that's too inconvenient, I would actually insist that the wife practice in a very dead room. Practicing in a very dead room definitely has its benefits, as it's unforgiving in a certain sense. (More excessive resonances will mask unclean performances). She will still sound good in a nice hall, but your recordings will still sound terribly on people's systems if you don't do your best in making it a recording studio. I do understand that it's nice as a musician to practice in a livelier setting at times, as it can be somewhat inspirational, when needed, and the greater power can encourage the musician to "go with it", so to speak. IOW, it can be encouraging at times.
I have a friend who has applied ARC to his room, after making a plethora of panels for it. He says it has become much improved. I don't know how he got the software, surely illegally, and he found the mic for like $300 I believe.
