The audience constitutes a major sound absorbent material in most performance spaces like cinemas, auditoriums, venues and non-inclusion of the sound absorbed by the audience in the determination of the optimum reverberation time from the design stage accounts for the problem of poor sound quality in many projects. To address this problem, this research was
carried out to provide designers with data on sound absorption by an individual at some octave band frequencies important for intelligibility in speech and music. The work utilized the Sabine’s formula for Reverberation Time to determine the sound absorption per person at Octave band frequencies of 125Hz, 250Hz, 500Hz, 1000Hz, 2000Hz and 4000Hz.
Data which included the volume, sitting capacity of persons and reverberation time of eight spaces obtained when the churches were occupied and when unoccupied. These data gave the calculated average sound absorption per person of 0.29, 0.43, 0.51, 0.68, 0.71 and 0.73 at these octave band frequencies respectively, all showing that the average sound absorption by an individual increases with frequency within this octave band frequency range.
These values could be used by architects, building engineers, room designers and acousticians in the determination of optimum reverberation time (from the design stage) for effective communication in enclosures of any type. However, this is an exploratory study and the values of the average sound absorption by an individual depend on the clothing of the members of the audience and the type of seating. It is believed that such values also depend on the spacing between the members of the audience and upon temperature.
