Music Production

So today we're using the anechoic chamber to test, to measure loudspeakers so that students can understand the design characteristics and how those design characteristics relate to the performance of the loudspeaker, allowing them to pick the best loudspeaker for a live sound environment, or a recording studio environment, or whatever is required.

So they're sending various different sweeps and noise based signals through a variety of loudspeakers and using some test microphones and test equipment to establish the audio performance of those loudspeakers.

Essentially, it removes the room from the test measurements that we're doing, so you would put a loudspeaker in there and perform your measurement, and it removes the run from the experiment, so you get a valid result.

We also occasionally use it for psychoacoustic testing on human beings, so running experiments in terms of people's perception of sound in the absence of any reverb.

The practical sessions have given us greater insight into how things are working, and learning from an experienced tutor has definitely helped put things into practice.

The whole building can be used for a variety of purposes. We can have live reverbs from a control room and a recording studio, we can get very dry recordings from the anechoic chamber, and we could explore the full technical and creative applications of these spaces.

The recording studios, anechoic chamber, dubbing rooms, theatres, they are all industry standard, so the spaces are all ten out of ten and a really good experience to learn.

The acoustics labs themselves are world-class. We've got an anechoic chamber, reverb chambers, and also, the excellent test equipment such as the Kemar which we've been using today.

It's basically a fake human upper half with microphones in the two ears, and that allows us to capture sounds from the perspective of a human being with all the reflections and the arrival time differences and level differences between the two ears. It's called binaural recording.

So, students are looking at the theory behind binaural recording. They're also taking some recordings using the dummy head and experiencing those recordings on headphones, and we can also use the dummy head to measure headphone performance as well, so we can put the headphones on the dummy head and run audio testing to establish the sound quality of those headphones.

The brand-new facilities are unreal. They've helped me a lot with helping out with my project, and just having like the accessibility just throughout the uni, especially with... there's like lots of new equipment as well as the new facilities, which have just been great.

So, there's two courses that the access those facilities mainly. One of which is our audio engineering undergraduate BSc, and the other of which is our music technology undergraduate BSc. The ability to work in these spaces and do finally a project work that moves them towards really interesting careers in the industry is really exciting for us.

I love it, the fact that it introduced me new opportunities to subjects which I didn't think I would even know about before I came to uni. So for example, spatial audio, I'm a massive fan of that now. Before I came to uni, it was... didn't have a clue what it was.

In the reverb chamber, we generally use omnidirectional sound sources which generate sound in all directions to excite the room in all directions, which allows us to measure absorption and reverberation in there.

In terms of measuring those parameters, we have a range of high-spec sound level meters, which allow us to measure sound pressure level as well as reverb time and other important parameters of sound.

The labs are loaded with every bit of equipment that you could want from 7.1 Dolby sound to all the computers, mixing desks, and even down to, like, electronic components that we need when we're building things.

The whole building can be used for a variety of purposes. We can have live reverbs from a control room in a recording studio, we can get very dry recordings from the anechoic chamber, and we can explore the full technical and creative applications of these spaces.

The most fun that I have on the course is getting hands-on with all the practical things in the chambers, in the labs.

The ability to work in these spaces and do, finally a project work that moves them towards really interesting careers in the industry is really exciting for us.

We've got so many, so many little gadgets and things that we can play with that, you know, we're still learning so, exceptionally good.

We're excited by the research potential as well with these spaces. They're really high spec, they're great for research purposes and we're hoping we can collaborate with industry and other institutions in terms of bringing people into these spaces and get them used to really exciting new research.