Author Archives: Ankoor Apte

Reverb – Drinkward Recital Hall, Harvey Mudd

reverb-Harvey Mudd-Shanahan Building-Drinkward Recital Hall

 

Loading map...

Loading

 

Location:

Drinkward Recital Hall, Harvey Mudd College

Description of Space:

The recital hall can hold an audience of 100 people. The walls of the recital hall are padded well to make the hall an intentionally reverberant space. The ceiling is about 50 feet high. The floors and walls have a wooden finish.

Recording Setup:

The recording was made with the TASCAM DR-40 Sound Recorder placed on a tripod on the podium in the recital hall. The balloon was popped about 5 feet away from the recorder, in the center of the stage.

Reverberation time:

30 dB decay 0.5 second

50 dB decay: 1.1 second

Decay to Background Level: 1.5 second

Minimum: 1.6 second

Acoustic Description:

The walls of the hall were padded, which resulted in a relatively lower amount of resonance. However, the pop sound itself is very clear. The sound did not take too long to die down, and there wasn’t much echo.

Hoch Shanahan Dining Commons, Harvey Mudd, March 4th, 12pm

Harvey Mudd-Hoch Shanahan Dining Commons-Chef counterLunch time

 

Location

This recording was made at the Harvey Mudd Dining Hall, Hoch Shanahan Dining Commons during lunchtime. There are four big food stations at the Hoch, and this recording was taken at one of them. The food stations are one of the busiest parts of the dining hall. This is where the chefs and the students communicate. The students stand in long lines and socialize. This audio recording captures the soundscape of the peak lunchtime hour at Harvey Mudd: 12pm.

Recording

This recording was made using the TASCAM DR-40 Sound Recorder. The recorder was placed on a tripod and then on the counter of one of the chefs.

Description

There are no major events in this sound recording, therefore non are marked on the diagram. However, the three main elements of this soundscape are the plates/utensils, the students and the dining hall staff. Throughout the recording, the sounds of plates and utensils hitting each other are the most noticeable. Some of the sounds are more distant, indicating that these are sounds coming from the kitchen/behind the counter. Speech is heard from students in English and some speech is heard from the dining hall staff in both English and Spanish. The interesting aspect of this soundscape is that there is constant commotion and noise in the dining hall. Additionally, the two audible sentences presumably from students both use the common phrase: “It’s lit”. A student says “lit, fam” at the 0:08 mark, and another student says “lit” at the 1:51 mark. While this might just be a coincidence, it is interesting to hear a commonly uttered phrase twice in the dining hall soundscape in a two minute recording.

 

Bernard Field Station, March 4th 3pm

bfs

 

 

Location

This recording was made at the Bernard Field Station in Claremont. More specifically, this recording was taken next to the chicken coop at the BFS. On the day this recording was made, there were no chickens in the coop. The day was hot and the recording area is a large open space, far away from any commercial activity or roads.

Recording

This recording was made using a TASCAM DR-40 Sound Recorder. The recorder was placed on a tripod under a tree.

Description

The predominant sound in most of the recording is birds chirping. There seem to be multiple types of birds. Then, at the 0:31 minute mark, a low whirring noise is heard. This was due to an airplane flying over us. At the 1:23 minute mark, a train horn is heard. It is interesting that the train horn is heard, considering that the recording was made very far away from the train tracks; about a mile north. The train horn sound travels over a mile to the BFS, while all the other noises from the Claremont Colleges do not reach this spot of the BFS at all. The soundscape depicted in this recording is calm, natural and almost rural. It’s interesting to know that this soundscape was recorded very close to the dorm rooms and dining halls of the Claremont Colleges, because this soundscape tells a unique story.