The existing body of literature regarding the acoustic design of concert halls has focused almost exclusively on classical music, although there are many more performances of popular music, including rock and pop. Objective measurements were made of the acoustics of 20 rock music venues in Denmark and a questionnaire was used in a subjective assessment of those venues with professional rock musicians and sound engineers as expert listeners. Correlations between the measurements show that clarity, including bass frequencies down to , is important for the general impression of the acoustics of the hall. The best-rated halls in the study have reverberation times that are approximately frequency independent from for hall volumes from . The worst rated halls in the study had significantly higher reverberation times in the 63 and bands. Since most audiences at rock concerts are standing, absorption coefficients were measured with a standing audience from . These measurements showed that a standing audience absorbs about five times as much energy in mid-/high-frequency bands as in low-frequency bands.
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The critical distance is the distance from a sound source at which the reverberant sound energy is equal to the energy of the sound radiating directly from the sound source. At greater distances from the source, the reverberant field dominates the sound received. The critical distance decreases with increasing reverberation time.