Experimental investigations of acoustically coupled spaces

Recently, architectural acousticians have been increasingly interested in halls that incorporate coupled‐volume systems because of their potential for creating desirable effects in meeting conflicting requirements between clarity and reverberance. Previous works on coupled spaces include studies on theoretical formulation of energy exchange between coupled volumes and applications of Bayesian inference for estimating decay parameters in such spaces. Frequency dependence of sound‐energy decay is one of the essential aspects of acoustically coupled spaces that has not yet been extensively investigated. In order to understand the behavior of sound‐energy decay over different frequency ranges, experimental studies are carried out. Room impulse responses are collected through real‐size and scale‐model measurements. Schroeder integrations followed by Bayesian decay analysis reveal location sensitivities over different frequency bands in coupled spaces. This paper discusses extensive analysis results from Bayesian analysis of experimentally measured room impulse responses.