SOUND GLOSSARY

Absorption 

Sound Absorption is when sound energy absorbed by materials known as “acoustically soft” as it encounters with sound waves, otherwise sound will be reflected by ‘acoustically hard materials. For example, when sound-proofing a room, wall pads made out of foam or sponge would typically be placed on the ceilings, walls and floors in order to absorb soundwaves  

Reflection

When a sound wave comes into contact with one medium and another, a section of the wave is “reflected” and another section undergoes transmission through the boundary. An echo is a type of sound reflection when sound from a second surface bounces back to the first one. 

Early Reflections

Early reflections are the sounds heard by the listener less than 100 milliseconds after being reflected once or twice by the listening space before reaching the full reverberation (the sounds that remain after the source of the sound has stopped completely, e.g. basketball bouncing). Early reflections are helpful and used in order to allow the brain to pick up information about the room size and gain a sense of distance of the different sounds in the room.

Room size

The size of the room (ratio of wall to ceiling to floor) all contribute to the effect on the room acoustics. Small rooms are at risk of adding to the low-pressure frequencies whereas large rooms risk surfaces reflecting the sound and therefore affecting the reverberation times which can distort it.

Noise

Noise refers to any unwanted sound that can be heard either alone or whilst interfering with other sounds at the same time. For example, static heard during a sort of radio transmission. There are many ways to remove these sounds in post-production using audio programs, however too much can also be done that it appears too noticeable.