You may be just browsing, or you may have a real acoustical problem that you're looking for help with. Often it is hard to put a name to the problem when you don't know the jargon. To help you with that problem we have a number of demonstration sound files of various common acoustical and sound system problems that will help you in describing your problem to us when you contact us. We have several available in .wav/ .au and downloadable Real Audio 3.0 .ra formats. The .au files will play in Netscape's NPlayer, the .wav files will play on Windows platforms, and the Real Audio files require the Real Audio player. These are downloadable rather than real-time .ra files because that allowed us to encode them with the best 16kHz stereo bandwidth, but don't sweat it, they are really short compared to either the .wav or .au files.

• Excess Reverberation Time ("the room sounds kind of echoey")
• Late Reflections, or Slap Echoes ("it really does sound echoey")

These files are also Q Sound encoded to help put you inside the virtual acoustic environment, and the best news is you need nothing more than a pair of ears to decode that.

Sound File Construction

We used the Power Technology DSP-FX 32 bit processor for many of the current samples of reverberation to process a speech sample recorded in near-anechoic conditions using a Bruel & Kjaer Type 4007 microphone. The early and late decay settings were adjusted using a Techron TEF 20 SHIP Time Delay Spectrometer to fine tune the decay slope. The reverb was processed using a Sonic Foundry Sound Forge and the Q-sound Plug-In processor. The resulting seven sound files were combined with the aid of Cakewalk Pro Audio. Finally all of the sounds were processed through Sound Forge to create the Wave and AU files and encode the Real Audio 3.0 files.