Innsbruck river view.
INTERNOISE 2013 in Innsbruck, Austria, took place recently (15-18th September) and indeed was a positive experience on many levels. (See previous posting!) Many great acoustic sessions, related expert meetings, meeting both new and old acquaintances from all over the globe, new and updated insights and knowledge – and of course, a lot of inspiration! This posting contains some of my personal reflections and all of you who were there for sure have your own experiences.
Mountain view from Innsbruck.
Innsbruck:
It was the first time for me and most likely for many others to visit Innsbruck in Austria. The Congress venue was situated wonderfully by the river Inn and we were all surrounded by majestic Austrian mountains. “Luckily” we had some rain, which became snow higher up, turning the mountain tops white. Innsbruck is a lovely place and easy to cover by foot – and the atmosphere is very historic.
Sessions:
I tried to cover as much as possible, but had to concentrate on the classroom acoustics and hospital acoustics sessions. And then of course picking other interesting subjects along the way, mainly related to room acoustics. Kerstin-Persson-Waye, from Gothenburg University in Sweden, chaired the very interesting health care acoustics session and Kerstin herself (with Erica Ryherd from Georgia Institute of Technology in USA involved) delivered a valuable overview of this topic in the keynote lecture. Noise in educational settings, chaired by Staffan Hygge (University of Gävle in Sweden) and Dylan Jones (Cardiff University, UK) and Acoustics in educational facilities/classroom acoustics chaired by David García Pelegrin (Research Foundation-Flanders, Belgium) and Nicola Prodi (University of Ferrara, Italy) took place at the same tome and day, which made it hard to choose. Very good sessions both of them! Other parameters than reverberation time needed as to judge the room acoustic quality in educational (and other ordinary) rooms was frequently lifted up. Also calculations and prediction models were highlighted.
Ecophon speeches:
Ecophon contributed with five speeches covering various room acoustic related topics. Below a short overview:
Jonas Christensson: “Speech Intelligibility in Swedish Forests an Example of Good Classroom Acoustics”.
Colin Campbell: “Classroom acoustic research findings on speech behaviour of teachers and students”.
Erling Nilsson: “Calculations and measurements of Reverberation Time, sound strength, clarity, in classrooms with absorbing ceilings”.
Yoann Le Muet: “Thermally activated cooling technology (TABS) and high acoustic demand: Acoustic and thermal results from field measurements”.
Gerd Marbjerg (Saint-Gobain Ecophon/Technical University of Denmark, DTU): “Development of a pressure based room acoustic model using impedance descriptions of surfaces”.
Thank you all people who actively contributed to this acoustic conference – Internoise 2013! And thank you all acousticians from around the globe for being there.
