It might seem bizarre to think a different shade of paint can make an orchestra sound better or worse, but new research has shown that the colour scheme of a concert hall does indeed influence how listeners perceive music.
A study published in the Journal Of The Acoustical Society Of America in February found that in darker halls with less saturated colours, many people like the music better than in rooms with brighter and more vivid colours.
Sound in brighter rooms with more vivid colours is also more likely to be perceived as cold, study author Stefan Weinzierl of the Technical University Berlin said.
Room acoustics are not perceived one-dimensionally, the physicist and expert in audio communication argues in the study.
"We can hear whether a hall is louder or quieter, more reverberant or drier but also what tonal colouring it has. A room can seem warm, brilliant or metallic," Weinzierl said. "Our results show that this perception is more strongly linked to visual impressions than previously assumed."
The study involved 48 participants. For the experiment, they put on virtual reality (VR) headsets that placed them in virtual versions of the chamber music hall at the Konzerthaus Berlin.
The hall appeared in different hues and with different brightness and saturation.A total of 12 differently designed colour environments in red, green and blue tones were tested, the researchers said, for example by changing the colour schemes for seat upholstery and the stage backdrop.
Participants listened to four pieces of music from different eras at different tempos. They then rated them on a scale of 1 to 10, including by criteria such as personal preference, perceived loudness, warmth, reverberation and tonal colour.
The room design had the strongest influence on perceived tonal colour. By contrast, the colour scheme had no measurable effect on the perception of loudness.
Weinzierl said darker rooms with muted colours drew attention more strongly to the musicians on stage. Many concert halls were already designed accordingly and many people had apparently become used to this.
The participants' ratings therefore also had a psychological component, he said: "People tend to like what they know rather than what they have never seen."
What can architects and acoustic planners learn from the study when designing concert halls, theatres and other performance spaces? Visual impressions must be taken more into account when planning a room acoustically, Weinzierl said. – dpa
