Planning of Sound Reinforcement Systems  
Primarily with the introduction of the sound film technique it became absolutely necessary to think about the location and quality of loudspeakers.

In this respect the listener does not distinguish whether the hall he is seated in has itself bad acoustic properties or is just equipped with a bad sound-reinforcement system. What he does realize is that he has just heard a bad acoustic reproduction and he thus considers the room as a whole to be "acoustically insufficient". Consequently, planning in this field has to aim at compensating the acoustic deficits of rooms by means of adequately selected sound reinforcement systems.

EASE and EARS: This computer software was developed by a team under the direction of Prof. Ahnert and constitutes, apart from our experience of many years standing, our most important tool for the planning of sound-reinforcement systems.

 
   

Planning is based on a 3-dimensional computer model of the room containing all boundary surfaces and depicting its interior surfaces with all their acoustic properties. Some models are composed of several thousand surfaces.

By means of this model it is already possible to calculate basic parameters, such as the reverberation time. Optionally one can also make use of measuring values ascertained in the real room.

  
   
  The Engineering Office ADA Acoustic Design Ahnert relies on an experience of 30 years in the solution of sound design problems.

An essential help in this respect is the CAD program EASE (Electro Acoustic Simulator for Engineers) which was developed especially for this purpose and has shown its value already in many countries. It enables the following procedures to be carried out:

  • Layout of the audience areas, loudspeakers and listeners' seats in a hall
  • Arrangement of the most varied types of loudspeakers (from a data base of more than 1000 loudspeakers, 5° and third-octave resolution)
    • Computation of Clusters and Line Arrays with application of in-phase superposition of individual speaker components
  • Rotation and inclination of the speakers
  • Coverage investigations concerning the question: how does the speaker cover the planned audience area?
  • Distribution of direct sound and overall sound levels
  • Calculation of energy measures and various clarity measures

The results obtained by EASE can be transferred to other CAD programs, via adequate export routines, for further visualization.