Mondo Knows Facts

Concert halls aim for about two seconds of reverberation

Too little sounds dry, too much muddles fast passages Reverberation time measures how long a sound takes to decay by 60 decibels, and the figure depends on volume and surface absorption. Halls for organ music want longer tails than halls for speech. Balconies, coffers and curtains all change the balance. It sits in Mondo's music collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.

Where this comes from

Britannica

Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.

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Tags: acoustics, halls, design

Concert halls aim for about two seconds of reverberation: the short answers

Where does this come from, and can I check it?
Too little sounds dry, too much muddles fast passages. The figure is taken from Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
Is this really a music fact?
Yes. It sits on the Music shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
What else can I read about it?
The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.