EduRA database: room models based on room acoustic measurements in primary and preschools

Abstract

To investigate effects of the acoustical situation in educational facilities, listening experiments are often conducted using simulated acoustic environments. In this case, it is essential to reproduce the acoustics close to the real-life settings to achieve a high ecological validity. However, acoustics strongly depends on the shape and interior design of the room, which vary significantly depending on their functional purposes, especially in the context of primary and preschools. It is, therefore, desirable to have representative sceneries for acoustic simulations to keep listening experiments comparable. This work intends to establish average room types covering the range of German educational rooms based on room acoustic measurements. In a first step, several rooms in primary and preschools in the city of Aachen were measured acoustically. Then, the rooms were categorized into five groups by clustering their room acoustics and physical features. Five average room models were derived from the resulting clustering and finally simulated using the room simulation environment RAVEN. This resulting database, EduRa (room acoustics in educational facilities), contains the room models and the simulated binaural room impulse responses from two receiver positions with eight source positions from each of the five average rooms.