Acoustics Quotes

“Sam hauled open the library door.
"There you are!" Whit pushed up from the desk he'd been hunched over. "We thought you two had given up on us."
"Unlike some people I know," I said, removing my mittens and scarf, "we don't live here."
"She says that now." Sam followed me toward Whit's and Orrin's desks, where they worked over flat electronic screens. "But the first thing she said when I showed her the library was that we should move in."
Orrin lifted an eyebrow, oddly delicate for someone so large. "The acoustics would be terrible.”
― Jodi Meadows, Incarnate

“The voice welling up out of this little man is terrific, Harry had noticed it at the house, but here, in the nearly empty church, echoing off the walnut knobs and memorial plaques and high arched rafters, beneath the tall central window of Jesus taking off into the sky with a pack of pastel apostles for a launching pad, the timbre is doubled, richer, with a rounded sorrowful something Rabbit hadn't noticed hitherto, gathering and pressing the straggle of guests into a congregation, subduing any fear that this ceremony might be a farce. Laugh at ministers all you want, they have the words we need to hear, the ones the dead have spoken.”
― John Updike, Rabbit Is Rich

“Martin explains that working with architects in the Arup SoundLab has led to improved collaborations: 'We can relate to architects much better. If we are brought on board at the ideal time, which is if we are brought on board at concept, we can sit with the architect and say...this is what you have to work with. They can hear and they can understand it. Then from their first ideas and concepts they are much more willing to work with us when we talk to them about shape and form.”
― Yanni Alexander Loukissas, Co-Designers: Cultures of Computer Simulation in Architecture

“Martin's distinction between the approach to acoustics characterized by the Sabine formula and his own approach, using the Arup SoundLab, recalls the sociologist Max Weber's distinction between the ethics of the scientist and those of the politician. Weber explains the vocation of science as the pursuit of clarity. Scientists follow an "ethic of ultimate ends," in which the ends justify the means. "The believer in an ethic of ultimate ends feels responsibility only for seeing to it that the flame of pure intentions is not squelched." Weber contrasts this with the politician's "ethic of responsibility." For Weber, being a politician means giving priority to the legitimacy of the means over the end. In their shift from the optimization of reverberation time to the pursuit of a consensus in the Arup SoundLab, acousticians have traded the ethics of the scientist for those of the politician. By focusing on a collaborative means of examining architectural acoustics, Martin and his colleagues have created a place for themselves as engaged co-designers rather than objective scientists.”
― Yanni Alexander Loukissas, Co-Designers: Cultures of Computer Simulation in Architecture

“When seas of state 1 or higher are noted, when traffic or industrial noise is apparent, or when other low frequency sound sources such as shifting bottoms, tidal currents, or noisy animals are encountered, sound reception in all, but the "deafest", fishes is probably impaired - the degree of such impairment being directly dependent upon the noise-level attained.

-- Arthur A. Myrbery, Jr.”
― John L. Fletcher, Effects of Noise on Wildlife

“The acoustic physics principles behind a travelling voice are fundamental to a just and empathetic society.”
― Hope Latta