[LAU] room acoustics simulation

[Kevin Cosgrove]

On 13 March 2008 at 14:08, thomas fisher <studio1 at commspeed.net> wrote:

> On Thursday 13 March 2008 00:58:26 Kevin Cosgrove wrote:
> > I've been trying to find a simulator for room acoustics which
> > will allow me to construct a non-rectangular shaped room,
> > specify absorptive characteristics of the surfaces, specify
> > sound sources, and listening position.  I'd like the output of
> > the software to be an impulse response, so that I can listen to
> > the predicted response, and some depiction of the standing waves
> > versus frequencies.  Does anything like that exist for Linux?
> > For what it's worth, web searches lead me to some rudimentary
> > software to show room modes of rectangular box shaped rooms,
> > and there is a lot of theory out there too.  But, the finished
> > "product" software seems scarce, or at least hard for me to find.
> >
>    You might check into BRLcad, Sean Morrison responds to the forum 
> frequently. With this app you would be able to create a 3D model to any 
> degree of detail and make material assignments to all surfaces. Properties of 
> the materials can also be defined. Analysis can then be carried out. BRLcad 
> is also linkable separate FEA apps.

I just had a look at BRL-CAD.  Wow!  That seems like one fine CAD 
program.  Being general purpose, it's a bit overkill for doing just 
room impulse response modeling.  But, it seems like it could get the 
geometry and physical properties part right.  Like you say, it might 
need some sort of FEA or other analysis engine.  I'm guessing that 
the ray tracing detailed on the BRL-CAD website (http://brlcad.org/)
is more related to image rendering than to any kind of (sound) wave 
propagation simuluation.

Thanks much...
--
Kevin