Adding absorption reduces seat-to-seat bass variation significantly

Evidence

One way of thinking about it is that adding acoustical damping will in general make the individual modal peaks wider and smoother, i.e. lower the Q, as shown conceptually in Figure 14.11(a) and (b). This results in a flatter response on average and generally less seat-to-seat variance. Figure 14.11(c) shows an example in a rectangular room model with six seats, where the absorption coefficient on all surfaces was set to α = 0.1 and then in (d) at α = 0.3, again showing the effect of adding absorption. This roughly corresponds to absorption of double layer sheetrock and single layer sheetrock, respectively. Seat-to-seat variation at the lowest mode was reduced from 20 to 14 dB. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 1560

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that damping reduces modal Q, widening peaks rather than just lowering them.