Concert hall reverberation times range from one to two seconds

Evidence

Bigger spaces tend to have longer reverberation times and well-furnished spaces tend to have shorter reverberation times. Reverberation time can vary from about 0.2 of a second for a small well-furnished living room to about 10 seconds for a large glass and stone cathedral. — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 1784 (#expands, via linked claim)

An interesting result from Equation 6.6 is that it appears that the level of the reverberant field depends only on the total absorbing surface area. In other words it is independent of the volume of the room. However, in practice the surface area and volume are related because one encloses the other. In fact, because the surface area in a room becomes less as its vol­ ume decreases, the reverberant sound level becomes higher for a given aver­ age absorption coefficient in smaller rooms although the reverberation time in the smaller room will always be shorter. Another way of visualizing this is to realize that in a smaller room there is less volume for a given amount of sound energy to spread out in, like a pat of butter on a smaller piece of toast. Therefore the energy density, and thus the sound level, must be higher in smaller rooms. However, there are more impacts per second with the surface of a smaller room, which gives rise to the more rapid decay than in a larger room. — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 1806 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Recommendable reverberation times range from 2 seconds down to 0.35 seconds by room type; Reverberation time spans from 0.2 seconds to 10 seconds across rooms — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 1784; Halls vary reverberation time by either adding volume or adding absorption (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Reverberation time spans from 0.2 seconds to 10 seconds across rooms #expands (0.90) — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 1784
• Halls vary reverberation time by either adding volume or adding absorption #expands (0.85)
• Smaller rooms produce louder reverberant fields but shorter reverberation times #expands (0.80) — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 1806
• Sabine experimentally verified exponential sound decay in a reverberant room #corroborates (0.70)