Fan-shaped halls sacrifice lateral reflections for seating capacity

Evidence

Another popular structure, which has a different behavior as regards to lateral reflections, is the fan-shaped hall shown in Figure 6.26. This structure has the advantage of being able to seat more people with good sightlines but unfortunately it directs the lateral reflections away from the audience and those few that do arrive are very weak at the wider part of the fan. — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 1970

Another popular structure, which has a different behavior as regards lateral reflections, is the fan-shaped hall shown in Figure 6.26. This structure has the advantage of being able to seat more people with good sightlines, but unfortunately it directs the lateral reflections away from the audience, and those few that do arrive are very weak at the wider part of the fan. The situation can be improved via the use of explicit diffusion structures on the walls, ceilings, and mid-air as floating FIGURE 6. — David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 1931

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to shoebox hall acoustics tradeoffs in surrounding passages of this chapter and the general literature on concert hall geometry. — connects to: Fan-shaped halls discourage early side reflections and tend to fail acoustically; Fan-shaped halls trade good sightlines for weak lateral reflections; Shoebox-shaped concert halls naturally produce abundant lateral reflections — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 1969
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 1970; David M. Howard, Jamie Angus, Acoustics and Psychoacoustics, 1931

Broader Connections

• Fan-shaped halls trade good sightlines for weak lateral reflections #corroborates (1.00)
• Shoebox-shaped concert halls naturally produce abundant lateral reflections #contradicts (0.70) — David Howard, Jamie Angus, coustics and Psychoacoustics, 1969