Ever wondered how sound behaves in diffrent rooms? This widget trains your ear by demonstrating behavior of sound in various spaces. It’s interactive, with touch screen and mouse support. It’s also keyboard precise.

There are two main activities: design your own room blueprint and then listen to the sound in that space. Or put yourself through the paces with a blind identification game.

How to Use the Sound Widget

First select how you’d like to interact. Next, hear how the reverb alter with the room shape using spatial controls. The room blueprint in the middle is your best friend. Move the sound emitter by dragging the Source marker. Move the listener by dragging the Ear marker. As you move them, the blue lines will change. These are paths of the first reflections. They are called the first reflections because they bounce off walls very quick after the original sound arrives.

Use the early bounces to determine shape and size of the room. The closer the source get to a wall, the quicker the reflections will reach the listener. The visual feedback helps you understand how sound relate to distance.

If you’re a keyboard person, go for it. Tab to the Ear and Source handles. Move them around with your arrow keys in increments of two percent. To jump 10 percent, hold down Shift and hit an arrow key. When you’re satisfied, just hit Space or Enter to hear what you’ve got.

Use number keys one through four to cycle through your sound sources. This lets you toggle between them without having to touch the mouse.

What is the sound source selector doing? The sound source selector set the tone in the room. A rim knock is a sharp transient that reveal early reflections and pre-delay. A nylon pluck has a longer sustain that allow you to hear the body of the reverb. A piano triad fills the stereo field with harmonics. Vowel bloom emphasizes the damping and low frequencies. Select a sound source highlighting what it is you’d like to study.

Tweak the geometry and material of the room under the blueprint. Use the height, depth, and width sliders to adjust the volume. These sliders modifies the size of the room. Bigger rooms typically has longer decay times. Walls are set to absorb varying amounts of sound by adjusting absorption slider. A higher value creates a shorter, dryer reverb. Wall finishes apply preset material profiles that you can quickly switch between stone cathedrals and carpeted booths.

This is the visual representation of what we are listening to, called a reflection chronograph graph. On the left side are spikes of early reflections. The Reverb Tail (the decaying curve) is on the right. As you adjust the settings it will update in real-time. The part we are looking for is where the curve drops off. This is the RT60. It’s how long it takes for the sound to fall 60 dB.

The buttons on the monitor layer is used to isolate sections of the sound. Direct doorway lets you hear only the sound without reflections. First reflection hears just the first bounce off a wall. The decay chamber mode captures only the end of the reverb tail (the late reverb). These modes break down the mix into manageable pieces, making it easier to see which part of the sound are contributing to the room sound.

Use the hero buttons at the bottom for quick listening scenarios. Walk the source through rooms, click to hear the same source in four presets. This will level the volume between spaces. It’ll help you make a comparison that isn’t based off loudness but on differences in tone.

Click this blueprint to hear what it sounds like with your current settings.

Structured Practice: curtained-room identification section Veil A Mystery Room curtains off to conceal blueprint details. Random Space tool play is triggered. What do you hear? Tail length? How dense is the reflection? Is there an onset gap? Guess the preset via verdict buttons. Did you get it right? Lock-in answer to check. Tracks across attempts with score keeping.

The position and shape controls allows fine tuning of the listening environment. The room reverb, which is the part that adds air, is balanced against original sound (dry) using the wet slider. The stereo spread slider expands and contracts width of the reflection image. The master volume slider determine the overall output level. Use these settings to create a comfortable listening environment where you can clearly hear direct sound and the ambient tail.

To use it, begin by locating the point of reflection (pre-delay) using the rim knock source; then, you’ll notice that the silence is audible because of the sharp attack. For hearing the high-frequency damping, try the vowel bloom source. You’ll hear its rapid fading as energy rapidly drain into the air. Positioning the source near a wall will reveal the reinforcement effect of early reflections on direct sound. Try adjusting the extra tail pre-delay slider. The pre-delay is only for the tail. You can hear what happens when your brain cannot distinguish ambient haze from room shape.

On a smaller screen, use the fullscreen button. To refresh the keyboard map or review some listening tips, toggle the help panel at any point.

Combining sight and sound, this widget joins visual geometry with perception of sound. Adjusting source position and the physical space creates an instinctive feel for acoustics. Whether it’s room design or audio mixing, it refines your ear.

Every day take a few minutes adjusting sources. Know where the rooms are. Practice remembering. Begin by dragging the source marker around the blueprint. Use your keyboard instead and tab to it. Listen to how that blueprint sounds. Try different settings on absorption. Observe the change in the tail. Veil a room and see if you can pick out what it is by ear.

It’s an acoustic picture that gets clearer the more you play.