Proposal to improve the acoustic quality of the main hall of Catania University

The University of Catania has its main hall located in the Monastery of Benedictine an ancient building built in the XVII century. The aesthetic appearance of the hall, used by Benedictine Monks as "Refectory-room", is impressive: the architectural complex comprises a semi-elliptic geometry and a high vaulted roof. Due to the large dimensions of the hall, to its large and empty volume and to the sound reflecting finishing of almost all surfaces, the listening quality and speech intelligibility in the hall is very poor. Therefore, a thorough acoustical study was carried out, in order to define the necessary corrections and to give the hall an acceptable acoustical quality, especially for speech. Preliminary research is carried out using a ray tracing software in order both to modelling and identify the temporal distribution of the various reflections into the room and computing the Reverberation decay Time(T60). Experimental measurements of the Reverberation Time (RT) and other important acoustic descriptors have been compared with the results obtained by means ray tracing software. After the Analysis of the acoustic descriptors of the hall, the Authors proposed corrections to improve the acoustic quality of the main hall and room acoustic recommendations. The suggested designed proposal won't effect the historical architecture of the hall.