The first session of the year was held jointly with the International Congress on Acoustics and the Acoustical Society of America in Seattle Washington, June 20 - 26. (back to top)

Since this was a joint session there was participation from many countries around the world.

A special workshop was held on Opera House Acoustics jointly with CIARM, MCHA and ASA.  Also included as part of the workshop was a student design competition in Opera House design.  Following is a list of topics that were covered as part of the workshop:

Opera House Acoustics Workshop (joint with CIARM, MCHA)
Sound Field for the Audience - 13 papers
State of the Art - 4 papers
Sound Field for the Singer and Orchestra - 13 papers
Opera House Design Case Studies - 10 papers
Opera House Acoustics Student Design Competition - 12 entries from 5 schools, with a total of 15 students involved in the competition.

Listed below are the other sessions held at the Seattle meeting:

Room Acoustic Measurement Techniques Absorption and Diffusion (poster session) 32 posters
Measuring and Modeling Noise Flanking Transmission - 6 papers
Impact of Trains on Performance Halls - 5 papers
Case Study of the New Tokyo Performing Arts Center - 6 papers
Case Study of the New Tokyo International Forum - 4 papers and panel discussion
Speech Intelligibility - 4 papers
Case Studies of Performance Spaces - 12 papers
Performance Spaces (poster session) - 20 posters
Classroom Acoustics - 5 papers

Special Sessions included:
Vern Knudsen Distinguished Lecture - Concert Hall Research:  Balancing Complexity with Practicality - John Bradley
Plenary Lecture - Sound Transmission Through Suspended Ceilings - F.M. Mechel.

There were many sessions that were held jointly with the Noise committee which are listed below:
Novel Approaches toe Noise Control Barriers - 13 papers
Acoustics of Buildings - 6 papers
Environmental Noise from Combined Sources - 9 papers
Low-Frequency Noise - 4 papers
Progress Report and Discussion on the Continuing Activity on ASA’s Role in Noise and   Its Control

A Graduate Student Reception was also held (jointly with MU/SC/P&P/AB).

For those in Architectural Acoustics there was a Technical Tour of special interest: the tour of Benaroya Hall (which was nearing completion at that time).

The Seattle session proved to be excellent with almost too many choices of what paper/poster sessions to take in.  There were a total of 134 papers/posters presented in the Architectural Acoustics area.
 

The Fall meeting of the ASA was held in Norfolk, VA; October 12-16. (back to top)  The Architectural Acoustics group had a number of sessions as well as a combined tour and session in Acoustics for Organ Spaces which was one of the highlights of the meeting.

The following is a list of sessions that were presented at the Norfolk meeting:
Reverberation Topics - 3 papers
Recording Microphones -  2 papers and panel discussion
Acoustics for Office Spaces - 8 papers
Acoustics for Organ Performance Spaces - 18 papers
Characteristics of Scattering - 6 papers
Total Papers - 37 papers

The Technical Tour mentioned above included organ concerts and demonstration at two Norfolk churches which were held in conjunction with the session on Acoustics of Organ Performance Spaces.

At the conclusion of the Norfolk meeting there was a Short Course held on Auralization.
 

Technical Initiatives that were sponsored by the Technical Committee included: (back to top)

• travel funding assistance for students involved in the design competition at the Seattle meeting
• funding was also provided for translation for some sessions given in Japanese at the Seattle meeting
• the development of materials for a course in Classroom Acoustics to be used to help educate those outside of the field of acoustics of the need for and proper acoustical design of classrooms
• funding was provided to place the data the had been collected as part of the Concert Hall Research Group measurements onto a CD-ROM
• part of the technical initiative was used to help sponsor the Graduate Student Reception in Seattle
• funding was also provided for the organ concerts and demonstrations that were part of the Acoustics of Organ Performance Spaces at the Norfolk meeting
• funding was provided, but was not used for the development of the Architectural Acoustics section of the ASA web site.

  The activity in Architectural Acoustics continues to be very strong.  I would like to thank the presenters, chairs and co-chairs, organizers, TCAA members and all those who have participated in 1998 for their hard work and effort to make it a successful year.  I would also encourage any of those interested in Architectural Acoustical to attend the ASA meetings and become involved in the Architectural Acoustics group.  The TCAA meetings are an excellent way to get started.

  Sincerely,
   

  Ron Freiheit
  Chair - Technical Committee on Architectural Acoustics