Tapio Lokki is professor at Aalto University in Finland.

His passion is to understand how rooms modify the sound that we hear.

To pursue the encompassing understanding of room acoustics, his research team is investigating auralization, spatial sound reproduction, binaural technology, and novel objective and subjective evaluation methods, as well as physically-based room acoustics modelling methods.

Particularly, the interest has been in concert halls, in which the team has developed: 

• new measurement techniques
• analysis methods for spatial impulse responses
• sensory evaluation methods to understand the perceptual differences between concert halls.

In this episode, Tapio talks to us about:

• What makes a great concert hall.
• What is reverberation.
• How he and his team measure reflections using 45 Loudspeakers. 
• Measuring musical emotion in the finger tips and using it in the study of concert hall acoustics. 
• The difference between Vineyard and Shoebox concert halls.
• Future of concert hall acoustics.
• How wood fibre pulp is used as a net-zero sound absorber

We also listen to some of Tapio’s recordings to compare the acoustics of the Berlin Concert House, Vienna Musikverein, Helsinki Musiikkitalo, and the Berliner Philharmonie.

To know more about Tapio’s research, follow this link. 

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