Is the science of acoustics now so highly advanced that, if money were no object, you could be certain that you’d build a perfect performance space, time after time? Or is there still room for serendipity or bad luck, such that it’s still iffy as to whether you have another Carnegie Hall or a Quickie Mart parking lot?
[disclaimer] I am neither an acoustics expert nor an architect [/disclaimer]
I suppose you could build The Perfect Concert Hall®, but wouldn’t that result in all halls being more or less identical as regards to physical appearance, materials etc. and I don’t think an architect who wants to put his personal mark on the design would go for that. There are, of course, ways to simulate the acoustic characteristics plus the accumulated knowledge of how to build houses so it’s not really a matter of trial and error anyway.
Depends upon your definition of “perfect.”
I would define perfect as meaning that every seat in the house got at least as jaw dropping quality sound as the best seat in the best concert hall ever built. If this is the goal, it isn’t going to happen.
Sound is a harsh mistress. Concert halls are (or should be) as carefully tuned as any musical instrument. But in any engineering system there are compromises that are forced on you by the physics of the siutation, and they cannot be got around. The dominant one is the reverberation time. Essentially how long it takes for a sound to die away. Different sorts of music demand different reverberation times, and a hall designed around orchestral music will be wrong for chamber music. Some halls attempt to cope with this by using movable walls and baffles. Even then the reverberant sound is affected by the physical size of the hall. Again, different sorts of music sound better in smaller or larger halls. Short of making the walls movable there is little that can be done.
The sound can’t be the same throughout the hall. You can probably avoid really bad mistakes, like reflections from odd bits of architecture (like the underside of balconies) wrecking the sound in particular areas. But the overall sound field thoughout the hall will always vary. Orchestras are not homogenous. Depenind upn where you sit you get a different sound balance. Some people will activey setect their seat depending upon the piece to be played. Especially if there are soloists present.
The sound designer will try to balance the direct sound, reflected sound, and diffuse sound, along with enough absorbant material in the hall to control reverberation. Getting this mix right is probably the key to good sound. But it is impossible to get it right everywhere.
Air is lossy and dispersive. The further away you are the more high frequencies are lost, and the more phase information is lost. You can’t put this back.
Some halls try active compensation. Lots of loudspeakers with DSP (digital signal processing) to try to create the right sound field where the passive nature of the hall design falls short. The main theatre where I live, where the local orchestra often play is so fitted out. It doesn’t work. Well not well enough to recommend to anyone. It would be better if they turned it off.
Hall design has all sorts of other compromises. Opera? So an orchestra pit. Big stage. More sonic compromises. I guess if money is absolutley no object you can design something that reconfigures the entire stage setup as needed. But a big hall suited to big opera and big orchestra works (which still prefer different acoustic mixes) isn’t going to be much good for a solo piano. Not unless you mic it, and then you might as well go home and listen to it on your HiFi.
So, there is no excuse with current knowledge in acoustics and computer modelling to create anything but a first class hall design. One as good as anywhere else. So long as one is clear about the design tradeoffs. If the hall is to be multipurpose, compromises will need to be made. Even if you had the luxury of designing a single purpose hall, you need to make compromise decisions about the balance of best possible sound for the few against good sound for the many.
Frank Zappa wrote that when conducting an orchestra the sound up on the podium was so good that if you actually listened to it, you would f*ck up. That is what one would want to aspire to.
I’ve been in concerts where, during sound tests, the engineer asked people to stand up on the central area, with an explanation that it would lead to less tweaking later. I don’t know whether the engineer had been smoking something funny, but there does seem to be more similarity between the profile of a hall with people sitting on the seats and standing on the floor (that is, during the concert) and the profile of one with emptyish seats and people standing on the floor, than between the real concert and seats filling up while the floor remains mostly empty.
I imagine that particular engineer wouldn’t end up with the same settings if his audience was several school-fuls of 6 year olds than when it was adults…
Thanks, folks!
Some places have no alternative.
Kansas City built a third arena so Sprint could have something to name after it’s self. It has only been used for concerts, and it is terrible. The acoustics were optimized for sporting events, where you need hard surfaces to reflect the sound of the crowd back at it’s self. But there are no sports teams to play there. (Kansas City had a professional basketball team. Nobody went, they moved away. Kansas City had a professional hockey team. Nobody went, they moved away. Kansas City had a professional soccer team. Nobody went, they moved away.) So now Kansas City has a third arena, and while it is very nice looking, it is deeply uncomfortable and sounds like shit.
They should have optimized it for music then added a LARES system to provide the crowd acoustics when (or if) they ever get a sports team to play there.
The outdoor pavillions are a good use of the LARES system. (The local theatre here uses LARES too.) My main complint about LARES is that the sound you hear is only as good as the speakers and amplification they use. When it is a choice between no sound, or a conventional big PA system on the stage, there is no contest. LARES is the right answer. Using LARES to put in a huge reverberant sports field feel is a superb idea. 
But when you are paying top dollar to see really good music, with a really good orchestra, I object to ending up listening to a sound that is worse than my home HiFi system can reproduce. Now I have pretty high standards in HiFi, but it is pretty poor, when the real thing is actually worse. Our local orchestra plays in two venues. The big modern 2000 seat theatre, and a smaller 1000 odd seat town hall. The big theatre has LARES, and the town hall is natural. The town hall sounds superb, and the musicians love playing there. The big theatre sounds B grade, and no one really likes it all that much. If you get a premium seat, close in, and at orchestra level, it can sound wonderful, but you are in the real sound field, and away from all the problems. To get seats in these positions you need to kill someone. Subscriber seats are closely held, and typically only come available in these positions after someone dies.