The conference, which was held at Austin Court, Birmingham, commenced with a great lecture from Mike Barron on auditorium acoustics. He focussed on clarity, early decay time, lateral energy and sound strength as being the most important factors in designing good spaces for classical music. Mike is a great teacher and communicator, and I know everyone learned something new. For me, it was the new research into objective support and that orchestral reflectors don't necessarily improve communication between musicians on a stage; the reflectors make the sound from all instruments louder and orchestras now prefer to have the reflectors at about 14m above the stage, which is where the reflectors in the Birmingham Symphony Hall have been placed. Afterwards we went for a curry at Itihaas on Fleet Street -boy was it good - fully recommended!
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