The influence of boundary conditions on acoustic signal features in reverberation plates – concept of study and initial results

Mechanical vibrations of plates are used in many branches of science including acoustics - for reverberation purposes. The paper takes up a topic of synthesis of artificial reverberation, one of the most important signal processors in audio engineering. Using a reverberation processor, it is convenient to have available adjustable features to simulate different types of phenomena depending on needs of the engineer. This paper describes results of measurements of a plate vibrations depending on its boundary conditions, and acoustic signals obtained by them. The measurements were performed using a test stand created for such experiments. It allows to implement different types of boundary conditions of the plate, as well as to excite the plate using an electrodynamic transducer and record the plate vibration using a contact microphone. Analysis of the acoustic signals obtained by the plate vibrations indicates that boundary conditions affect the signals features in terms of reverberation time as well as frequency content, which is perceptually significant for a listener.