Acoustic Reconstruction of the Odeon Of Herodes Attikus, Greece: An Immersive Museum Installation.

This study investigates the acoustics of the Odeon of Herodes Atticus, an ancient and currently partly reconstructed Odeon located in Athens, Greece. A geometrical acoustic model of the Odeon at its original state was constructed using CATT-Acoustic software. In line with the latest investigations of Dr Manolis Korres, the model incorporated a roof extending across the whole length of the theatre, which had not been considered in previous studies. The performance of the empty space as well as the effect of seated audience occupying 85% of the theatre have been examined in relation to four acoustic indices; Reverberation Time, Clarity, Sound Strength and Speech Transmission Index. The results indicated that reverberation time was slightly higher than the proposed optimum values for the type of performances taking place in the Roman era but still within the range of previous published data regarding predictions of similar structures for the occupied version. Clarity in the occupied version of the theatre was within the acceptable range, whereas lower values than the reported optimum were observed in an empty state. With regard to Strength, optimum values were achieved mainly at the central area of the lower cavea in both simulations. Lastly, although speech intelligibility was classified as “Poor” in the roofed version of the Odeon, and “fair” for the occupied version according to the speech intelligibility assessment, it was still within the range of predicted values for other similar structures. The implementations of the above were applied in a virtual reality environment which allowed navigation through the virtual space including audio-visual stimuli in the view to achieve an immersive experience.