Hearing myself with the others - Sound levels in choral performance measu

The choir singer has two acoustic sipals to attend to: fhe sound of his or her own voice (feedback), and the sound of fhe rest of fhe choir (reference). The balance in loudness between feedback and reference is governed mainly by the room acousfics. While earlier experimenfs have shown fhat singers have a fairly large tolerance for imbalance, wifh references ranging from -23 dB to +5 dB, experience suggests tha f , when singers are given control over this parameter, their preferences are much narrower. A quantification of the optimum balance would be useful in fhe desip of concert stages and rehearsal halls. A method is described for measuring the feedback and reference levels as experienced by singers under live performance conditions. Recordings were made using binaural microphones worn by choir singer subjects. With the given combination of choir and room, it was possible to achieve adequate separation of the feedback and reference sipals with simple signal processing. The feedback-to-reference ra fio averaged over the N v e singers was found to be +3.9 dB, with extremes of +1.5and +7.3 dB.