Sound produced in a room will repeatedly bounce off reflective surfaces such as the floor, walls, ceiling, windows or tables while gradually losing energy. When these reflections mix with each other, the phenomena known as reverberation is created. Reverberation is thus a collection of many reflections of sound.
Reverberation time is a measure of the time required for reflecting sound to "fade away" in an enclosed area after the source of the sound has stopped.
Reverberation time is important in defining how a room will respond to acoustic sound. Reverberation time reduces when the reflections hit absorbent surfaces such as curtains, padded chairs and even people, or exit the room through the walls, drop ceilings, doors, window glass, etc.
Soundproofing is any means of reducing the sound pressure with respect to a specified sound source and receptor. There are several basic approaches to reducing sound: increasing the distance between source and receiver, using noise barries to reflect or absorb the energy of the sound waves.
Two distinct soundproofing problems may need to be considered when designing acoustic treatments - to improve the sound within a room, and reduce sound leakage to adjacent rooms or outdoors noise controller acoustics can be used to limit unwanted noise. Soundproofing can suppress unwanted indirect sound waves such as reflections that cause echoes and resonances that cause reverberation.
Soundproofing can reduce the transmission of unwanted direct sound waves from the source to an involuntary listener through the use of distance and intervening objects in the sound path.
Acoustics is the branch of physics that deals with the study of all mechanical waves in gases, liquids, and solids including topics such as vibration, sound, ultrasound and infrasound.
The most basic part of theatre audio calibration is making sure that all of the speakers' levels are balanced. Your receiver or surround processor has a speaker-setup section in its setup menu. The first thing you'll typically see is a list where you can set the number of speakers in your system and the size of each.