Stephen Dance to present at Listen Up!

On the 2nd and 3rd March 2015 the Health and Safety Laboratory has organised a new conference to be joint hosted at Manchester Airport and the HSL in Buxton. The meeting is entitled, "Listen Up" and is the inaugural European Hearing Conservation Conference. Dr Stephen Dance will be presenting his work on the hearing conservation programme organised for the Royal Academy of Music.

Royal College of Art visit the Acoustic Group

On the evening of the 23rd November 2015, the Acoustics Group hosted the now annual visit from the Sound Design students from the Royal College of Art. Mike Wyeld and Dr Stephen Dance demonstrated our excellent facilities in the acoustics laboratory. The students particularly loved staying in silence in the anechoic chamber

Philip Robinson gives a guest lecture

On the 23rd November 2015 Philip Robinson of Fosters + Partners gave a guest lecture to the 2nd year Masters students. Philip gave a couple of great demonstrations on auralisation and virtual reality. The students were really engaged in the presentation particularly when things went wrong!

Visit from the Association of Motion Picture Sound

On the 16th November 2015, the Association of Motion Picture Sound  visited the Acoustics  Group. The were particularly impressed by the facilities of the acoustics laboratory, and enjoyed the demonstrations organised. They spend most of the time in the anechoic chamber which was setup for silence!

Eric Bustamante wins the Newman Medal

On Friday 13th November 2015, Eric Bustamante was awarded the Acoustical Society of America Newman Medal for Architectural Acoustics. His project, supervised by Dr Luis Gomez-Agustina, was in collaboration with the University of the Arts, where Eric gave a lecture on acoustics to the design students. His Masters thesis was entitled, "Application of sustainable materials for the treatment of open-plan spaces". Well done Eric!

New PhD student: Federico Rossi

On Thursday 12th November 2015 Federico Rossi, Leader of DARLAB at London South Bank University, joined the Acoustics Group to study for his doctorate. Federico is an architecture and robotic manufacturering, and hence his PhD is entitled, " Integrating design with robotic manufacturing to benefit acoustics". He will be supervised by Dr Stephen Dance and Professor Andy Ford. We all wish him luck!

Talk to the IOA Central Branch

On the 11th November 2015, Dr Stephen Dance gave an invited talk to the Institute of Acoustics Central Branch. The topic of the talk was on the hearing acuity of classical music student with new results given. These results will be in the next issue of the Acoustics Bulletin.  The talk was kindly hosted  by the Open University and ended with the traditional curry and questions session.

Acoustics Group at Auditorium Acoustics 2015

The Institute of Acoustics organised Auditorium Acoustics 2015 in Paris, with a finale at the newly built La Philharmone 1. The Acoustics Group was well represented with five Masters students in attendance. The students organised the visit themselves with the help of AirBnB. Well done on your initiative  - Eric Ballestero, Andrew Steele, Doug Shearer, Eric Bustamante, Simon Brown!

3-D Printing Poster goes on tour!

Auditorium Acoustics 2015 was held in Paris, 29-31st October 2015. Masters student Andrew Steele presented his thesis poster. The poster was entitled, "The Development of a 3-D printed Dodecahedron Loudspeaker - an improved omnidirectional sound source". Well done on sneaking the poster in!

Audiometric Testing of the London Philharmonic Orchestra

On the 11th November 2015 the Acoustics Group signed their third agreement with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Health surveillance will be undertaken on the musicians and managers adding to the existing database of audiometric data build up in 2009 and 2012. We wish the musicians well with their performance at Wembly tonight for Diwali!

The 2nd year Masters students at work

Here's a photo of nearly all the 2nd year Masters students learning about noise exposure. It was the closest we could get to November 5th as an experiment! Noise exposure at work using various classes of sound level meter and dosimeter!