M. R. Schroeder’s scientific contributions

A new method of measuring reverberation time is described. The method uses tone bursts (or filtered pistol shots) to excite the enclosure. A simple integral over the tone-burst response of the enclosure yields, in a single measurement, the ensemble average of the decay curves that would be obtained with bandpass-filtered noise as an excitation signal. The smooth decay curves resulting from the new method improve the accuracy of reverberation-time measurements and facilitate the detection of nonexponential decays.