Acoustic measurements of the Roman theatre of Pompei by mapping the sound reflections

The city of Pompei has been always subject to archaeological works during the last decades. However, the theatre that has been discovered in the urban environment has one of the best preserved cavea, although it lacks most of the scaenae frons. This paper deals with the acoustic measurements undertaken to study the behavior of this important monument through the main acoustic parameter outlined by ISO 3382-1, and to detect the direction of the early and late reflections characterizing the reverberation. This latest approach enabled the possibility to investigate the sound propagation thought the space with the employment of a multichannel spherical array microphone. The recorded impulse response (IR) has been analyzed in such a way to create an overlay video, given by the overlapping of the 360° image taken at the receiver position with the contour level of the sound decay after the impulse.