How do room layouts affect tuning?

Question

For background, I am not a musician, but I know a few things from physics. Physics tells us that we should perhaps expect that if your room changes, then you might need to tune your instruments differently - is this something that you can experience in real life? For instance, in a larger room, are notes more 'flat' than usual? (or the other way around perhaps?)

As another consideration, the characteristic wavelengths of some notes will be on the order of human scales (for instance, in usual conditions you can expect middle C to have a wavelength of around a meter and a half). In this situation, it seems that you might even have a phenomena where if people in the audience are all seated approximately this far apart from each other, you would hear a boost at this wavelength(?) Is this something that is ever observed? Do noise-cancelling materials pasted onto the walls largely mitigate both of these effects?

Answer 1

Room layouts don't affect the pitch of notes (unless the walls are moving).

There could theoretically be some strange beating effects if the room had a very narrow resonance near a note, or perhaps you are thinking about avoiding a room mode by tuning so that the room mode lands in between notes instead of on a note. In reality, room resonances are not that narrow and precise, so there is no practical reason to consider the room when tuning your instrument.

Answer 2

Sound waves reflect from walls; they may form resonances or standing waves, which is perceived by certain notes being louder than others. This is a very important factor in design of rooms meant for listening music (in particular recording and mixing rooms in a studio). Large resonances should be avoided, and frequencies of the resonances should be uniformly distributed. This is achieved by choosing room geometry as well as placing acoustic treatment devices such as diffusion panels or bass traps.

In larger rooms, like concert halls, standing waves are less of a problem, while the concern is making sure the sound from the stage is delivered uniformly to the audience, and the reverberation amount is appropriate. Concert halls often feature fanciful shapes and structures on the walls and the ceiling; they are exactly for this purpose.

Answer 3

Different frequencies are affected by room dimensions and content. Rows of seats (especially if hardback) then each row reflects a different frequency. People and clothing an curtains and upholstery can absorb a lot of sound energy. However, as instruments (like pianos, accordions, etc.) are difficult to retune for various venues, the rooms are generally set up to work well. Some venues are "live" and sound bounces back loudly and others are "dead" and you cannot hear the music from the other side of the room.

https://physicsworld.com/a/acoustics-in-architecture/