The Star-Club

The Hamburg Star-Club, where the Beatles played in the early 1960s, no longer exists. We reconstructed its room acoustics in the computer to hear how the bands sounded there.

The metamaterial wall

A labyrinth wall made of wood and air absorbs sound down to very low frequencies – see The Metamaterial Wall.

Hearing rooms without words

How do listeners perceive room acoustics if they are not asked to name it? A multi-dimensional scaling experiment lets listeners judge only similarity between rooms, revealing which acoustic features they actually use.

Literature

Bader, R. & Schneider, A.: Playing “Live” at the Star-Club: Reconstructing the Room Acoustics of a Famous Music Hall. Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft 28, 185-210, 2012.

Bader, R., Mischo, J., Gernert, S. & Mischo, H.: Metamaterial Labyrinth Wall Low-Frequency Sound Absorption Measurements for Restaurant Room Acoustics and Decorative Applications. Preprints 2024. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202403.1178.v1

Böhlke-Grabe, L., Ziemer, T. & Bader, R.: Non-verbal Perception of Room Acoustics using Multi-Dimensional Scaling Method. arXiv:2511.09029, 2025.