Immersive audio inside the Greek-Roman theatre of Tyndaris: comparison between past, current and future conditions

The acoustics applied to the ancient monuments has been found to be of great interest, especially when other disciplines interface with the sound perception of virtual reality. This paper deals with the digital reconstruction of the acoustic conditions related to the Greek-Roman theatre of Tyndaris through its historical architectural evolution from the 4th century BCE. The auralization of the selected audio recording has been applied to four different scenarios, representing the theatre in its past original condition (PC), in the current conditions (CC), in a future condition (FC) that includes an acoustic shell on the orchestra area, and in a hypothetical condition with the original scene preserved, but the current degraded cavea (SC). The absorption coefficients of the digital model have been calibrated based on the measured results of the current condition. These data have been used as input for the PC and FC models. The same source-receivers set-up has been used in the three conditions. Furthermore, a listening test has been submitted to 8 volunteers who have been involved in the assessment of the subjective acoustic parameters, that is, the Intensity, Reverberation, Clarity, Tonal Balance, Listener envelopment, Apparent source width, Distance and the source localization in the virtual environment.