The acoustics of AccorHotels Arena and other large scale indoor pop venues

International audienceSince the 70-ties, pop music has moved from outdoor to indoor venues. Especially sport arenas were converted or just used as venue for large scale pop concerts. Also new halls, sometimes dedicated to music were built. Especially the pour sound insulation of existing sport venues let to the building of new halls. For both new and existing halls the main issue, not always well understood, is the room acoustics of these venues. The large size of these venues results in significant delay of reflections. Every reflection that carries enough energy is disturbing in the sense that it is audible as echo, it colors or it blurs the sound. So the effort focuses on the removal of reflections, as thorough as possible. In new halls there are more possibilities than in existing halls, however also in existing halls significant improvements can be obtained. One example of an existing hall that was improved is the AccorHotels Arena (formerly Palais des Sports Paris-Bercy). Others are for example Ahoy Rotterdam, Johan Cruijf Arena Amsterdam and Burg-W�chter Castello D�sseldorf. New large venues, that were built with optimized acoustics are AfasLive! (formerly Heineken Music hall), Ziggo dome Amsterdam and Volkswagen Arena Istanbul. Though it is not the reverberation time itself that should be used as a criterion, reflections do generate reverberance, so a relation can be derived between volume and reverberation time for the optimal situation with sufficient suppression of late reflections. With the renovation of the AccorHotels Arena as an example, the approach and potential for improvement of existing sport venues, compared to new venues, will be explained