Samuel Musora
Dept. of Mech. Eng., The Cooper Union, 51 Astor Pl., New York, NY 10003
Daniel R. Raichel
The Cooper Union and the Graduate Ctr. of City Univ. of New York
Latif Jiji
Karim Abdulla-Altaii
CCNY
Establishing an acoustics laboratory from the start on limited funds ($50 K) for the purpose of training engineering students constitutes a formidable task that requires careful planning and design. Cost considerations limit the size of an anechoic chamber, but fortunately a commercially ready unit was found available for the price of $15 K and with a cutoff frequency of 125 Hz. A reverberation chamber could be constructed in-house with the incorporation of a reflective door which is also available commercially. The preferred minimum room volume of 7062 ft[sup 3] results in a cut-off frequency of 125 Hz. In the selection of instrumentation, advantage was taken of the ready availability of task-specific circuit boards which can be inserted into microcomputers which can then serve as FFT analyzers and signals generators. Other equipment include a Class 1 sound level meter kit, a number of extremely low-priced SLMs, audio amplifiers, monitor speakers, measurement microphones, and an X-Y plotter. Also, the available space was reconfigured to minimize outside interference and to maximize the ease of facility usage.