Although architectural acoustics has been an integral part of the design of structures for at least 2,000 years, the subject was only placed on a firm scientific basis at the beginning of the 20th century by Wallace Sabine. Sabine pointed out that the most important quantity in determining the acoustic suitability of a room for a particular use is its reverberation time, and he provided a scientific basis by which the reverberation time can be determined or predicted.

When a source creates a sound wave in a room or auditorium, observers hear not only the sound wave propagating directly from the source but also the myriad reflections from the walls, floor, and ceiling. These latter form the reflected wave, or reverberant sound. After the source ceases, the reverberant sound can be heard for some time as it grows softer. The time required, after the sound source ceases, for the absolute intensity to drop by a factor of 10⁶—or, equivalently, the time for the intensity level to drop by 60 decibels—is defined as the reverberation time (RT, sometimes referred to as RT₆₀). Sabine recognized that the reverberation time of an auditorium is related to the volume of the auditorium and to the ability of the walls, ceiling, floor, and contents of the room to absorb sound. Using these assumptions, he set forth the empirical relationship through which the reverberation time could be determined: RT = 0.05V/A, where RT is the reverberation time in seconds, V is the volume of the room in cubic feet, and A is the total sound absorption of the room, measured by the unit sabin. The sabin is the absorption equivalent to one square foot of perfectly absorbing surface—for example, a one-square-foot hole in a wall or five square feet of surface that absorbs 20 percent of the sound striking it.

Both the design and the analysis of room acoustics begin with this equation. Using the equation and the absorption coefficients of the materials from which the walls are to be constructed, an approximation can be obtained for the way in which the room will function acoustically. Absorbers and reflectors, or some combination of the two, can then be used to modify the reverberation time and its frequency dependence, thereby achieving the most desirable characteristics for specific uses. Representative absorption coefficients—showing the fraction of the wave, as a function of frequency, that is absorbed when a sound hits various materials—are given in the Table. The absorption from all the surfaces in the room are added together to obtain the total absorption (A).

While there is no exact value of reverberation time that can be called ideal, there is a range of values deemed to be appropriate for each application. These vary with the size of the room, but the averages can be calculated and indicated by lines on a graph. The need for clarity in understanding speech dictates that rooms used for talking must have a reasonably short reverberation time. On the other hand, the full sound desirable in the performance of music of the Romantic era, such as Wagner operas or Mahler symphonies, requires a long reverberation time. Obtaining a clarity suitable for the light, rapid passages of Bach or Mozart requires an intermediate value of reverberation time. For playing back recordings on an audio system, the reverberation time should be short, so as not to create confusion with the reverberation time of the music in the hall where it was recorded.