On the quality of plate reverberation

Metallic plates are used in recording studios to create artificial reverberation. In this paper, the flexural vibrations of such plates are analysed in order to better understand the influence of geometry and materials on the quality of plate reverberation. A comparison is made with acoustic reverberation, both in the time and frequency domain. This comparison is supported by objective criteria such as modal density and density of reflections. From a physical point of view, the internal and external damping mechanisms are examined in detail since they determine the frequency dependence of the reverberation time. Theoretical results are validated through comparison with experiments performed on an EMT140 reverberation plate. The underlying model is aimed at developing numerical simulations of plates (virtual reverberators) allowing a large variety of reverberations based on variations of geometry and materials as input parameters.