Predictive Acoustics and Acoustical Modeling Software: Bose Modeler

From March to August 2014, in its Sound Control column dedicated to acoustics, Richard Honeycutt reviewed and wrote a series of articles on the evolution of predictive acoustics and acoustical modeling software, including a review of some of the available tools. The first article provided an introduction to the possibilities of acoustical modeling tools and the second article focused already on one of those available tools: Bose Modeler.
 
Bose Modeler electroacoustic prediction software is one of the earliest ray-tracing computer acoustical modeling programs. It was first released for MacIntosh in 1986 and is now available for Windows only. At the time of writing, the Windows version was Modeler 6.8 (Bose introduced Modeler 6.9 in October 2017 - more info here. It is designed to be used as an aid to scientific sound-system design and as a sales tool for sound contractors (especially in regard to its auralization capabilities). It is not intended to be a complete room-acoustics modeling program.
 
The software provides an implementation of what Bose calls the D2RΔSTIc procedure for designing a sound system and which includes calculating direct coverage, direct + reverberant coverage, predict time arrivals—direct, first-order reflections, and second-order reflections, predict speech intelligibility using the speech transmission index (STI) and confirm the design by auralizing, using the Bose Auditioner hardware workstation, an apparatus designed to provide a controlled environment for listening to auralizations. 
 
This article was originally published in audioXpress, April 2014.

Read the full article now available online here.